A People's History of Sports in the United States by David Zirin

Author:David Zirin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2010-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

On June 23, 1968, Ali appeared at his first and only antiwar demonstration. Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to speak at a $500-a-plate fund-raising dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. In response, local antiwar activists organized a rally at the Cheviot Hill Play-ground. Twenty thousand turned out for the largest antiwar gathering yet held in southern California. The speakers included Benjamin Spock and Rap Brown. Ali arrived in a Rolls-Royce and mounted a garbage can to address the crowd. “Anything designed for peace and to stop the killing I’m for one hundred percent,” he told them. “I’m not a leader. I’m not here to advise you. But I encourage you to express yourself.” Then he began his familiar refrain: “Who’s the champion of the world?” The Los Angeles Times reported that marchers replied with “Clay’s Black Muslim name.” 65

In 1968, Ali was accumulating tremendous financial debt. He attempted to stop the flow by giving a series of speeches, two hundred by his count, at college campuses around the country. In the late 1960s, when Esquire magazine gave Ali five pages to do with what he would, he crafted a political manifesto. He wrote that black athletes should “take all this fame the white man gave to us because we fought for his entertainment, and we can turn it around. Instead of beating up each other ... we will use our fame for freedom.” Arguing for reparations long before the term ever entered the parlance of our times, he proposed using $25 billion allocated for the Vietnam War and use it to construct houses in the South. “Each black man who needs it is going to be given a home,” he wrote. “Now, black people, we’re not repaying you. We ain’t giving you nothing. We’re guilty. We owe it to you.” Later, in a 1970 interview in Black Scholar, it was clear Ali had been radicalized. “I was determined to be one nigger that the white man didn’t get,” he said. “Go on and join something. If it isn’t the Muslims, at least join the Black Panthers. Join something bad.”66

Ali got his first taste of jail in December, serving ten days for driving without a license. “He got sentenced for being Cassius Clay,” Ali’s lawyer told reporters after Ali was sentenced. “Everyone is caught up in the hate Clay hysteria.”67

Yet Ali’s isolation would reach new depths in April 1969, when Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam officially distanced themselves from Ali. On the front page of Muhammad Speaks, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, was this statement:We tell the world we’re not with Muhammad Ali. Mr. Muhammad Ali plainly acted the fool. Any man or woman who comes to Allah and then puts his hopes and trust in the enemy of Allah for survival is underestimating the power of Allah to help them. Mr. Muhammad Ali has sporting blood. Mr. Muhammad Ali desires to do that which the Holy Qur’an teaches him against. Mr. Muhammad Ali wants a place in this sport world.

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