by Muhammad Ali
When we arrived in Louisville, it had been twenty-one days since I had last seen my parents. That was the longest that I had ever been away from home. I walked off of the plane, wearing my gold medal. My mother, father, and brother were already standing there, along with the press and a small crowd. I read aloud for all to hear what would be my first published poem. I called it
HOW CASSIUS TOOK ROME
To make America the greatest is my goal,
So I beat the Russians, and I beat the Pole,
and for the USA won the Medal of Gold.
Italians said, “You’re Greater than the Cassius of Old.”
We like your name, we like your game,
So make Rome your home if you will.
I said I appreciate your kind hospitality,
But the USA is my county still,
’Cause they’re waiting to welcome me in Louisville.
As I walked down the streets of Louisville, with my parents and my brother beside me, I received a hero’s welcome.
There were Black and White crowds on the sidewalks; we had a police escort all the way downtown; my classmates from Central High were there, and the mayor told me that my gold medal was the key to the city. It all felt so good that I never let that gold medal out of my sight.
I wore it everywhere I went. I ate with it, showered with it, slept with it. I didn’t even take it off when the edges were cutting my back as I turned over in my sleep. Nothing could make me part with it, not even when the gold began to wear off. But, I did wonder sometimes why the richest nation in the world didn’t give its champions solid gold.
When the offers for management started rolling in, I didn’t pay them much attention at first, because I wanted Joe Louis to be my manager. But Joe was the quiet type, and he didn’t like loudmouth, bragging fighters, so he turned me down.
Joe must not have thought I was much of a boxer. He even predicted that I would lose all of my professional fights. I guess he wasn’t so smart after all.
My second choice was Sugar Ray Robinson. He was at the end of his career and I thought that he might be interested in managing me, but when I spoke to him, he told me to come back in a few years, he didn’t have the time.
It seemed like the only people who showed any interest in me were White southerners. One of the first contracts I was offered was from Joe Martin. I was not offered any cash advance, only the promise of seventy-five dollars a week for ten years. Needless to say, my father ripped it up immediately. So I ended up signing a six-year contract with ten Louisville millionaires. They became my sponsoring group. I received a ten-thousand-dollar advance, and they received 50 percent of all my earnings, in and out of the ring. It seemed like a good deal to me at the time.
I was really happy about that ten-thousand-dollar advance. It seemed like so much money. Our house had cost forty-five-hundred dollars and it was taking my father forever to pay it off, so ten thousand dollars sounded really good. Everything seemed to be working out for me. Even though I often thought about what happened with Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, I didn’t hold a grudge toward either of them. They both did what they felt was right, and we eventually became friends.
Sugar Ray Robinson was there to support me in 1964 when I won the heavyweight title against Sonny Liston. As I stood before all of the cameras and the critics shouting “I am the greatest, I shook up the world!” Sugar Ray was on my left and Bundini Brown was on my right. They were both hugging me and laughing while trying to cover my mouth at the same time. It’s funny how things turn out in life. Sugar Ray later told me that he often wondered what might have been if he had been my manager, but I knew that everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to.
The last time I saw Sugar Ray Robinson was in his Los Angeles home. He wasn’t well then. I told him again how much he meant to me and that he was the greatest fighter who ever lived.
Then I told him that I was still waiting for that autograph.
The greatest victory in life
is to rise above the material things
that we once valued most.
THERE COMES A time in every person’s life when he has to choose the course his life will take. On my journey I have found that the path to self-discovery is the most liberating choice of all.
My Olympic gold medal meant so much to me. It was a symbol of what I had accomplished for myself and for my country. Although I still experienced some of the same racial discrimination that I always had, my spirits were so high that I thought all of that would change.
A Kentucky newspaper wrote that my gold medal was the greatest prize any Black boy ever brought home to Louisville. I was proud, but I remember thinking at the time, if any White boy ever brought back anything greater, I sure didn’t hear about it. It seemed that I had become Louisville’s Black “Great White Hope.” I expected my gold medal to achieve something greater for me. During my first few days home, it seemed to accomplish exactly what I hoped, but soon I had a rude awakening.
I was sure they were finally going to let me eat downtown. In those days almost every restaurant, hotel, and movie theater in Louisville and the entire South was either closed to Blacks, or had segregated sections. But I thought that my medal would open them up to me.
One day my friend Ronnie and I were riding our motor bikes around downtown Louisville, when it began to rain. We parked and walked into a little restaurant, where we sat down and ordered two cheeseburgers and two vanilla milk shakes.
