Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight

by Howard Bingham

  In 1975, sportswriter Gary Wills contemptuously downplayed Ali’s social and political significance, arguing that his only contribution to society came from his boxing skills. “For some reason, people don’t want fighters just to be fighters,” he wrote. “They have to stand for an era, for the color of hope, for a metaphysics of spirit. … Ali will be a celebrity as long as he lives—like the Duke of Windsor. But he only rules from the ring. He has nothing, really, to say, except with his fists.”

  After he retired once and for all in 1981, however, Ali proved just how wrong Wills was. Rather than rest or reflect on past glories, the former champion turned his energies full-time to a crusade that had been a life-long passion—social justice.

  Perhaps the best evidence of Ali’s continued energy, in spite of his disability, is the fact that he still spends more than two hundred days a year on the road as a roving ambassador for human rights.

  For a man who is afraid to fly, his travel itinerary is impressive. During the past decade, he has visited more than fifty countries, crusading against world poverty and oppression. His latest passion is the Jubilee 2000 campaign—an international movement to cancel Third World debt. His access to world leaders makes him an especially effective advocate, a fact proven in 1998 when he convinced British Prime Minister Tony Blair to support the movement. Both Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro have called Ali their “hero.”

  Polls continue to show Ali is the most recognized and admired man in the world and huge crowds assemble wherever he travels, giving him a continued platform for his message of tolerance and economic development.

  In the introduction to his 1998 book, The Muhammad Ali Reader, Gerald Early attempts to deflate the significance of Ali’s induction refusal, arguing “Ali cannot be taken seriously as a Martyr.” He points out that other athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Ted Williams and others lost several years of their athletic prime serving in the Armed Forces during their careers. “No one seems to think this was tragic,” he complains, noting Ali didn’t end up paying a price for his dissent.

  Early, who condescendingly writes that Ali hadn’t a single idea in his head, clearly misses the point and fails to acknowledge that Ali was fully prepared to pay a harsh price by going to prison for his beliefs.

  Activist Dick Gregory’s assessment seems closer to the mark.

  “I don’t know of anyone who’s had as great an impact on people as Ali. Not just black people; not just Muslims….He got our attention; he made us listen. And then he grew within people who weren’t even aware he was there. Whatever the Universal God Force meant for him to do, it’s out of the bottle, and it isn’t ever going back. Ali is inside all us now, and because of him, no future generation will ever be the same.”

  When he entered his exile period in 1967, Ali regularly reflected on how history would view his stand, on what his legacy would be.

  Unquestionably, his actions helped spark the Revolt of the Black Athlete, characterized by the 1968 Olympic protests and other principled actions which followed. But thirty years later, such stands are increasingly rare in the world of sports. Many are especially troubled by the association of superstars such as Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan with the Nike Corporation, a company that has been accused of brutally exploiting Third World labor to manufacture its elite running shoes, especially in Asia. Jordan has made millions of dollars as the symbol of the world’s most successful marketing campaign, refusing repeated calls by human rights groups to demand the company improve its labor conditions. Meanwhile, his endorsement has allowed Nike to gain a stranglehold on the black community’s buying habits.

  When Jordan retired in 1998, award-winning sports columnist Jack Todd compared the basketball icon’s attitude to the example of Muhammad Ali. In an article headlined NOBODY EVER CALLED HIM CARE JORDAN, Todd writes, “Jordan’s legacy will forever be tainted by the marketing connection that marks the chasm between him and a truly great athlete like Muhammad Ali. How can a man who most certainly does not need the money go on pushing Nike after he learns about their sweatshops in Southeast Asia? Ali understood the political dimension: he refused to go to Vietnam because he understood the irony of exploited young black, Hispanic, and poor white males being sent halfway around the world to fight poor Asian boys involved in a war of national liberation that had nothing to do with the U.S. or its national interests. A decade after the end of the Vietnam War, Jordan willingly became a worldwide spokesman for a U.S. corporation that exploited the children of the Asian boys Ali refused to fight. In the global context, that is far more significant than anything he achieved on the basketball court…. Remember, a generation grew up wanting to’Be Like Mike.’ Maybe that’s why their aspirations today don’t extend beyond the next video game, or the next new pair of Nikes. Once you get past the highlight film, it’s not much of a legacy.”

