Muhammad Ali. Who among us today can suppress a smile of appreciation at the mere mention of the name? I can unabashedly confess that the man was my hero, the single most impactful athlete of my generation.
However, as a Black male, sports journalist and citizen of the United States of America, I also have to honestly admit that was not always the case. Ali, the universally unstoppable force, pulled me into his orbit as he did others who might have been opposed to what they thought they knew of him ― or perhaps, more accurately, because of what they thought they knew of themselves.
You see, I actually did not like Ali even though I was a kid living in Louisville as he was beginning to make his meteoric ascent into the global consciousness. The root of the dislike was easy to trace. My father, a life-long Navy man, disparaged the young fighter as a “loud-mouthed draft dodger.” He never told me not to like Ali but he didn’t have to. My father was the wisest man I knew at the time so he had to be right.
Besides, I could think for myself. In my world of little plastic, green military figures, if your country called on you to serve, you served. Why wouldn’t you unless you were a coward? Rules were rules. Who did this guy think he was, already talking about how he was “The Greatest” and how he didn’t have “no quarrel against no Viet Cong?”
He mocked opponents. The arrogant man changed his name from Cassius Clay. Who were these frightful Black Muslims he was running with? I thought justice was served when he was stripped of his titles and jailed as the result of being a conscientious objector.
Then the world’s harsh realities began to make an impression on a now more inquisitive and socially aware adolescent.
Walter Cronkite would give us the body count for both sides on the evening news as if the “Vietnam conflict” were a sporting event that we were somehow winning every day. Some folk for whatever reason gunned down Malcolm, Martin and Bobby even after having already traumatized us with the assassination of JFK. Desegregation was not exactly going off without a hitch. Cities were aflame and college campuses smoldered as students dared to blatantly question authority.