I was so proud, sitting there with my gold medal around my neck. (I wore it everywhere in those days.) The waitress looked at both of us and said, “We don’t serve Negroes.”
I politely replied, “Well, we don’t eat them either.”
I told her I was Cassius Clay, the Olympic Champion. Ronnie pointed to my gold medal.
Then the waitress looked me over again and went to the back, to speak with the manager. Ronnie and I could see them huddled over, talking and looking back at us.
We were sure that now that they knew who I was we would be able to stay and eat, but when the waitress came back, she said that she was sorry, but we had to leave.
As Ronnie and I stood up and walked out of the door, my heart was pounding. I wanted my medal to mean something—the mayor had said it was the key to Louisville. It was supposed to mean freedom and equality. I wanted to tell them all that they should be ashamed. I wanted to tell them that this was supposed to be the land of the free. As I got up and walked out of that restaurant, I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking that
I just wanted America to be America.
I had won the gold medal for America, but I still couldn’t eat in this restaurant in my hometown, the town where they all knew my name, where I was born in General Hospital only a few blocks away. I couldn’t eat in the town where I was raised, where I went to church and led a Christian life. I still couldn’t eat in a restaurant in the town where I went to school and helped the nuns clean the school. Now I had won the gold medal.
But it didn’t mean anything, because I didn’t have the right color skin.
Ronnie wanted me to call one of the millionaires from my sponsoring group and tell them what happened, and I almost did, but more than anything, I wanted that medal to mean that I was my own man and would be respected and treated like any other human being. Then I realized that even if it had been my “Key to the City,” if it could get only me into the “White only” place, then what good was it? What about other Black people?
Later I realized that it was part of God’s plan for me that they wouldn’t serve me that day. Before I was kicked out of the restaurant, I was thinking what the medal could mean for me. The more I thought about it, the more I began to see that if that medal didn’t mean equality for all, it didn’t mean anything at all.
What I remember most about 1960 was the first time I took my gold medal off. From that moment on, I have never placed great value on material things. What really matters is how you feel about yourself. If I had ke
pt that medal I would have lost my pride.
Over the years I have told some people I had lost it, but no one ever found it. That’s because I lost it on purpose. The world should know the truth—it’s somewhere at the bottom of the Ohio River.
Studying with Malcolm X, 1963.
To walk down a path
where great men have
been is an honor itself,
for a few privileged men.
But to blaze one’s own trail
unequaled to thee;
Is a tribute to greatness
that few men shall see.
Anonymous
Once upon a time, your great-granddaddy told my great-granddaddy that when my granddaddy grew up, “we would be free,” and things would be better.
But listen, your granddaddy told my granddaddy, that when my daddy was born, “Now that we’re free,” things would be better.
Then your daddy told my daddy that when I was grown, things would “surely” be better.
But they weren’t.
SO I TOLD my daddy, that by the time my kids were grown, somehow I will have made a difference, and the world will be better.
the FREEDOM SONG
Better far from all I see,
to die fighting to be free.
What more fitting end could be?
Better surely than in some bed,
where in broken health I’m led,
lingering until I’m dead.
Better than with cries and pleas
or in the clutch of some
disease, wastin’ slowly by degrees.
Better than of heart attack
or some dose of drug I lack,
let me die by being Black.
Better far that I shall go
standing there against the foe.
Is there sweeter death to know?
Better than the bloody stain
on some highway
where I am lain,
torn by flyin’ glass and pain.
Better call on death to come
than to die another dumb,
looted victim in the slum.
Better than of prison rot,
if there’s any choice I’ve got,
Rather perish on the spot.
Better now my fight to wage,
now while my blood boils with rage,
lest it cool with ancient age.
Better valid for me to die
than to Uncle Tom and try
making peace just to live a lie.
Better if I say my sooth,
I’m gonna die demandin’ truth
while I’m still akin to youth.
Better now than later on,
Now while fear of death is gone,
Never mind another dawn.
There were many ways for people to participate in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr. pursued peaceful, nonviolent methods such as marches, sit-ins, and political organization. Some took up arms alongside Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Black Panther Party to defend, with violence if necessary, the rights of Blacks against those who would harm them. Others, like Medgar Evers, chose to work through organizations such as the NAACP, which used legal and political methods to advance the cause of civil rights. At the time, I chose to join the Nation of Islam, which promoted Black pride and independence. When I became a member, I was fighting for equality and Black pride at the same time.
Whatever approach you chose, the goal was the same: We all wanted freedom, justice, and equality for Black people in America.
Martin Luther King Jr. made a difference.
The NAACP made a difference.
Rosa Parks made a difference.
