Salaam Muhammad Ali! // The Radical Reverberations of Muhammad Ali - by Dave Zirin
"My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father.... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail." (See video here)
"I have said it once and I
will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my
religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are
fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…. If I thought the war was
going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t
have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for
my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years."
Muhammad Ali leaves the Armed Forces induction center
after refusing to be drafted into the Armed Forces in Houston,
Texas, April 28, 1967. (AP Photo)
The reverberations. Not the rumbles, the reverberations. The death
of Muhammad Ali will undoubtedly move people’s minds to his epic boxing matches
against Joe Frazier and George Foreman, or there will be retrospectives about
his epic “rumbles” against racism and war. But it’s the reverberations that we
have to understand in order to see Muhammad Ali as what he remains: the most
important athlete to ever live. It’s the reverberations that are our best
defense against real-time efforts to pull out his political teeth and turn him
into a harmless icon suitable for mass consumption.
Garry Sobers sits with Muhammad Ali in the dressing room, England v West Indies,
Lord's, 1st day, June 16, 1966
That photo with Sobers actually really rather tells you everything you could ever want to know about Muhammad Ali: Even the greatest was in awe of The Greatest.
Garry Sobers sits with Muhammad Ali in the dressing room, England v West Indies,
Lord's, 1st day, June 16, 1966
That photo with Sobers actually really rather tells you everything you could ever want to know about Muhammad Ali: Even the greatest was in awe of The Greatest.
When Dr. Martin Luther King came out against the war in Vietnam in 1967, he was
criticized by the mainstream press and his own advisors who told him to not
focus on “foreign” policy. But Dr. King forged ahead and to justify his new
stand, said publicly, “Like Muhammad Ali puts it, we are all—black and brown
and poor—victims of the same system of oppression.”
When Nelson Mandela
was imprisoned on Robben Island, he said that Muhammad Ali gave him hope that
the walls would some day come tumbling down.
When John Carlos and
Tommie Smith raised their fists on the medal stand in Mexico City, one of their
demands was to “Restore Muhammad Ali’s title.” They called Ali “the
warrior-saint of the Black Athlete’s Revolt.”
When Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) volunteers in Lowndes County, Alabama
launched an independent political party in 1965, their new group was the first
to use the symbol of a black panther. Beneath the jungle cat’s black silhouette
was a slogan straight from the champ: “WE Are the Greatest.”
When Billie Jean King
was aiming to win equal rights for women in sports, Muhammad Ali would say to
her, “Billie Jean King! YOU ARE THE QUEEN!” She said that this made her feel
brave in her own skin.
The question is why?
Why was he able to create this kind of radical ripple? The short answer is that
he stood up to the United States government… and emerged victorious. But it’s
also more complicated that that.
What Muhammad Ali
did—in a culture that worships sports and violence as well as a culture that
idolizes black athletes while criminalizing black skin—was redefine what it
meant to be tough and collectivize the very idea of courage. Through the
Champ’s words on the streets and deeds in the ring, bravery was not only
standing up to Sonny Liston. It was speaking truth to power, no matter the
cost. He was a boxer whose very presence and persona taught a simple and
dangerous lesson: “real men” fight for peace and “real women” raise their
voices and join the fray. Or as Bryant Gumbel said years ago, “Muhammad Ali
refused to be afraid. And being that way, he gave other people courage.”
My favorite Ali line
is not him saying, “I hospitalized a rock. I beat up a brick. I’m so bad I make
medicine sick” or anything of the sort. It was when he was suspended from
boxing for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War. Ali was attending a
rally for fair housing in his hometown of Louisville when he said:
Why should they ask
me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets
on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are
treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles
from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the
domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is
the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take
such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I
will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my
religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are
fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…. If I thought the war was
going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t
have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for
my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.
Damn. This is not only
an assertion of black power, but a statement of international solidarity: of
oppressed people coming together in an act of global resistance. It was a
statement that connected wars abroad with attacks on the black, brown and poor
at home, and it was said from the most hyper exalted platform our society
offered at the time: the platform of being the Champ. These views did not only
earn him the hatred of the mainstream press and the right wing of this country.
It also made him a target of liberals in the media as well as the mainstream
civil rights movement, who did not like Ali for his membership in the Nation of
Islam and opposition to what was President Lyndon Johnson’s war.
But for an emerging
movement that was demanding an end to racism by any means necessary and a very
young, emerging anti-war struggle, he was a transformative figure. In the mid-1960s,
the anti-war and anti-racist movements were on parallel tracks. Then you had
the heavyweight champ with one foot in each. Or as poet Sonia Sanchez put it
with aching beauty, “It’s hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was
still a time when hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft. It was
a war that was disproportionately killing young Black brothers and here was
this beautiful, funny poetical young man standing up and saying no! Imagine it
for a moment! The heavyweight champion, a magical man, taking his fight out of
the ring and into the arena of politics and standing firm. The message was
sent.” We are still attempting to hear the full message that Muhammad Ali was
attempting to relay: a message about the need to fight for peace.
Full articles can and
should be written about his complexities: his fallout with Malcolm X, his
de-politicization in the 1970s, the ways that warmongers attempted to use him
like a prop as he suffered in failing health. But the most important part of
his legacy is that time in the 1960s when he refused to be afraid. As he said
years later, “Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I
did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t
trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free.” Not the fight, the
reverberations. They are still being felt by a new generation of people. They
ensure that the Champ’s name will outlive us all. Bill Russell said it
best in 1967. “I’m not worried about Muhammad Ali. I’m worried about the rest
of us.” That is more true than ever
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