Ali

by Jonathan Eig

  The first judge who heard Ali’s case sustained his claim as a conscientious objector. But the Justice Department’s appeals board, perhaps fearing the kind of chain reaction the New York Times’s Tom Wicker had warned about, rejected the judge’s recommendation, saying Ali’s objections to military service were based on issues of politics and race, not on a moral objection to all war. Ali would have to serve or go to jail, the board ruled. In March, he received an order to report the following month for induction at a draft board office in Houston.

  While his lawyers scrambled, Ali prepared for the kind of fight he knew how to win. On March 22, 1967, after minimal training, he took on Zora Folley in Madison Square Garden. Folley was almost thirty-six years old, with a record of seventy-four wins, seven losses, and four draws, a father of eight, a combat veteran of the Korean War, and one of the kindest, gentlest men in boxing. Even Ali couldn’t find reason to get angry with Folley. Moments before the fight, Ali was asked what he would do if he lost. He answered without hesitation: “Retire. Tonight.”

  When the fight began, Ali seemed uninterested, like a man too bored by his dinner guest to bother making conversation. He landed only two punches in the first round, three in the second, and six in the third. He bounced around the ring as if his only goal were to burn calories. Folley landed a few good shots but hardly enough to bother Ali.

  In the fourth, Ali delivered a jolt of excitement with a knockdown. But Folley rose from the canvas before the referee counted ten and hit back, landing his best punches of the fight. In the fifth, Ali poked steady, painful jabs. In the sixth, he did more of the same. The seventh was different, though. Ali was no longer bored. He advanced on Folley. He threw big right hands and left hooks, not jabs. That left him vulnerable, and Folley retaliated with his best punches of the night. Ali accepted the punishment as the cost of doing business and stepped in again. Midway through the round, Ali rotated his torso and wound up for a big right hand that caught Folley flush on the left cheek. Ali wound up again, threw the same punch, connected with the same spot on Folley’s cheek, and watched as the veteran fighter fell flat on his face, settling to the mat with his arms by his sides like a sidewalk drunk.

  When the television announcer found Ali, the champ had his brother on one side, Herbert Muhammad on the other, and his father behind him. Ali smiled: “First of all I would like to say As-Salaam-Alaikum to our dear beloved leader and teacher the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and I’m feeling real fine tonight. I thank him for his blessings and prayers.”

  “Now, let’s talk about the fight,” said the announcer.

  They did. Ali, as was custom, said he had never been hurt. He described the knockout punch and then he invited his father to get in front of the camera. “I would say he’s the greatest of all time,” a beaming, slick-haired Cash Clay said. “I’m not saying that because he’s my son.”

  After he pried himself off the mat and regained his senses, Zora Folley, a more impartial judge, came to the same conclusion as Cash Clay. “He’s smart,” Folley said. “The trickiest fighter I’ve seen. He’s had twenty-nine fights and acts like he’s had a hundred. He could write the book on boxing, and anyone that fights him should be made to read it first.” He continued, “There’s just no way to train yourself for what he does. The moves, the speed, the punches, and the way he changes style every time you think you got him figured . . . This guy has a style all of his own. It’s far ahead of any fighter’s around today, so how could those old-time fighters, you know, Dempsey, Tunney or any of them keep up? Louis wouldn’t have a chance — he was too slow. Marciano couldn’t get to him, and would never get away from Ali’s jab.”

  Finally, Ali was getting the respect he’d been saying he deserved since he was twelve years old. What’s more, there were few opponents likely to challenge him. There was talk of a Chuvalo or Patterson rematch. And there was a young fighter named Joe Frazier, winner of the 1964 Olympic gold medal and undefeated through his first fourteen fights, looming on the horizon. But at that moment it was difficult to imagine anyone beating Ali.

  His biggest threat was jail.

  “I’ve left the sports pages,” he said. “I’ve gone onto the front pages. I want to know what is right, what’ll look good in history. I’m being tested by Allah. I’m giving up my title, my wealth, maybe my future. Many great men have been tested for their religious belief. If I pass this test, I’ll come out stronger than ever . . . All I want is justice. Will I have to get that from history?”

  PART II

  24

  Exile

  Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Louisville on March 28, 1967, just as Ali returned to his hometown after defeating Zora Folley. According to an FBI memo marked “secret,” Ali and King met privately at King’s hotel for about thirty minutes, and their time together “mainly consisted of joking and ‘horse play.’ ”

  When they finished, the men met with reporters.

  “We’re all black brothers,” said Ali, who stood almost a full head taller than King. Both men wore suits and ties. “We use different approaches to our everyday problems, but the same dog that bit him bit me. When we go out, they don’t ask if you are a Christian, a Catholic, a Baptist, or a Muslim. They just start whupping black heads.”

  “Yes, oh, yes,” King chorused. “We discussed our common problems and our common concerns. We are victims of the same system of oppression. Although our religious beliefs differ, we are still brothers.”

