The Greatest

by Walter Dean Myers

  * * *

  Early 1967. The news from Vietnam was not good. Young Americans were being killed at an alarming rate in a war that it seemed we could not win. The news from the civil rights frontlines looked just as bleak. For every victory there was a setback. More and more blacks were arming themselves, fearful of a race war. To many Americans, the young fighter from Louisville, Kentucky, represented all that was bad about the era. Ali was openly against the war and he gave a face and a voice to the country’s racial problems. The problem for many Americans was not that blacks were forced into second-class citizenship but that they made themselves visible by protesting that deprivation of rights.

  On February 6, 1967, Ali fought against Ernie Terrell, who had made a point of telling the press that he would not call the man he knew as Cassius Clay by any other name. Terrell, a rangy heavyweight, had little chance against Ali. But his taunts were damaging Ali’s reputation. Sportswriters were publishing “interviews” with fighters who really expressed their own dismay over Ali’s joining the Nation of Islam.

  “What’s my name? What’s my name?” Ali put the question to Terrell over and over again as he beat him mercilessly in front of the same sportswriters who had encouraged Terrell to make his statements about Ali.

  Sportswriters such as the well-known Jimmy Cannon took the occasion to say that Ali was racist and mean-spirited. And, safe from Ali’s fists, he had the courage to call him Cassius Clay. He made no mention of Terrell’s remarks about Ali. Ali was not acting the way sportswriters thought he should, and they were going to punish him for it in the press.

  Cassius Clay had registered for the draft on April 18, 1960, as required by law. He was given a 1-A classification on March 9, 1962. This is the classification everyone is given until they undergo physical and mental tests to see if they are fit for military service. On January 24, 1964, he was ordered to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Coral Gables, Florida, where he took a qualifying examination. Clay scored below the qualifying scores on the standardized aptitude tests at that time and again in March 1964.

  In February 1966, Clay (as he was still known to the draft board) was reclassified 1-A, the draft board now saying that his test scores were acceptable. Ali appealed the classification and also asked for status as a conscientious objector, or “CO” status. Conscientious objectors were those who, due to their religious or moral beliefs, could not participate in military service. This request was denied, and Ali asked for a hearing. A hearing was held on August 23, 1966. Ali had to convince the hearing officer that three things were true: The first was that he was sincere in his objection to military service; the second was that his objection was based on religious training and belief; and the third was that his religious beliefs were against all wars.

  In a written statement and then in answer to questions put to him by the hearing officer, Ali said he understood that by refusing to enter the army he was seriously injuring his reputation and ability to earn a living. He went on to say that as a Muslim he objected to participation, in any way, in any war.

  The Koran, the holy text of the Muslim religion, forbids the taking of a life, and the participation in any war that is not in defense of the Muslim faith. Ali put this forth to the hearing officer. And, to the surprise of many, the hearing officer recommended that Ali be given CO status. Despite the recommendation, his appeal was turned down by the draft board.

  Throughout the country, other young men were protesting U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. Some were fleeing to Canada; others went underground to avoid a war they felt was morally wrong. Thousands of draftees applied for and received CO status based upon their religious beliefs. But Muhammad Ali had become a symbol of the antiwar movement. He was also a superstar. Young men and women who did not like his allegiance to the Nation of Islam still respected his decision to make what they saw was a positive racial statement in changing his name. In the late sixties, especially in the inner cities, few young blacks had involvements with whites. They might not subscribe to the racial theories of the Nation of Islam, but neither were they very much affected by those theories. The draft board feared that if Ali was given CO status then all the members of the Nation of Islam could claim such a status.

  * * *

  The date for Ali’s induction into the army was set for April 28, 1967. In an interview for the April 10 edition of Sports Illustrated, Ali was asked how he felt about the Vietnam War. “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” he asked.

  An army induction ceremony is a simple affair. All of the inductees stand in lines and a military officer calls out their names. When an inductee’s name is called, he steps forward. When everyone in the group has made the symbolic step forward, there is a swearing-in ceremony. If an inductee does not step forward, he is said to have refused induction and is then charged with a federal crime.

  The draft board listed Ali’s name as Cassius Marcellus Clay, and that was the name called. Muhammad Ali refused to step forward.

  Prior image: Ali at the Army Induction Center in Houston.

  “Freedom means being able to follow your religion, but it also means carrying the responsibility to choose between right and wrong,” he said. “So when the time came for me to make up my mind about going in the army, I knew people were dying in Vietnam for nothing and I should live by what I thought was right. I wanted America to be America.”

  Because Joe Louis fought exhibitions and helped raise money for the government during World War II, and because Sugar Ray Robinson had been assigned to what the army called Special Services, Ali was privately assured that he would be used only to raise the morale of troops. He would play the same role during the Vietnam War as Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson had played during World War II. His stance would have been seen as heroic to many.

