Muhammad Ali - United States

Sports Columnist Dave Zirin on Muhammad Ali's Career and His Groundbreaking Political Involvement

Democracy Now, Monday, April 9th, 2007

Sports columnist Dave Zirin has written a new account of the career and politics of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. In his prime, Ali was an outspoken advocate of the Black Muslim movement and a critic of the Vietnam War. [includes rush transcript]

We end today with a new look at the boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Ali is considered the greatest boxer in the history of the sport. In his prime he was an outspoken advocate of the Black Muslim movement and a critic of the Vietnam War. He was sentenced to prison and stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

Sports columnist Dave Zirin has written a new account of Ali's career and his groundbreaking political involvement called "The Muhammad Ali Handbook." Zirin joins us in the firehouse studio.

David Zirin, writes the weekly column Edge of Sports. He is a regular contributor to the Nation magazine and author of the "Muhammad Ali Handbook." His website is EdgeofSports.com.

AMY GOODMAN: We end today with a new look at the boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Ali is considered the greatest boxer in the history of sports. In his prime, he was an outspoken advocate of the Black Muslim movement, a critic of the Vietnam War. He was sentenced to prison and stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

0. NEWS ANCHOR: Cassius Clay, at a federal court in Houston, is found guilty of violating the US Selective Service laws by refusing to be inducted. He is sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000.
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AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt that came from the documentary When We Were Kings. Sports columnist Dave Zirin has written the book, the Muhammad Ali Handbook. It's a new account of Ali's career and his groundbreaking political involvement. Dave writes the weekly column, "Edge of Sports," and is a regular contributor to The Nation magazine, joining us here in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

DAVID ZIRIN: Great to be here, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we talk about Muhammad Ali, I want to go back to the top story today: Don Imus's comments disparaging the Rutgers basketball team and Maretta Short of NOW talking about this being the thirty-fifth anniversary of Title IX. Can you talk more about this, because this is something you've written extensively about?

DAVID ZIRIN: Absolutely. When Title IX was first put into play back in the early 1970s, roughly one out of twenty-nine girls in middle school, junior high school, high school, played sports. Today, that number is roughly one out of three. And so, statistics show that young girls who play sports at an early age are actually less likely to end up in abusive relationships, less likely to have eating disorders, less likely to have issues with drugs and alcohol. So you're talking about legislation, a direct result of the women's movement of the late '60s and early '70s, that has benefited the lives of tens of millions of women in this country. And the fact that it's something that both George W. Bush and Chief Justice John Roberts have both said that they opposed, I think is something that we all should be very aware of on this anniversary of this incredible legislation.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts on Don Imus, whether he should be fired?

DAVID ZIRIN: Oh, I think he should be canned like a tuna. I mean, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I'm just so sick and tired of the shock jocks, of the Coulters, of the Imuses, being able to say whatever they want to say and then reaping the publicity from that, and then being able to just apologize and go on with a slight bump in their ratings.

But I'll tell you something that's bothersome to me, and this is why, really, I wrote the Muhammad Ali Handbook, is the silence from the world of sports. I mean, with all due respects to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, I wanted to hear the rise of voices from NBA players, from WNBA players, from NBA Commissioner David Stern, from all the people who were offended by what Imus said. The sports world needs to have its own progressive milieu to respond to things like this.

I mean, look how political the world of sports is, everything from Pat Tillman to gay athletes to this issue. I mean, it's so infused with politics. Yet, too often, politics is verboten for athletes. I have spoken in the last week to NBA and WNBA players who were repulsed by what Don Imus said. But the idea of speaking out is such a foreign concept that it makes Ali's history all the more relevant for today: the athlete who would not be silenced.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about Muhammad Ali and what he would say out loud.

DAVID ZIRIN: What Ali would say out loud would be -- well, he certainly would say, I think, "I have a quarrel with Don Imus." I mean, and he would say -- you know, even say, "I ain't got no quarrel with the sisters at Rutgers University." I mean, that's the thing about Muhammad Ali in the 1960s that's so incredible. I mean, he finished in the bottom 1% of his high school class. He barely graduated from high school. Yet, on all the important social issues of the day, on the edge of the black freedom struggle, on the Vietnam War, while all the best and the brightest were talking about "all deliberate speed" for integration and talking about war in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali knew what side he was on, time and again. He knew there was right, and he knew there was wrong. And because he had that direct connection both to a black political tradition that was antiwar, through people like Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, and also because his own family came from the black working class in the South, he knew which side he was on, on a series of these questions, when the leading edge of politics, of the so-called "experts," were so patently wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play another clip highlighting Muhammad Ali's political beliefs. This, a clip from When We Were Kings, the documentary about Ali's 1974 championship bout with George Foreman in Kinshasa that came to be known as the "Rumble in the Jungle."

