Kaepernick’s Knee and Olympic Fists Are Linked by History

The gesture by the athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics was ultimately widely seen as a landmark in the civil rights movement.In the summer of 1968, a roiling year of war, assassination and political and racial tension, I turned 14 in the Cajun town of Eunice, La. Schools would not fully integrate until a year later, after man walked on the moon. So naïve was I as a boy, so complete and unquestioned was segregation, I thought the sign at the laundromat that said, “Whites Only,” referred to the color of clothing.

In 1968, I was also first drawn irresistibly to the Olympics, an event I have now covered 14 times: Bob Beamon launched a magnificently unbound long…