  A group of elite black athletes, including football great Jim Brown and basketball stars Bill Russell and Lew Alcindor (who would later become a Muslim and take the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), called a meeting to talk to Ali. Some of them advised the young boxer to go into the army. It would be better than jail, they reasoned, and he would maintain his status as heavyweight champion. The feeling of many of the athletes prior to meeting with Ali was that he was a youth being taken advantage of by the Nation of Islam. However, after the meeting, they left with the realization that he was indeed young, but firm in his convictions and willing to live with the consequences of his actions.

  Ali, as he said he would, did not step forward when asked to by the officials of the draft board. After a two-day trial in June 1967, in which he was found guilty of refusing induction, he was given the maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. He was released pending an appeal of the case, and his passport was taken away.

  His heavyweight championship was taken away by the World Boxing Association. Muhammad Ali, unbeaten in the ring, had finally fallen.

  Within weeks of Muhammad Ali’s conviction and the removal of his championship status, each state revoked his boxing license. Sportswriters, athletes, politicians, and entertainers joined in condemning Ali. He was called a coward, a traitor, and a racist. His lawyers appealed the case, but if he lost the appeal Ali would have to serve the five years in jail. His character was suddenly considered not good enough for professional boxing.

  But fighters who had been convicted of armed robbery were considered of good enough character to enter the ring. Fighters who had been convicted of murder made a living fighting.

  Besides his stance on the draft, Ali’s attachment to the Nation of Islam continued to be problematic to many middle-class African Americans. Those who had expressed a liking for Cassius Clay, now tried to create a distance between themselves and Muhammad Ali.

  Many African Americans also did not want to risk alienating President Lyndon B. Johnson by opposing the war in Vietnam. Others saw
the war as draining resources that could be used for the war on poverty, a much more pressing issue to the black community than the conflict in Southeast Asia.

  Ali began to lecture within the Nation of Islam and at colleges throughout the nation. He spoke about social issues, the war in Vietnam, and on the hate that he was accused of spreading.

  “I don’t hate nobody and I ain’t lynched nobody,” he stated. “We Muslims don’t hate the white man. It’s like we don’t hate a tiger; but we know that a tiger’s nature is not compatible with people’s nature since tigers love to eat people.”

  Ali, by his selection of friends over the course of his professional life, did prove that he didn’t hate white people. But he also showed an attitude that was typical of many Nation of Islam members: a willingness to formally withdraw from the quest to integrate. In the late sixties, blacks in the lowest economic classes, which made up the overwhelming majority of Nation of Islam members, had very little meaningful contact with whites. To most black Muslims, separation was merely speaking the truth about what was happening and lacked practical meaning. If a black man worked for a white man and had no social contact with him, was never invited to his home or to his church, then why should he not formalize the arrangement by calling it separation? If a black man’s life was not considered valuable to whites, then why should he seek to integrate?

  In 1967, rioting resulted in eighty-two deaths, thousands injured, and 18,000 blacks arrested throughout the United States. There was a costly war going on while the inner cities were crumbling. It was a familiar scene to the African-American author James Baldwin, who wrote, “Everything was falling down and going to pieces. And no one cared. And it spelled out to me with brutal clarity and in every possible way that I was a worthless human being.”

  The Kerner Commission, established in August 1967 to investigate the riots across the country, concluded in a report dated March 2, 1968, that America was headed for two separate nations, one white and the other black. The FBI started tracking Ali’s movements and listening to his phone calls. His speeches were recorded and his associates noted.

  But while Ali was being attacked in the press for spreading hate and being against the war, the country was seeing an outpouring of rage against blacks. On April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. King, an advocate of integration and a man who pleaded for acceptance of all people regardless of skin color, who advocated nonviolence, was brutally gunned down. The Nation of Islam, who had so often disagreed with King’s strategies, now pointed to his murder as proof of the mayhem that was being loosed on the black community. On June 5, 1968, only three months after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came the assassination in Los Angeles of Robert Kennedy, who had often championed black causes.

  All the while, many young white Americans were fleeing to Canada to escape the draft. Others went to jail rather than fight in a war that was increasingly being questioned. The grim statistics coming from the military showed large numbers of men being killed and wounded in a seemingly endless escapade. The United States had been involved, first as advisers and then as combatants, in Vietnam since 1954, and the body count was piling up.

  In December 1968, Ali was arrested for driving without a valid license in Dade County, Florida. He was jailed for nearly a week in what appeared to be a purely vindictive exercise.

  With the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., more blacks than ever lost faith in the willingness of the United States to grant them the rights of full citizenship. At the 1968 summer Olympics in Mexico, two black sprinters raised their fists in the black power salute while on the medals stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If America wanted business as usual, it wasn’t going to get it.

  Ali’s appearances at college campuses were increasingly popular. What he was saying made more and more sense to his young audiences. America needed to be out of Vietnam. America needed to deal with racism. America needed to get onto a moral path.

  Could Ali lead black America? He lacked the education and sophistication to assume a national role, but he was a clear thinker and many of his views would one day be accepted. The truth of the matter was that with the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the voice of nonviolence and of moderation, black leadership was in a crisis. Compared with the Black Panthers, the 5 Percenters, a black radical group, and the emerging Symbionese Liberation Army, the Nation of Islam was becoming the voice of moderation.

