Years before he became an instant civil rights icon on a literal global platform, Olympian John Carlos had a premonition.

“I go back to a vision I had as a young kid,” Carlos said. “I saw that things were out of order and I thought, ‘Why didn’t the adults try to put it back in order?’”

In that vision, he stood up in public and raised his hands, immediately sensing the response of the crowd turn from happiness to “anger and venom.” But even as a child, he said, “I knew it was worth it for the right cause.”

The real-life cause would manifest itself in the ongoing racial discrimination and poverty in the African American community.

The venue was the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, and that raised hand was a gloved fist — a Black Power salute from Carlos, who’d just won bronze in the 200-meter race. The venom, as predicted, was swift for him and Tommie Smith, his co-protester and the event’s gold medalist. The two were immediately banished from the Olympic Village and suspended by the U.S. Olympic Team. They received death threats and lost many opportunities.

But Carlos, who will be honored by the American Visionary Art Museum with the Lifetime Grand Visionary Award at Saturday’s Play(ful) Ball Gala, doesn’t regret a moment of it.

“A visionary has to have an inner strength, a calm in the storm,” said Carlos, who went on to become a high school counselor, coach and tireless activist. “You realize you might not have as many supporters when you initially start, but when they track what you’re doing, they follow your lead.”

As a Gen-Xer born three years after the momentous events of Mexico City, that calmly defiant image of Carlos and Smith, barefoot and resolute, was burned into my brain. It’s my go-to visual representation of standing on your beliefs, but I also always imagined the possible fear behind making such a public statement.

“You’re vulnerable every day,” Carlos said. “You don’t have to open your mouth to be in a vulnerable situation. It could just be your hair texture or your last name.”

But his belief in something higher carried him through.

“You look on the victory stand, look at my eyes, and see how focused I am,” Carlos said of the famous photo by LIFE magazine’s John Dominis. “Based on my vision, I knew it was gonna be rough. But the Creator told me ‘Have no fear. I have you in my hands.’ And it’s been that way, relative to me having fear. People don’t understand if they’ve never been conflicted with the issues you’ve been conflicted with.”

Carlos thinks many Americans are now seeing their connection to the fight for basic rights, understanding that subjects like diversity, equity and inclusion or immigration affect them in ways they’re just learning in crisis. He welcomes them to the revolution.

“These white people, for the first time, understand how Black and brown people have been feeling all this time,” Carlos said. ”Forty-five [President Donald Trump] said ‘Make America Great Again,’ but as soon as he said that, the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘When was America ever great for me, for my race?’ People started to feel certain things where they are not as protected as they were in the past. A whole bunch of white folks out there raising hell.”

When he reflects on the medal stand in Mexico City, he thinks not just of himself, but of the others with him: Smith and white Australian silver medalist Peter Norman. Though Norman left his fist at his side, he donned an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge — an organization that Smith and Carlos had co-founded.

“There are not too many situations in history where individuals do certain things to be so closely connected,” he said. “We were all three Geminis on that victory stand. We got handpicked to put us on that platform, to make change.”

Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at Norman’s 2006 funeral. The men are still inextricably linked as a template for protest and revolution, but those concepts are not stagnant. I asked Carlos what advice he would give to younger generations about the importance of activism — they’re doing pretty well already, in my opinion.

“It’s all about education. People don’t know their role in the whole equation. Give them education about why you have to have inner strength to make necessary changes,” he said. “Everything you do, the kids are watching you. … You either make a statement or the kids will say, ‘Daddy, what did you do?’”

Carlos accepts his role as an icon and a pioneer but refuses to believe it makes him different or more significant in spirit than others. We’re all connected by our societal plight, he said. In a way, we’re all on the platform, raising one fist and demanding to be heard.

“What Rosa Parks did, you did. What I did, you did. What Paul Robeson did, you did. What Harriet [Tubman] did, you did,” he said solemnly. “We did it for our race — for the human race. If one Black person does something, rest assured that bloodline runs through.”