  Todd, an American who moved to Canada to dodge the Vietnam War, is one of the rare sportswriters who understands the unparalleled influence sports has on society. By extension then, an athlete—especially one who so utterly dominates his sport like Ali or Jordan—must be judged on more than his athletic accomplishments.

  Although Ali’s principles don’t seem to have trickled down to the current generation of athletes, Martin Luther King Jr.’s former lieutenant Andrew Young believes his legacy is undeniable. “Ali’s lasting impact is that he was the first athlete to make us aware of the world in which we lived,” says Young, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Carter. “He forced us to think internationally. Ali saw that the globe is dominated by those who are oppressed because of their color. His influence is and was enormous.”

  Ali’s political and religious views weren’t the only aspects of his life to become more socially acceptable as the years passed. His personal life did too—but not because of an evolution in collective values. Rather, after years of womanizing, Ali settled down in 1986, when he married Lonnie Williams, an old Louisville friend he had known since she was five years old. By all accounts, the marriage is the best thing that ever happened to Ali. Besides providing domestic stability, Lonnie, who has an M.B.A., finally banished the vultures and parasites who had mismanaged and stolen Ali’s assets for more than two decades.

  She has brought a happiness and structure to his life, which has gratified many of his old friends, long troubled by the exploitation of the trusting champion. At their home on Ali’s Michigan farm, their days are spent quietly with Ali studying the Koran and personally answering each and every letter and request for an autograph, or donating hundreds of pieces of memorabilia to charity auctions. “Each good deed is counted,” he explains. That is his life when not traveling the world—an enterprise that takes up the lion’s share of his time.

  His human rights work has taken Ali to every state and every continent. No trip, however, was as significant as the journey he made to Vietnam in 1994, a trip that brought closure to the most tumultuous chapter in his life while also bringing together the families of American and Vietnamese servicemen missing since the war.

  Wherever he went in the country, thousands of Vietnamese turned out to greet the man who, almost three decades earlier, had stood up to his country and sacrificed so much for his principled refusal to declare war on a people he had no quarrel with. With tears in their eyes, the cheering throngs shouted out the English words they had carefully memorized: “Thank you!”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN possible without the support of numerous individuals who contributed their assistance, advice, and inspiration. Thanks first, of course, to Muhammad and Lonnie Ali; Thomas Hauser for his guidance and navigation; Phyllis Bailey; Damon and Dustin Bingham; my attorney, Ron DiNicola; BernieYumans; Mel Wallace; Daniel Sanger for his superb editing skills; Marc Baller and George de Kay of M. Evans & Co. for making the publication process a painless task; our agent Noah Lukeman, one of the best in the business, for persistence and patience; and the following people and in
stitutions: Elizabeth Barthelet, Evan Beloff, Julian Bond, Jacquie Charlton, Esmond Choueke, Ramsey Clark, Ian Halperin, Coretta Scott King, Coretta Bather, Paul Bather, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure), Ali Cohen, Gene Dibble, Harry Edwards, Julien Feldman, Jack Greenberg, Betty Hawkins, Jerry Izenberg, Jesse Jackson, Betty Johnston, Thomas Krattenmaker, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Bob Lipsyte, Michael Meltsner, Larry Merchant, Charles Morgan Jr., NAACP Legal Defense Fund, James Nabrit III, David Nanasi, Brenda Plant, George Plimpton, Pat Putnam, Darcie Rowan, Betty Shabazz, Jonathan Shapiro, Tom Syvertsen, Wayne Smith, Mort Susman, Wallace Terry, Jack Todd Jamel Touati,, Margaret van Nooten, Robert Walker, Jeremiah Wall, Hope Wallace, Lloyd Wells, Bobby White, Sandy Wolofsky, Morag York, and Andrew Young.

  SOURCES

  WE CONSULTED HUNDREDS OF BOOKS, newspaper, and magazine articles to research this book and interviewed hundreds more people associated with Muhammad Ali’s life and the events documented in this book. Instead of a detailed bibliography, we list here the major sources consulted for each chapter.

  The book is most of all indebted to Thomas Hauser’s definitive biography/oral history Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (Simon & Schuster, 1991), which provides a number of the quotes used throughout the book, many of which were facilitated by Howard Bingham, to whom Hauser dedicated the book.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A History of Blacks in Kentucky, George Wright (Kentucky Historical Society, 1992).

  The Greatest, Muhammad Ali with Richard Durham (Random House, 1975).

