Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight

by Howard Bingham

  Since his first draft exemption request, the Nation of Islam had secured the services of a lawyer named Hayden Covington Jr., who had made his reputation successfully representing Jehovah’s Witnesses seeking religious deferments during World War II. When he took on Ali as a client, Covington decided his previous lawyers had made a fundamental error in strategy. Initially, they had applied for conscientious objector status, which—under the nation’s current laws—would have still required Ali to perform two years of alternative service in a non-combat role. Covington amended the request to seek exemption for Ali as a Muslim minister. Members of the clergy were exempted from military service of any form.

  A convincing case could be made that Ali was a genuine minister. For more than two years, he had traveled the country preaching sermons at Nation of Islam mosques throughout the country. Thousands of Muslims heard him expound on his favorite topic, in what became known as the “pork-eating lecture,” about one of the faith’s greatest taboos. His repertoire included snuffling pig sounds and blackboard cartoons of “the nastiest animal in the world, the swine, a mouthful of maggots and pus. They bred the cat and the rat and the dog and came up with the hog.” After witnessing his sermons, it was hard to doubt that he was a legitimate minister. In front of Judge Grauman, he proceeded to make this case.

  “You see this?” he said, holding up a copy of the Koran. “These are the writings which we Muslims believe are revelations made to Muhammad by Allah.”

  He contended that 90 percent of his time was devoted to “preaching and converting people” and only 10 percent was taken up by boxing. “At least six hours of the day I’m somewhere walking and talking at Muslim temples and there are fifty odd mosques all over the United States that I am invited to minister at right now, and constantly.”

  When Ali finished, Judge Grauman took a short break before delivering the judgment which would shock the hearing room, the United States government, and Ali himself.

  I believe that the registrant is of good character, morals, and integrity, and sincere in his objection on religious grounds to participation in war in any form. I recommend that the registrant’s claim for conscientious objector status be sustained.

  James Nabrit III, who would later join Ali’s legal defense team, described the general reaction. “Nobody expected the hearing to go for Ali. These things are usually pretty routine and they normally uphold the original decision. In this case, Ali was at his lowest point of popularity and he was arguing this religious doctrine which needless to say wasn’t very popular in a Christian state like Kentucky.”

  Ali had been warned by his legal team that he was unlikely to prevail. When Grauman delivered his surprise judgment, he thought his grueling battle had finally come to an end. “For a very short time, I actually thought the system had worked,” Ali recalls. “When that judge said I was sincere, I thought he was supporting the principles of our faith, he was telling America that we were legitimate, that we had as much right as the Christians to our beliefs.”

  But Grauman’s ruling was only a recommendation. In Washington, the Justice Department wasted little time ensuring that the Appeal Board ignored the judge’s opinion. It wrote a letter to the Selective Service Board arguing that Ali had failed to satisfy the most important tenet of conscientious objection—that he was opposed to war in any form.

  “It seems clear that the teachings of the Nation of Islam preclude fighting for the United States not because of objections to participation in war in any form but rather because of political and racial objections to policies of the United States as interpreted by Elijah Muhammad …. These constitute only objections to certain types of war in certain circumstances rather than a general scruple against participation in war in any form,” wrote T. Oscar Smith, chief of the conscientious objector section of the Justice Department.

  Pointing out that Ali had made no mention of his religious status at his first draft exemption hearing in February, the department argued that his beliefs were a matter of convenience and not “sincerely held,” manifesting themselves only when military service became imminent.

  Two days after the hearing, the chairperson of the House Armed Service Committee, L. Mendel Rivers, addressed a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New York. He threatened a complete overhaul of religious deferments if Ali’s conscientious objector claim was upheld.

  “Listen to this,” he bellowed. “If that great theologian of Black Muslim power, Cassius Clay, is deferred, you watch what happens in Washington. We’re going to do something if that board takes your boy and leaves Clay home to double-talk. What has happened to the leadership of our nation when a man, any man regardless of color, can with impunity advise his listeners to tell the President when he is called to serve in the armed forces, ‘Hell no, I’m not going.’”

