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“Afterlife” really tells two stories, running along parallel tracks: One is a work of cultural history that touches on Malcolm’s appeal to people as disparate as Black Power firebrand Stokely Carmichael and conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who once groused, “I don’t see how the civil rights people of today can claim Malcolm X as their own.”

The image of John Carlos and Tommie Smith on the medal stand at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, gloved fists in the air in a Black power salute, has been seared into the historical consciousness.

Think Tommie Smith and John Carlos standing in silence, shoeless, gloved fists raised in a Black Power salute, during the 200-meter medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics.

Emotionally, the LP strikes a tone of cautious optimism that reflected the advances of the Black Power movement and the long-awaited end of the Vietnam War.

There, in the Games famous for Black power protest salutes by track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos from the medal stand, Foreman bloodied Lithuanian Jonas Cepulis, fighting for the Soviet Union, for 1½ rounds in the gold-medal heavyweight match, winning when the referee stopped the fight.