The photo was snapped on June 4, 1967. Behind a podium, a dozen athletes had assembled in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Negro Industrial and Economic Union. Seated in the front row were four of the greatest and, at the time, most famous Black athletes in America: Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (née Lew Alcindor). Five weeks earlier, Ali had made it clear he would not comply with his local draft board to serve in the Vietnam War, citing a religious objection. Stripped of his heavyweight title crown and suspended by boxing, he was staring down the barrel of a possible five-year prison sentence and five-figure fine. 
The original goal of the meeting,