Malcolm X made a difference.
Elijah Muhammad made a difference.
I would like to think I made a difference, too.
black pride
I woke up this morning feeling good and black.
I got out of my black bed,
I put on my black robe,
I played all my best black records,
and drank some black coffee.
Then I put on my black shoes and
I walked out my black door …
and Oh Lord, white snow!
IN 1976, I went to the White House to meet with President Gerald Ford. When I arrived, I told him that I liked the place so much I might go after his job. I was only half-kidding. I didn’t want that job; it was too dangerous, but if I were president, things would be different.
During the sixties and seventies, people were always asking me if I ever thought about going into politics. After I joined the Nation of Islam, reporters were saying that I was involved in a power struggle. But it was never a power struggle; it was a freedom struggle. We weren’t trying to get the power to rule White people. We only wanted to get out from under their rule and do something for ourselves.
* * *
Throughout the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, I thought a lot about what America meant to me, and what it ought to stand for. Then I thought about some of the things that I would do differently if I were the president of the United States.
So, I wrote some of them down. I imagined myself in the White House, sitting at my desk in the Oval Office. I knew that the president would have to be White so I imagined myself as a White man ready at last to be fair to the Black people of America.
I would give an important speech to reporters gathered on the White House lawn. I would say:
Ladies and gentlemen,
It takes a real man to admit when he is wrong and when he is guilty.
We White Americans are guilty of many crimes throughout history. The worst crime our ancestors committed was bringing over those slaves from Africa.
I’ll get to that one in a minute, but first, I’m going to stop the war in Vietnam tomorrow.
Start de-escalating, because we are leaving. I feel that it is wise for us to get out now!
South Vietnam, you must just do the best you can, because we’re through.
Now, after all the boys get back to America, I’m going to tell the people who are getting paid for not growing food that they will get life in jail if I catch anyone destroying any more food. We need that food.
I’m going to hire a bunch of people with all those billions we’ve been spending on the war. I am going to pay them three hundred dollars a week to help their fellow human beings.
Furthermore, I’m going to say, “General Motors, listen here: I want you to make 50,000 diesel trucks. I’m going to fill them with canned foods and all the other goods people have been throwing away. We’re going to take it all down to the Black people of Mississippi and charge them nothing for it.
I’m going to take all the money I would have spent on helicopters for Vietnam and it’s going to go to Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi to pay for houses, nice brick houses with at least three bedrooms in each one. Every person who needs it is going to have a home.
Now, fellow Americans, all of you know that Black folks and White folks have had trouble getting along. We have tried almost everything from integration to sit-ins. Even tried swim-ins, and nothing has yet happened in a peaceful manner.
Black people today are educated. They’re doctors, lawyers, mechanics; there’s nothing they can’t do.
Now, Black people, we’re just repaying you. We’re not giving you anything. We are guilty.
We owe it to you. Soon we will have a completely Black-and-White society, harmoniously living in peace. There will be no more hunger, no more unemployment. Everybody will be happy.
Now, my fellow Americans, I’m going to implement all of those plans tomorrow …
You know what happens the next day?
I get shot.
The president is dead.
SPEAKING OUT
WHEN A MAN of great wealth and fame speaks out and tells the truth, he risks losing everything that he’s worked for, possibly even his life, but he helps millions.
/> On the other hand, if he stays quiet and doesn’t say anything, just because he could have made millions, he wouldn’t be helping anybody. I loved freedom and loved my people more than I loved the wealth and the fame.
I proved that when I gave it all up.
the
JOURNEY
OUR LIVES ARE a journey during which we must find our own answers and make our own paths.
On my journey I found Islam.
If I were not a Muslim, I might not have taken all of the stands that I did.
If I were not a Muslim, I would not have changed my name or sought to spread peace, and I would not have meant as much to people all around the world.
If I were not a Muslim, I would not be the person that I am today, and the world would have never known Muhammad Ali.
my
SPIRITUAL
evolution
THE MAN WHO views the world at fifty the same as he did when he was twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
The Nation of Islam taught that White people were devils. I don’t believe that now; in fact, I never really believed that White men were devils. But when I was young, I had seen and heard so many horrible stories about the White man that this made me stop and listen.
The press called us Black Muslims and referred to us as a hate sect. But that wasn’t true. We never preached hate and “Black Muslims” was a name given to us by the media. This made many people very confused about what the Nation of Islam stood for. We declared ourselves to be righteous Muslims. We refused to take part in any wars, in any way, fashion or form, which took the lives of other human beings. We would not allow any government to force us to kill our brothers for political reasons.