0. MUHAMMAD ALI: Yeah, I'm in Africa. Yeah, Africa is my home. Damn America and what America thinks! Yeah, I live in America, but Africa is the home of the black man, and I was a slave 400 years ago, and I'm going back home to fight among my brothers. Yeah!
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AMY GOODMAN: That was Muhammad Ali speaking in 1974.

DAVID ZIRIN: Absolutely. And, you know, going back to that Kinshasa fight, I think it's a great example of the redemptive power of Muhammad Ali, because by that time he was somebody who, you know, had returned to the world of boxing, had fought off through the Supreme Court a five-year prison sentence given down to him by the federal courts, an outrageously high sentence for a draft resister at the time, and by the end, after that fight, he was named "Sportsman of the Year" by Sports Illustrated. So he makes this amazing journey from being the most vilified, hated athlete in the history of the United States -- and I don't think there's any contention about that -- to becoming a figure of reconciliation, who was invited by Gerald Ford to the White House to shake hands. And that's the thing about Ali, is that he was always bound up in the rhythms of the social movements of the day. So in the '60s he becomes a figure that's beloved by the antiwar movement and the black freedom struggle, hated by the mainstream, yet as the movements died in the '70s, he became a figure of bringing those two worlds back together.

AMY GOODMAN: This is another clip of Muhammad Ali, again from When We Were Kings, also before the fight with George Foreman.

0. MUHAMMAD ALI: I'm going to fight for the prestige, not for me, but to uplift my little brothers who are a sleeping on concrete floors today in America, black people who are living on welfare, black people who can't eat, black people who don't know no knowledge of themselves, black people who don't have no future. I want to win my title and walk down the alleys, settle in the garbage can with the wineheads. I want to walk down the street with the dope addicts, talk to the prostitutes so I can help a lot of the people.
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0. I can show them films. I can take this documentary. I can take movies and help organize my people in Louisville, Kentucky, Indianapolis, Indiana, Cincinnati, Ohio. I can go through [inaudible] and Florida and Mississippi and show the little black Africans in them countries, who didn't know this is their country. You look like people in Mississippi, in Alabama and Georgia. They're your brother, but they never knew you was over here, and you don't know much about them. God has blessed me [inaudible] through boxing to help get to all these people and to show them films that I haven't seen. I know they haven't seen them. I'm well, and I haven't seen them. Now I can go get all these films. You governments can let me take pictures. You can let me do things, and I can take all this back to America. But it's good to be a winner. All I go to do is whoop George Foreman.
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AMY GOODMAN: That's right, that was Muhammad Ali, right before the fight with George Foreman in 1974.

DAVID ZIRIN: Yeah, and what I can't help think about, hearing this, is about how distanced a lot of the star athletes are today from that kind of mindset, of saying, "I'm fighting for the people in the -- for the winos, for the dopeheads, for the people who live in the gutter, for the people who are told that they can never amount to anything. You know, LeBron James, who's the most famous player in the National Basketball Association, still only twenty-two years old, was asked in an interview about his career aspirations, and he said at the same time that he wanted to be a global icon like Muhammad Ali and that he wanted to be the first athlete billionaire. Now, if you actually know the history, those two ideas are so in conflict with one another, yet because all LeBron James knows is that Muhammad Ali is famous for being famous, that's what LeBron James knows. And because few people have had their political teeth extracted like Muhammad Ali -- I mean, he's been the victim of a political root canal -- so the hope for this book is to try to restore the teeth to what Muhammad Ali actually stood for in the '60s.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Gary Tyler. We did a broadcast with the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, talking about his case. Explain how you're organizing with athletes.

DAVID ZIRIN: Yes. I mean, first of all --

AMY GOODMAN: And explain his case quickly.

DAVID ZIRIN: Absolutely. Gary Tyler, he's been in Angola prison, a former slave plantation, for thirty-two years. The case against him is spotty, to put it mildly. I believe he's innocent, looking at the evidence in the case. Bob Herbert believes he's innocent, looking at the evidence of the case. And I read Bob Herbert's three columns published over the course of a month in the New York Times, and I heard him on your show, Amy, and when I heard this, I tried to ask myself, "Well, what can I do to help?" I mean, it was so stark and so upsetting, Gary Tyler's story.

