The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

-- Robert F. Kennedy

In 1968, the world seemed to reel off its axis, weighted as it was by events that could fill a decade. In the span of one year, revolution rocked mankind. Young people rose up, from Paris to Prague to New York to Chicago to Mexico City to protest repression, inequality and war.

''You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world,'' sang the Beatles.

The Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre intensified the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. Students took over Columbia University. The Soviet Union crushed reform in Czechoslovakia. Demonstrators clashed with riot police at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Feminists disrupted the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. George Wallace campaigned for segregation.

Forty years ago today, on Oct. 12, the Summer Olympics began in Mexico City, 10 days after hundreds of protesters were gunned down by Mexican troops in the Tlatelolco Massacre. The tumult of the times pierced the illusion of the Olympic Games as a harmonious and apolitical international competition.

On Oct. 16, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos showed that black athletes were participants in the struggle, not pawns. They used the medal podium as a platform for their message. When the national anthem played, they stood shoeless and bowed their heads. Each raised a black-gloved fist into the air.

Of all the pictures of 1968 -- from the Vietnamese officer shooting his enemy point-blank in the head, to King's body lying on the Lorraine Hotel landing, to police pummeling activists -- none carried the quiet eloquence of Smith and Carlos' gesture, which was both forlorn and powerful, angry and hopeful.

It has become an iconic image, and undeniable proof of the intersection of sports and society.

''It was militant and moving,'' said Harry Edwards, the sociologist who wrote The Revolt of the Black Athlete. ``It has come to symbolize the era. It's taken 40 years for the world to see that they were right.''

Smith and Carlos, pariahs then, are heroes today. Smith, who won the 200 meters in world-record time, and Carlos, who finished third, were kicked off the U.S. team and sent home. For years, they received death threats. They were treated like traitors and outcasts. They couldn't find good jobs. Their wives and children were ostracized, too.

Forty years later, Carlos, 63, considers the state of the world and the theme of Barack Obama, a black man running for U.S. president: change.

''I smile to myself and think maybe I had something to do with his aspirations,'' said Carlos, who counsels troublemakers at Palm Springs (Calif.) High School. ``We've come a long way, but it's evident -- with all the hate, poverty and racism in the world -- that we have a long way to go. Mr. Smith and I were beacons to the next generation.''

WORLD-RECORD LEAP

Two days after the protest of Smith and Carlos came another historic moment in Mexico City: Bob Beamon obliterated the world record in the long jump by nearly two feet. On his first attempt, Beamon, who almost fouled out during qualifying, leaped 29 feet, 2 ½ inches through the thin air of the high-altitude capital -- so far that the optical measuring device couldn't reach Beamon's footprints. Officials had to unspool an old-fashioned measuring tape before they posted the distance of 8.90 meters. His record would last for 22 years.

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