  The FBI may have been right that the meeting between Ali and King consisted largely of jokes. Both men were great comics. Both knew how to establish emotional connections quickly, even with their critics. Both possessed a manic energy at times. But despite the joking, the meeting mattered. For one thing, it revealed King’s continued willingness to stand publicly as an opponent of the war in Vietnam. It also served as a reminder of Ali’s flexible ideology and his seemingly contradictory urges to rebel and make friends. Finally, the meeting reflected the manner in which the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement were colliding.

  On the same day he met King, Ali, dressed in an iridescent blue-green suit, appeared at a protest against segregated housing in Louisville. His remarks were not entirely in favor of integration, but he nonetheless spoke and lent his support. He wanted to be heard. He wanted to stand with black people. He wanted everyone to know he fought on the side of change.

  “Check me out on this,” he told the housing protesters, as he launched into a variation on some of the speeches he’d heard at Nation of Islam rallies. “The richest soil is the black soil. You want a strong cup of coffee, you say, ‘I want it black.’ The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” He went on to say black was not only beautiful, it was better off without white. That brought shouts of “No!” from audience members who, after all, had gathered for the purpose of integrating Louisville’s housing supply. But Ali continued, “Let’s quit worrying white people and forcing ourselves into their neighborhoods,” he said. “Let’s start cleaning up and do for ourselves. I am what they call a Muslim. I am a follower of another freedom fighter — his name is Elijah Muhammad.” Again, the crowd expressed some disdain. Ali said black Christians had been deceived all their lives. “When we went to church we looked in the Bible . . . We saw Jesus. He’s white. We see angels. They’re white. You see pictures of the Last Supper. Everybody there is white. The president lives in the White House.” On the other hand, he said, “Devil food cake is dark. Black cats are bad luck.” He continued to insult his audience. “I realize this here’s a small town and you’re not too wise to these teachings . . . I say the solutions to our problems is getting together, cleaning ourselves up, and respecting our women. Then the whole world will respect us as a nation.”

  He went on to talk about his opposition to the war, making his most plainly political statement on the subject to date: “Why should they ask me, another so-called Negro, 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 and denied simple human rights?” He went on to say that his real enemies were in the United States, and that he would not help the United States enslave others.

  The audience members did not boo when he was done, but neither did they wildly applaud. Clearly, this was not what they had come to hear.

  When Ali finished, a reporter asked him how he thought the audience felt about his sermon.

  “Oh, they liked it,” he said.

  A few days later, Dr. King, speaking at New York’s Riverside Church, made his most powerful statement to date about Vietnam, calling the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and saying he felt compelled to speak out as a “brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam” and on behalf of “the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes of home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam.” The reverend was attacked from almost all sides for his remarks — branded unpatriotic, a communist sympathizer, and, in the words of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, “an instrument in the hands of subversive forces seeking to undermine our nation.” Meanwhile, antiwar demonstrations around the nation grew larger and louder.

  On April 17, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request by Ali’s lawyers for an injunction that would have blocked the boxer’s military induction. The lawyers had argued that the Kentucky Selective Service had discriminated against the boxer because of his race. Faced with the disappointing news, Ali promised that he would appear at his scheduled induction ceremony on April 28, but he insisted he would not accept induction. He vowed to “stand up for my religious beliefs even if it means I am put in jail for fifty years or am stood up in front of a machine gun.”

  In Chicago, Ali conferred with Elijah Muhammad and Herbert Muhammad. Elijah told reporters he offered no advice to his disciple. Perhaps tellingly, though, he added, “I gave him no more advice than I gave the faithful ones who followed me to the penitentiary in 1942.”

  It was a cool, gray morning in Houston, a curtain of mist in the air. On the morning of his scheduled military induction, Muhammad Ali gazed at himself in the reflection of a coffee-shop mirror as he jabbed with his fork at four soft-boiled eggs on his plate. Perhaps he saw a historical figure looking back at him in the mirror. That was the take of a Sports Illustrated reporter seated by the boxer’s side. In opposing the draft, Ali considered himself a fighter whose battle transcended sports. He was Davey Crockett now. He was John Henry. Nat Turner. He was a leader of his people. A true believer. Or, as he might have been tempted to say, the greatest crusader of allll tiiiimes!!

  If the government of the United States jailed him or took away his right to fight, “it could cost me $10 million in earnings,” he said to the reporter and to his own reflection. “Does that sound like I’m serious about my religion?”

  When they finished their breakfast, Ali and his group of friends, lawyers, and journalists crammed into two taxis for the ride to the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station on the third floor of the federal office building at 701 San Jacinto Street. As Ali stepped out of his cab, lights from the TV cameras popped on, brightening the boxer’s blue suit. The boxer paused and smiled before entering the building but gave no comment to the press.

  Ali was one of twenty-six pre-induction examinees reporting at 8 a.m. to Houston’s Board No. 61. He was the only one with a lawyer. Most of the men brought duffel bags or suitcases, knowing that they would likely be leaving on a bus later that day for a military base, but Ali was empty-handed.