So, you know, my little corner of the world is the intersection of athletes and politics. So I put out a call. I wrote a letter, calling it "Jocks for Justice," sent it out to some athletes, and I wanted to see who would be willing to sign on and if we could get some publicity by doing a public statement. And I've got to tell you, one of the things that was really shocking about it is, usually getting in touch with former athletes, with famous athletes, it's like trying to get in touch with Don Corleone, like you have to talk to the guy who knows the guy who knows the guy just to talk to somebody. And it was so striking to me how people just got back to me so quickly, the older athletes, people like Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Tommy Smith and John Carlos, former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton and Red Sox all-star Bill "Spaceman" Lee. They remembered Gary's case from the early '70s, and immediately they got back to me: "Sign me on."

Some of the younger athletes, people like Etan Thomas for the Washington Wizards, or Toni Smith, the woman basketball player who made her stand protesting the war at Manhattanville College. They, like me, needed to be educated on the case, because it has been so forgotten over the last thirty years. But when they heard about it, I mean, it was just like -- it has that feel of a movement right now, and they were on board.

AMY GOODMAN: And just again, for those who didn't hear our broadcast of the case of Gary Tyler, Gary Tyler is the man who's been in prison now since he was sixteen years old, his case being called one of the great miscarriages of justice in modern history in the United States. He's the African American jailed in 1974 for a murder many believe he didn't commit, an all-white jury convicting him based entirely on the statement of four witnesses who have later recanted their testimony.

I want to thank you very much, Dave Zirin, for joining us. The new book is called Muhammad Ali Handbook. Howard Zinn has called Dave Zirin a "talented sportswriter with a social conscience."

*****

Muhammad Ali - the living flame

by Thomas Hauser

Observer Sport Monthly, November 2, 2003

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/

People today understand that Muhammad Ali defied the US government and alienated mainstream America because he stood up for his principles. But they often don't know what those principles were. Generally, they are aware that, after beating Sonny Liston to capture the world heavyweight championship in 1964, Clay announced that he had accepted the teachings of a religion known as the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Thereafter, he became a lightning rod for dissent throughout America and refused induction into the US Army during the height of the war in Vietnam.

But to younger generations the Ali of today is famous primarily for being famous. There has been a deliberate distortion of what he once believed, said, and stood for. History is being rewritten to serve political, social and economic ends. Thus, it's important to revisit the Ali who, in the words of author Dave Kindred, was 'as near to living flame as a man can get'.

In the early 1960s, when Ali first entered the public consciousness, sport was considered one of the few areas where black Americans could compete on equal footing with whites. But, in reality, sport reflected the old order. Black athletes could become stars, but only within guidelines dictated by the establishment. And away from the playing fields, as Ali himself once noted, 'many coloured people thought it was better to be white'. Black Americans were scorned, demeaned and denied even self-love.

In 1961, Cassius Clay met a man called Sam Saxon. Saxon was one of a small group of adherents (known to the media as 'Black Muslims') who attended Nation of Islam meetings at a Miami temple and followed the black separatist teachings of a self-proclaimed 'messenger' called Elijah Muhammad. Clay accepted Saxon's invitation to attend a Nation of Islam service and thereafter was indoctrinated with the tenets of the religion.

The Nation of Islam taught that white people were devils who had been genetically created by an evil scientist with a large head named Mr Yacub. It maintained there was a wheel-shaped, half-mile wide 'Mother of Planes' manned by black men in the sky and that, on Allah's chosen day of retribution, 1,500 planes from this Mother of Planes would drop deadly explosives destroying all but the righteous on earth. Neither of these views is part of traditional Islamic thought or finds justification in the Koran. Moreover, while the concepts of Heaven and Hell are central to traditional Islamic doctrine, the Nation of Islam rejected both.

From 1964 through his conversion to orthodox Islam in 1975, Muhammad Ali was the Nation of Islam's most visible and vocal spokesman in America. Nation of Islam teachings were at the core of who he was at that time in his life. Among the positions Ali preached were:

On integration: 'We who follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad don't want to be forced to integrate. Integration is wrong. We don't want to live with the white man; that's all.'

On intermarriage: 'No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.'

On the need for a separate black homeland: 'Why don't we get out and build our own nation? White people just don't want their slaves to be free. That's the whole thing. Why not let us go and build ourselves a nation? We want a country. We're 40 million people, but we'll never be free until we own our own land.'

On brotherhood: 'We're not all brothers. You can say we're brothers, but we're not.'

Ali was black and proud of it at a time when many black Americans were running from their colour. 'He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people,' said social activist Dick Gregory. 'And he was able to tell white folks, for us, to "Go to hell."'

