When I learned of Muhammad Ali’s death I shed a tear as I reflected on the life and times of a real hero. I have never quite understood the practice of labelling sport stars as heroes; however, describing Ali as a hero is quite proper. It helps to define the term. Sports Illustrated and the BBC each named Ali as the Sportsman of the 20th Century, and these honors came for more than what he accomplished in the boxing ring.
After winning the light-heavyweight championship in the 1960 Olympics, 18-year old Cassius Marcellus Clay fought his way through the professional light-heavyweights and then the heavyweights, usually predicting the knockout rounds. Two years later, after knocking out the ageless wonder, Archie Moore, in the predicted fourth round, he had convinced many of us to accept his unusual style of keeping his hands low and pulling his head straight back exactly as every boxer is instructed not to do. We learned that this approach made opponents miss by an inch or two and left them off-balance and open for his counter punches. Nevertheless, in 1964 Clay was a 7 to 1 underdog to the presumably invincible brute, Sonny Liston. Yet he became a giant killer with a TKO over Liston.
That night, after stunning Liston and “shocking the world,” the public glorified Cassius Clay, but this adoration turned to hatred in warp speed. The next day, Clay appeared publicly with Malcolm X, a scandalous act to many, black as well as white, as Malcolm was widely perceived as a dangerous demagogue. But Clay made it even worse, as he proclaimed that he was a member of the Nation of Islam, the so-called Black Muslims, erroneously considered a hate group, and that he had abandoned his slave name and assumed the name, “Cassius X,” which later became “Muhammad Ali.” The fight had come close to being cancelled beforehand after the Miami Herald ran a story saying that Ali had joined the Nation of Islam.
Because of his religion, Muhammad Ali became such a pariah in America that all the regular venues for boxing matches refused to schedule and hold the rematch with Sonny Liston. Sometimes the excuse was Sonny Liston’s continual brushes with the law and his reputed link to the mob. However, this was not a great hindrance to the first fight. What had changed was not so much Liston’s behavior, but Ali’s behavior–his membership in the Nation of Islam, which held that blacks could not live in peace with whites and therefore blacks should be granted five states in which to live and self-govern. Having a strong black nationalist stance made the Nation of Islam a despised group. When the Massachusetts Boxing Commission gave approval for the fight, the World Boxing Association suspended its membership, cancelling the fight. That is why the fight took place–more than a year after the first fight–in the remote small town of Lewistown, Maine.
Ali became even more of a problem for the American society when in 1966, at the end of his contract with the syndicate of Louisville businessmen, he switched to Herbert Muhammad–son of Elijah Muhammad–and the Muslims as his management. That was a bit too much for many people to bear.
I met and interacted briefly with Muhammad Ali a couple of times. The first time occurred at a Nation of Islam Mosque in Washington DC the Sunday before the Friday in 1967 at which he refused to accept being drafted into the Army. His stance against participating in the war was especially meaningful for me. There were so many sympathetic visitors to the Mosque that day that members seated us in the sanctuary and went to the basement and watched Ali’s speech on a projection system.
Because of his uncommon over-the-top verbal expressions the public greatly underestimated Ali–both inside and outside the ring. That day in the Mosque, when he shook my hand–with both of his–and said, “We will die for you brother,” I believed him. And for the next several days I told everyone in my circles that Ali would not be changing his mind and entering the draft, as he was thoroughly committed to a set of principles that I admired greatly, especially as he famously said, “No Viet Cong ever called me ‘nigger,'”
In 1964 the draft board declared Ali ineligible for the draft because of his low scores on the Army IQ tests; however, two years later, in a questionable move the draft board reclassified him as draft eligible. Ali refused to accept the draft, asserting conscientious objector status in the tradition of his religion and after the example of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, who claimed conscientious objector status during World War II. Ali should have been covered by a U.S. Supreme Court Ruling the year before, but his local draft board refused to consider his religious beliefs. So he was tried, convicted (in 20 minutes), and sentenced to five years in prison. It did not help of course for Ali to declare that he had nothing against the Viet Cong; however, hundreds of black Muslims who did not make such a statement went to jail because courts refused to accept their religion as the basis for conscientious objection just as had happened with Elijah Muhammad during WW II. On the other hand, many non-Muslims were successful in getting objector status which meant being ordered to perform an alternative service such as two years of low-paying public sector work.
It took over three years for Ali’s case to reach the Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction on an 8-0 vote. For three and a half years Muhammad Ali was deprived of his livelihood as his license to box was revoked and he was forbidden to travel outside the country. For his principled stance Ali risked prison and never being able to box again.
Though not connected directly to the Black Power Movement, Ali’s public pro-black stance and pronouncements helped set the stage for the movement, and he caused many black athletes to look more closely at their roles in society. This included the Olympics Project for Human Rights, which burst on the international scene at the 1968 Olympics.
I saw most of Ali’s fights, some on regular television but most on closed circuit television shown live in theaters then. I also attended a couple of his fights in person, most notably the so-called “Fight of the Century,” against Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in 1971. That Ali lost to Frazier should not have surprised as Ali had a forced exile from boxing for three and a half years during his prime.
There were two Muhammad Ali’s–the one before 1967 when he was rarely hit as he danced around the ring. By the time of the Frazier fight in 1971 Ali no longer danced and was no longer unhittable. His prime was slipping away. He fought well, bravely, and successfully, but he absorbed a lot of punishment along the way, thus the Parkinson’s disease.
For many years I would say that the best thing I had done academically was a set of television shows on Ali. After Ali regained his title from Leon Spinks in 1978 a scholarly oriented host of a late-night television interview show in St. Louis wanted to examine various sociological aspects of this phenomenon–Muhammad Ali. So looking for a sociologist who followed boxing, he was referred to me as I knew boxing and had followed Ali since his amateur days. We taped five one-half hour shows that ran five nights, Monday through Friday, each show dealing with a different issue–Muhammad Ali the boxer, the dancer, the activist, the Muslim, and his future on the world stage. As a result of the Muslim segment I was invited as guest of honor at an informal Sunday afternoon tea at the local mainstream Muslim Mosque.
Ali was not perfect, as few if any such people exist; however, he cut a wide swath through the world and we are better for it.