  “You all look very dejected,” he said to some of the other men awaiting induction. He told them jokes. He talked about the Floyd Patterson fight. He said that if he stayed home, the Viet Cong wouldn’t get him, but some redneck from Georgia probably would. He signed an autograph for a pre-enlistee from Escondido, California. Another one of the young men awaiting the draft said he wished Ali would go with him to Vietnam because the boxer made for pleasant company and “it would lighten our trip.”

  Ali’s lawyers told him that they planned to take his case to civil court, but they could only do so after they’d exhausted all administrative remedies and after he had formally disobeyed an order to serve. When the moment came, Ali refused to step forward and accept his induction. A Navy lieutenant summoned him to an office and warned that he was committing a felony punishable by five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. Ali refused again and signed a paper confirming his stance. With that, he became the most prominent American to make a legal plea for exemption from the war.

  When it was over, Ali, for once, had little to say. He read a prepared statement, went back to his room at the Hotel America, and phoned his mother, who had been urging him to accept his induction. By the end of the day, the World Boxing Association and the New York State Athletic Commission had suspended Ali’s boxing license and stripped him of his championship title. Soon after, with a unity of spirit, all the other boxing commissions in the country fell into line. Never mind that they had long tolerated the mafia and professional gamblers in their sport. Never mind that Ali had not yet been convicted of a crime. Never mind that boxing’s rules contained no requirement that its champion be a Christian or an American or a supporter of American wars. None of that mattered. Guided by anger, prejudice, or patriotism, boxing’s rulers decided that Muhammad Ali was unfit to wear the sport’s crown because he was a Muslim who refused to fight for his country.

  “The action of the sports authorities could effectively end Clay’s career,” his hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.

  “Mama, I’m all right,” Ali said. “I did what I had to do. I sure am looking forward to coming home to eat some of your cooking.”

  25

  Faith

  His enemy was solitude. His enemy had always been solitude, but now, with no one to box, no reason even to train, with his lawyers handling his fight with the government, and with no crowds clamoring for him, Ali grew bored.

  On May 18, 1967, he was pulled over by police in Miami and arrested for driving without a license and failing to appear in court on an earlier traffic violation. He spent about ten minutes in jail before posting bond.

  Soon he was back in Chicago, where he visited the Shabazz Restaurant on 71st Street, which sold bean soup and bean pies baked according to the special recipe of Clara Muhammad, the wife of Elijah Muhammad. Ali spotted a familiar face behind the restaurant counter, a seventeen-year-old girl named Belinda Boyd, whom he had met at least once before while visiting the Muhammad University of Islam and whom he had also seen working at one of the Nation of Islam’s bakeries. A scarf covered her head and a long dress draped her body. Herbert Muhammad had suggested Ali visit Belinda at the restaurant, suggesting she might make a good wife.

  Muhammad Ali was the Nation of Islam’s handsome prince. Every girl at Belinda’s school loved him. But she loved him more than most. Her love was “exponential,” recalled Safiyya Mohammed-Rahmah, Belinda’s classmate and the daughter of Herbert Muhammad. She had been proclaiming that love for years. “She just knew she was going to marry him,” Safiyya said.

  Yet Belinda’s knees did not wobble when the prince walked into the restaurant.

  “Do you know who I am?” Ali asked.

  Belinda did not smile or bat her eyelashes. She was tall and slender but no waif. She practiced karate. She stood squarely and confidently. Belinda watched out of the corner of her eye as Ali smiled and eased his way past the waiting customers to order a bowl of soup. When he got to the counter, Belinda addressed him sharply: “You gonna butt the line?”

  Ali froze. He went back and waited his turn.

  Belinda was the daughter of Raymond and Aminah Boyd of Blue Island, Illinois, a working-class suburb on Chicago’s South Side. Having completed her studies at Elijah Muhammad’s school for Muslim boys and girls, she was working two jobs, at the bakery and the restaurant. She loved work, loved engaging with customers, loved making mon
ey and saving for college. It was true that she’d long had a crush on Ali, and also true that she’d been jealous when she’d heard the boxer had married Sonji Roi. Sonji was the most beautiful woman Belinda had ever seen — a black Elizabeth Taylor, and Ali was her Richard Burton.

  Had Sonji and Ali remained married, Belinda said, she would have been content to work hard, help her parents around the house, and live a quiet life of religious observation, following her prince’s moves in the pages of Muhammad Speaks and on TV. “I wasn’t interested in having no boyfriend,” she said years later. “I wasn’t interested in getting married at all.” But after Ali’s divorce and after she turned seventeen in the spring of 1967, Belinda’s thoughts returned to the man of her dreams. It wasn’t his fame or his good looks that appealed to her, she said, so much as his potential as a Muslim. For weeks, Ali visited her at her jobs and called her on the phone. Once, after work, when she was waiting in the rain for a bus to go home, Ali offered to drive her home in his long, silver Eldorado. She refused, saying it wasn’t proper for a single girl to be alone with a man in a car. Ali, in his Eldorado, followed Belinda’s bus all the way to 150th Street in Blue Island. When Belinda got off the bus, Ali once again offered her a ride. She said she preferred to walk. Ali turned on his car’s emergency flashers and drove alongside her, his head out the window, chattering with her, as she completed the last three miles of her journey home.