The establishment media - and sportswriters in particular - came down hard on Ali. Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times labelled him the 'white man's burden'. Jimmy Cannon of the New York Journal-American called Ali's ties to the Nation of Islam 'the dirtiest in American sports since the Nazis were shouting for Max Schmeling as representative of their vile theories of blood'.

A lot of white liberals and black Americans also took issue with Ali. 'I never went along with the pronouncements of Elijah Muhammad that the white man was the devil and that blacks should be striving for separate development; a sort of American apartheid,' said Arthur Ashe. 'That never made sense to me. It was a racist ideology and I didn't like it.'

Joe Louis added his voice to those opposing Ali and opined: 'I've always believed that every man is my brother. Clay will earn the public's hatred because of his connections with the Black Muslims.'

Former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson concurred with Louis, declaring: 'I've been told that Clay has every right to follow any religion he chooses and I agree. But, by the same token, I have every right to call the Black Muslims a menace to the United States and a menace to the Negro race. I do not believe God put us here to hate one another. Cassius Clay is disgracing himself and the Negro race.'

Still, whether or not one liked what Ali represented, it was clear his demand for full entitlement for all black people was on the cutting edge of an era. 'I'm no leader; I'm a little humble follower,' Ali said. But to many he was the ultimate symbol of black pride and resistance to an unjust social order.

Ali broke the mould. When he appeared on the scene, it was popular among those in the vanguard of the civil rights movement to take the 'safe' path. That path wasn't safe for those who participated in the struggle. Martin Luther King Jr, Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo and other courageous men and women were subjected to violence and sometimes death when they carried the struggle 'too far'. But the road they travelled was designed to be as non-threatening as possible. White Americans were told: 'All that black people want is what you want for yourselves. We're appealing to your conscience.'

Then along came Ali, preaching something very different from mainstream values. Outside the ring, he was never violent. His threat to the status quo was one of ideas, which is ironic because he himself was never a 'thinker'.

The civil rights movement and Ali as a fighter both peaked in the mid-1960s. Then the war in Vietnam intervened. In 1964, Ali had been classified 1-Y (not qualified for military service) as a result of scoring poorly on a Selective Service mental aptitude examination. Then, in early 1966, with the war expanding and manpower needs growing, the test score required for induction into the armed forces was lowered, leaving him eligible for the draft. Ali requested a deferment but, on 17 February 1966, his request was denied and he was reclassified 1-A (available for the draft). Several hours later, a frustrated Ali blurted out to reporters: 'I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong.' The following day, his outburst was front-page news across the country and the sporting press raged against him.

Ali wasn't a political thinker. His initial concern over being drafted wasn't religious or political. It was that of a 24-year-old who thought he had put the draft behind him and then learned he was in danger of having his life turned upside down.

Later, however, on 28 April 1967, citing his religious beliefs, Ali refused induction into the United States Army. 'Clay seems to have gone past the borders of faith,' Milton Gross wrote in the New York Post. 'He has reached the boundaries of fanaticism.'

Less than eight weeks later, on 20 June, Ali was convicted of refusing induction into the armed forces and sentenced to five years in prison. He was stripped of his title and precluded by state athletic commissions throughout the country from fighting. His 'exile' from boxing lasted for more than three years.

Vietnam deflected attention from Ali's racial views and put him in a context where many whites and white opinion-makers could identify with him. There had been an ugly mood around Ali, starting with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965. Thereafter, Ali seemed to take on a bit of the persona, not just the ideology, of the Nation of Islam. But when the spotlight turned from Ali's acceptance of an ideology that sanctioned hate to his refusal to accept induction into the US Army, he began to bond with the white liberal community, which at the time was quite strong.

Thus it was that Ali was martyred and lived to talk about it. Ultimately, he returned to boxing. After wins against Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena, he lost a historic 15-round decision to Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden. Then his conviction for refusing induction into the army was reversed by the US Supreme Court on a procedural technicality. After that, Ali reeled off 10 more victories but suffered a broken jaw in a 12-round loss to Ken Norton. That made him an 'underdog' in the eyes of America. People who had once bristled at his words and conduct began to feel sorry for him.

Ali earned a measure of revenge against Frazier and Norton with victories in hard-fought rematches. Then, on 30 October 1974, he dethroned George Foreman to recapture the heavyweight championship of the world. But, more importantly, America had by that time turned against the war in Vietnam. It was clear that Ali had made enormous sacrifices for his beliefs. And, whether or not people liked the racial component of Ali's views, there was respect for the fact that he had stood by them.