  In December 1969, Ali appeared in Big Time Buck White, a Broadway play in which he did some singing as well as acting. His reviews were generally quite good. The mood toward him was changing enough to present him before middle- and upper-class America. Promoters realized it was time to get him back into boxing.

  In fact, there was no legal basis for keeping Ali out of boxing. While the World Boxing Association could strip him of its title, they could not stop him from fighting outside of their association. The ban on Ali was a “gentlemen’s agreement” in some cases and political pressure in others. In those states with State Athletic Commissions it was necessary to have a state-granted license to fight — a license that could be denied Ali on the grounds that he had been convicted of a crime. With the pressure lessening, promoters put together a fight pitting Muhammad Ali, now twenty-eight, against a talented twenty-five-year-old Irish-American named Jerry Quarry.

  Where, two and a half years earlier, prominent blacks had distanced themselves from Ali, they now flocked to this first fight after his exile. Coretta Scott King was there, as were actors Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier. From Atlanta were the activists Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond, and Andrew Young.

  Ali, in his exile, had become a symbol of defiance against the American power structure. He had taken their best shot, and he was still standing. Still standing, but the fight was not over yet. His conviction continued to make its way through the court system. If all of the appeals were denied, he would still have to serve the five-year sentence handed down to him in 1967.

  Jerry Quarry was a fighter who had likely experienced more poverty than Ali had. Quarry knew he was fighting for his future. His wasn’t a fight of white against black. He could either be a mere statistic on Ali’s comeback trail, or give himself the possibility of millions with a win.

  It was fitting that Atlanta, with its affluent black population, would be the site of Ali’s comeback. Few American cities had as much black political clout or savvy. Moreover, dozens of black celebrities, even those who had shunned Ali a few years earlier, were eager to welcome him back to public acceptance. America had radically changed since Ali’s banishment in 1967, and more and more people found Ali’s views less bothersome. In 1967 he had spoken out against the war in Vietnam. By 1970 many Americans were wondering what we were doing in Southeast Asia. In 1967 Ali had upset many blacks by speaking for separation of the races while Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had spoken so eloquently for integration, but King’s death at the hands of a white assassin made even the middle class wonder if integration was worth the struggle. Finally, Ali had conducted himself admirably during his years of exile, representing himself as a strong black man with no animosity for any other race. Black Atlantans came out to root for Ali in this match against a good white fighter.

  * * *

  The first round saw the old Ali, on his toes, moving, jabbing, throwing combinations — in a word, pretty. The second round saw a different Ali. The nervous energy was gone, and the legs that had danced in the first round began to shuffle. Quarry, a solid boxer who had won the heavyweight division of the Golden Gloves in 1965, slowed Ali down even more with punishing body blows in the second round. Tony Perez, the referee, thought that Ali might be beaten. The Atlanta crowd tensed as the victory they had come to see was in doubt.

  The third round came, and Ali was again flat-footed. The quick feet and nimble legs that had kept him out of trouble as Cassius Clay were now betraying him. Quarry sensed it, too, and became more aggre
ssive. Then Ali hit Quarry with a flurry of punches, opening up a large gash over his eye. When the round ended, Quarry’s cornermen worked feverishly to close the cut.

  Doctors should be in attendance at all fights, and they should be close to ringside, waiting to be called. Ali had insisted on black doctors at the fight, but Quarry had objected. As a result, there was a delay while a white doctor was located. Perez, the referee, had to make the call whether or not to let Quarry continue the fight when he saw that the cut was still open and bleeding.

  “I’d never seen a cut like that before,” he said. “You could see the bone.”

  Perez stopped the fight, giving the decision to Ali on a technical knockout. Quarry’s trainer thought it was the right decision. Quarry was disappointed, but accepted the loss gracefully.

  Muhammad Ali was back.

  Prior image: Muhammad Ali vs. Jerry Quarry, October 27, 1970.

  In the sixties and seventies the big money didn’t come easy for the young fighter. A “club” fighter, one of the veterans who fought on a regular schedule, might earn a steady $200 or $300 a month, but rarely more. It wasn’t until they fought the top tier of fighters that they could even expect to make enough to look forward to the payday. The typical young fighter had to have a day job to support himself and to buy the equipment he needed to fight — gloves, tapes, trunks, a robe, protective gear for the groin, sparring gloves, towels, protective headgear for amateur matches and sparring, and mouthpieces. He had to pay dues at a gym and for the time of a trainer, if he had one.

  If and when a fighter turns professional, his finances are largely dependent on his management. Somebody has to arrange the fights and make an agreement with another manager as to the fight conditions and money. A representative fight for a young man just turning professional will be a four- or six-round fight against somebody with similar experience. The “purse,” or payment for the fight, can be as little as $100 or less. While the money is virtually nonexistent for amateur and beginning professional fights, the punches are just as real.