Fellow by the name of John Carlos will be speaking tonight at Emerson Suites (7:00 p.m. for those interested; 11:30 p.m. for those who aren't).

If you're an obsessive track and field fan, you may recall seeing the name Carlos in the "1968/200 meter dash/bronze" column of your copy of the Ginormous Compendium of Track and Field Minutiae (79th edition). Not to diminish the accomplishment of placing third in one's Olympic event, but if that's all John Carlos ever did he probably wouldn't be talking to a bunch of college students 41 years after the fact (unless it was to yell at them to get off his lawn).

No, what John Carlos did was to evoke both a passion for justice and (quite frankly) reactionary hysteria among his countrymen by silently raising his fist and looking downward at the medal podium as "The Star Spangled Banner" played, a gesture born of the frustration, sadness, and anger felt by Carlos and millions of others about the blight of racism and the economic misery of people around the world. (For those of you too young to remember or unfamiliar with this episode in history, let's just say 1968 wasn't exactly a banner year for humanity.)

The image of Carlos and U.S. teammate Tommie Smith, heads bowed almost mournfully and those gloved fists aloft, is widely considered to be among the defining icons of the 20th century, as much for the violent reaction that followed as the gesture itself. Both Smith and Carlos were cast out of the U.S. team and ostracized upon returning to the States. The usual healthy debate of death threats and racial invective followed. Even Australian Peter Norman (he's the other guy on the podium) took it on the chin for his support of the two Americans; he was banned from 1972 Olympics and eventually sank into depression and booze, dying in 2006.

And if you're sitting there thinking how lucky you are that you live in an era when peaceful protest is no longer met with violence and hysteria...well, you just cling tightly to that little delusion as long as you can, friend.

Anyhoo, Carlos will probably have a lot to say on this subject and more tonight. He's led a fascinating -- if frequently tragic -- life, and we could all learn something from a man who made one of this country's most resonant statements without uttering a single word.