Today Ali is a living embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr's message that all people are deserving of love. As Jerry Izenberg, one of America's foremost sports journalists, observed: 'Ironically, after all he went through, the affection for Ali is largely colour-blind. Late in his career, he developed a quality that only a few people have. He reached a point where, when people looked at him, they didn't see black or white. They saw Ali. For a long time, that mystified him. He expected black people to love him and crowd around him, but then he realised white people loved him too; and that made him very happy.'

Ali's love affair with America and the world reached its zenith in 1996. Fifteen years earlier, his public profile had dropped after his retirement from boxing. Thereafter, if Ali appeared at an event, those in attendance were excited but he wasn't on the national radar screen. Then Ali was chosen to light the Olympic flame in Atlanta. It was a glorious moment. Three billion people around the world watched on television and were united by love and caring for one man.

But some think that the 1996 Olympics carried negatives as well, because it was in Atlanta that corporate America 'rediscovered' Ali. And since then there has been a determined effort to rewrite history. In order to take advantage of Ali's economic potential, it has been deemed desirable to 'sanitise' him. And, as a result, all the 'rough edges' are being filed away from Ali's life story.

No event crystallised the commercialisation of Ali more clearly than his appearance at the New York Stock Exchange on 31 December 1999. That was an important day. By most reckonings, it marked the end of a millennium. The Ali who won hearts in the 1960s could have been expected to celebrate the occasion at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter to draw attention to the plight of the disadvantaged. Many hoped to see Ali spend 31 December 1999 in a spiritual setting. Instead, the man who decades earlier was a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the globe and who refused to become a symbol for the US Army became a symbol for the New York Stock Exchange.

As the clock struck midnight, Ali was in Washington DC, dining on beluga caviar, lobster, and foie gras. That saddened a lot of people. Ali makes his own decisions, but those decisions are based on how information is presented to him. One can be forgiven for thinking that, had the options been explained differently to him, he would have chosen to serve as a different symbol that day. Thirty months later, that theme repeated itself when Ali was asked about al-Qaeda by David Frost during a televised interview. 'I dodge those questions,' Ali answered. 'I've opened up businesses across the country, selling products and I don't want to say nothing and, not knowing what I'm doing, not being qualified, say the wrong thing and hurt my business.' It's hard to imagine Muhammad Ali in the 1960s withholding comment on the war in Vietnam for fear of jeopardising his business interests.

'One of the many paradoxes about Ali,' says historian Randy Roberts, 'is that he embraced an ideology that disparaged white people; yet he was never cruel to white people, only blacks. Except for occasional humorous barbs, Ali's white opponents were treated with dignity and respect. But things got ugly with Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell and Joe Frazier. And sure, Patterson and Terrell might have asked for it because of things they said. But Joe was innocent. And to deny the cruelty of what Ali did to Joe Frazier is to continue to be cruel to Joe.'

In truth, it takes a certain amount of cruelty to be a great fighter. Let's not forget that Ali beat people up and inflicted brain damage on them as his livelihood and way of life for years. And the time when he was at his peak as a fighter coincided with the time when he was most openly angry at the circumstances he found.

Jeffrey Sammons, a professor of history at New York University and author of Beyond The Ring: the Role of Boxing in American Society, says: 'What's happening to Ali now is typical of what has happened to so many black figures. It's a commodification and a trivialisation. Maybe the idea is that, by embracing Ali as a society, we can feel good about having become more tolerant.'

Ali's legacy today is in danger of being protected in the same manner as the estate of Elvis Presley is protecting Elvis's image. New generations are born; and to them Ali is more legend than reality, part of America's distant past.

Ali in the 1960s stood for the proposition that principles matter; that equality among people is just and proper; that the war in Vietnam was wrong. Every time he looked in the mirror and preened: 'I'm so pretty,' he was saying: 'Black is beautiful,' before it became fashionable to do so. Ali's role in spreading that pride has been testified to by others. 'This man helped give an entire people a belief in themselves and the will to make themselves better,' said Arthur Ashe.

In sum, the experience of being black changed for millions of men and women because of Ali. But one of the reasons Ali had the impact he did was because there was an ugly edge to what he said. And by focusing on Ali's ring exploits and his refusal to serve in Vietnam, while at the same time covering up the true nature of Nation of Islam doctrine, the current keepers of Ali's legacy are losing sight of why he so enthralled and enraged segments of American society.

Ali stood up for his convictions and sacrificed a great deal for them. So why hide the true nature of what his principles were?

Great men are considered great, not only because of what they achieve, but also because of the road they travel to reach their final destination. Sanitising Muhammad Ali and rounding off the rough edges of his journey are a disservice both to history and to Ali himself. Rather than cultivate historical amnesia, we should cherish the memory of Ali as a warrior and as a gleaming symbol of defiance against an unjust social order when he was young.

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