  The Holy Warrior: Muhammad Ali, Don Atyeo and Felix Dennis (Simon & Schuster, 1975).

  King of the World, David Remnick (Random House, 1998).

  Hauser interviews with Skeeter McClure, Joe Martin, Chuck Bodak.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “White America Views Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali,” Frederic Cople Jaher, in Sport in America: New Historical Perspectives, edited by Donald Spivey (Greenwood Press, 1985).

  Loser and Still Champion, Budd Schulberg (Doubleday, 1972).

  Beyond the Ring, Jeffrey Sammons (University of Illinois Press, 1988).

  Bad Nigger!: The National Impact of Jack Johnson, Al Gilmore, (Kennikat Press, 1975).

  “Ali as Sixties Protest Symbol,” Thomas Hietala, in Muhammad Ali: The People’s Champion, edited by Elliott Gom (University of Illinois Press, 1995).

  Gorn, “Muhammad Ali and the Revolt of the Black Athlete,” Othello Harris

  Voices of Freedom: An Oral history of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s compiled by Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer with Sarah Flynn (Bantam Books, 1990).

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hauser interviews with Neil Leifer, Abdul Rahman, and Harold Conrad.

  The Assassination of Malcolm X, George Breitman, Herman Porter, and Baxter Smith. (Pathfinder, 1991).

  An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, Claude Andrew Clegg III (St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

  The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr., David J. Garrow (W.W. Norton, 1981).

  Malcolm X: FBI Surveillance File (Scholarly Resources, 1978).

  The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley (Ballantine Books, 1973).

  Beyond the Ring, Sammons.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hauser interviews with Jim Brown, Harry Markson, and Robert Lipsyte.

  King of the World, Remnick.

  The Holy Warrior, Atyeo and Dennis.

  Muhammad Ali Reader, edited by Gerald Early, “The Redemption of the Champion,” Gordon Parks; “Miami Notebook: Cassius Clay and Malcolm X,” George Plimpton (Rob Weisbach Books, 1998).

  Declassified Presidential Files, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hauser interviews with Jerry Izenberg, and Carl Walker.

  Soul On Ice, Eldridge Cleaver (McGraw-Hill, 1968).

  SNCC: The New Abolitionists, Howard Zinn (Beacon Press, 1965).

  Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War, James E. Westheider (NewYork University Press, 1997).

  Vietnam and Black America: An Anthology of Protest and Resistance, Clide Taylor (Anchor Press, 1973).

  Chicago Tribune Archives.

  Clay v. United States, Suzanne Freedman, Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Enslow, 1997).

  CHAPTER SIX

  Voices of Freedom, Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn.

  Sportsworld, Robert Lipsyte (Quadrangle, 1975).

  “Champ in the Jug?,” Robert Lipsyte (Sports Illustrated, April 10,1967).

  Gorn, “Ali and the Age of Bare-Knuckle Politics,” Thomas Hietala

  Gorn, “Victory for Allah,” David Wiggins

  Gorn, “Ali as Sixties Protest Symbol,” Jeffrey Sammons

  “I’m Free to Be Who I Want,” Robert Lipsyte, New York Times Magazine, May 28,1967).

  “Cosell,” Howard Cosell (Playboy Press, 1973).

  Gorn, “The Politics and Economics of Televised Boxing”, Randy Roberts

  “I Am Not Worried About Ali,” Bill Russell, (Sports Illustrated, May 10, 1967).

  The Greatest, Ali.

  One Man, One Voice, Charles Morgan Jr. (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979).

  Johnson Presidential Files, L.B.J. Presidential Library.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hauser interviews with Howard Cosell.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hauser interviews with John Condon, and Aminah Boyd.

  Holy Warrior, Atyeo and Dennis.

  Congressional Record.

  Sportsworld, Lipsyte.

  The Revolt of the Black Athlete, Harry Edwards (Free Press, 1969).

  One Man, One Voice, Morgan.

  “Great Black Hope,” Pete Hammill, Esquire, March, 1969.

  Gorn, “Ali as Sixties Protest Symbol”, Thomas Hietala

  Out of Bounds, Jim Brown (Kensington, 1979).

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hauser interview with Jeremiah Shabazz, Bryant Gumbel.

  “I’m Sorry but I’m Through Fighting Now,” Muhammad Ali (Esquire, Feb. 1970).

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong (Simon & Schuster, 1979).