I was just strolling around the Internet, and came across a bunch of great inauguration pics on the Boston Globe website: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/the_inauguration_of_president.html

The one that really struck me was the one above. The caption reads:

40 years after their silent protest at the 1968 Olympics, Gold Medalist Tommie Smith hugs Bronze Medalist John Carlos, and their wives Delois Smith and Charlene Carlos after Barack Obama is officially sworn in as the President of the United States.

The picture I recall from 1968 was not of these men hugging but raising their fists above them:

Here is a news story I found (from infoplease) that reminds us what the two men, having placed first and third in the 200 meter race, meant by the fist raising on the medal stand:

Smith later told the media that he raised his right, black-glove-covered fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos' left, black-covered fist represented unity in black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power. The black scarf around Smith's neck stood for black pride and their black socks (and no shoes) represented black poverty in racist America. While the protest seems relatively tame by today's standards, the actions of Smith and Carlos were met with such outrage that they were suspended from their national team and banned from the Olympic Village, the athletes' home during the games. A lot of people thought that political statements had no place in the supposedly apolitical Olympic Games. Those that opposed the protest cried out that the actions were militant and disgraced Americans. Supporters, on the other hand, were moved by the duo's actions and praised them for their bravery. The protest had lingering effects for both men, the most serious of which were death threats against them and their families.

Smith and Carlos, who both now coach high school track teams, were honored in 1998 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of their protest.

I do remember the outrage that followed this act of protest. BIG outrage. I watched this ceremony live, with my parents I believe, and Clinton and Lucille got right away what John and Tommy were doing and didn't seem to mind it too much. Some folks thought this was an un-American act. I found it (yes, at 14) moving and a profound statement of honesty in the midst of the Olympics, which , wonderful as they are, full of flag waving and pageantry and sunkist smiles, giving the world a very warm feeling inside, leave me feeling like the true state of the nations are put aside for a good show.

I think of the time as a child when I traveled by car with my folks through rural eastern Tennessee and saw desperate poverty not more than a mile away from mansion-like houses, three stories high, expensive cars out front. We like to extenuate the positive and eliminate the negative, but too often we do it simply by shutting our eyes and hearts to the unpleasant results of our own skewed values.

The picture of the men and their wives embracing on Inauguration Day makes me wonder how, forty years from now, we will look at what has gone on this week. Today, as I drove past the big horses fountain (I think some folks call it the JC Nichols fountain!) on the Plaza, I saw as I do every Sunday, a group of folks who held up pro-Palestinian signs, condemning Israel for the recent bombings. What will we think of that issue and that protest 40 years from now? I recently saw a group of Fred Phelps (known throughout the mid west and perhaps elsewhere as a radically judgemental filled anti-homosexual organizer) near one of our community colleges in Kansas City, protesting the speaking engagement of a well-known journalist who is gay but who wasn't speaking on gay rights. I remember two or three years ago in Liberty, watching the cortege of cars on the way to the cemetery to bury a young man who was a soldier killed in Iraq. And just when I thought that cortege was over, I heard a thundering sound of motorcycles, I think I counted two hundred at the end of the cortege. That was at the time that Phelps had stated that his group would be at fallen soldiers' funerals to assert in loud forms of protest their firm belief that God was striking down these young men and women out of retribution over America's unbridled moral decay, and the motorcycle riders showed up to register their own disgust that Phelps' ugly and hurtful words. Will Phelps and his daughter and other followers still show up and protest? Will bikers still rise up in protest against him? Will there still be war?

I think of my daughter who has travelled to Ft. Benning GA, to the School of the Americas, for the past four years with her high school, going now as a chaperon, to protest what she believes to be the training of soldiers to return to their native countries in Central and South America where she believes along with thousands of other protesters, that the soldiers use violent methods they have learned at the School to squelch organization of workers for better conditions, and against those who try to raise the awareness of these workers about the huge economic gap between those who run the factories and themselves. Will these protests have come to an end in forty years? Will we have educated ourselves and changed our buying habits so that we make sure our own apparel purchases don't perpetuate the poverty of those who work in these factories?

People still raise their hands, lift their voices, and take a stand. WhyForty years from now, what will touch the heart of our United Methodist church so deeply that we will mobilize for change in our world? I may not be there to see it, but my hope and prayer is that our church remains the prophetic voice and instigator of change that will be needed over these decades.

I only hope that a few more swords are beaten into plowshares, that a few more folks really conference together instead of yelling at one another, and that there will be many occasions for embracing our like-minded and other-minded brothers and sisters along the way.