  After a lengthy delay, the appeal board issued its decision. Ignoring Grauman’s recommendation completely, Ali’s request for conscientious objector status was denied. He would have to report for induction when his name came up.

  United States Attorney Carl Walker, who would later prosecute Ali, is convinced the board’s decision to deny the objector claim was political. “This is the only case I ever encountered where the hearing examiner recommended conscientious objector status and it was turned down,” he says. “At that time, I’m convinced the government truly believed they would have to make an example of Ali or it would start a chain reaction of black men refusing to join the army They were ignoring the Constitution—freedom of religion is very clear—and I thought it was wrong. But you have to understand those times.”

  The day the board’s decision was announced, Ali knew he was left with only two choices—go into the army or go to jail.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  The Step

  IN 1966 THE REPERCUSSIONS of his anti-war stand continued to haunt Ali, overshadowing his dominance in the ring. Like Jack Johnson a half century earlier, pariah status forced the unpopular champion into a self-imposed exile as it became increasingly obvious he was unwelcome in his own country. After beating George Chuvalo in Toronto, he successfully defended his title overseas three times within the space of six months, twice in England and once in Germany.

  Syndicated sports columnist and longtime Ali defender Jerry Izenberg covered the Chuvalo fight in Toronto. “I went to Toronto to ask Ali one question,” he recalls. “All these guys had been running to Canada to avoid the draft and here was Ali forced to leave his own country because of his attitude toward the war. I thought maybe he was going to stay in Canada. So when I got to Toronto for the Chuvalo fight, I asked him that question and I still remember his answer. He said, America is my birth country. They make the rules, and if they want to put me in jail, I’ll go to jail. But I’m an American and I’m not running away.’”

  But leaving behind the hostility of America for adoring crowds in Europe, Ali seemed to regain his old spirit, temporarily forgetting his legal troubles back home, although he lamented to the British press that he had “been driven out of my country because of my religious beliefs.” In London to fight Henry Cooper, he began to write poetry again. For one journalist, he recited:

  Since I won’t let critics seal my fate

  They keep hollering I’m full of hate

  But they don’t really hurt me none

  ‘Cause I’m doing good and having fun

  And fun to me is something bigger

  Than what those critics fail to figure

  Fun to me is lots of things

  And along with it some good I bring

  Yet while I’m busy helping my people

  These critics keep writing I’m deceitful

  But I can take it on the chin

  And that’s the honest truth my friend

  Now from Muhammad you just heard

  The latest and the truest word

  So when they ask you “What’s the latest?”

  Just say, “Ask Ali. He’s still the greatest.”

  But the fu
n was short-lived. Back home, his lawyers were studying tactics to delay the inevitable draft call, which now seemed imminent. The anti-war movement was picking up steam as thousands of college students demonstrated against the escalating war, shouting Stokely Carmichael’s slogan—originally referring to black draftees—“Hell no, we won’t go!” Ali watched these developments on television, and his resolve to stay out of the army intensified. On a side trip to Cairo, he told reporters, “My main concern now is to go back to the States and try to beat the draft.”

  After accompanying him for several days, during which he seemed to ignore his legal problems, Life magazine photographer Gordon Parks finally asked Ali, “What about your draft situation?”

  “What about it?” came the reply. “How can I kill somebody when I pray five times a day for peace? Answer me. For two years the Army told everybody I was a nut. I was ashamed! My mother and father was ashamed! Now, suddenly, they decide Fm very wise—without even testing me again. I ain’t scared. Just show me a soldier who’d like to be in that ring in my place. I see signs saying, ‘L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?’Well, I ain’t said nothing that bad. Elijah Muhammad teaches us to fight only when we are attacked. My life is in his hands. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s got to be.”

  Back in America, college students weren’t the only ones questioning the legitimacy of the war. Martin Luther King Jr. was in the process of debating his conscience and his SCLC Board, which was still reluctant to incur the wrath of the Johnson Administration and its support of the civil rights agenda.

  King had begun to shift his priorities from the battle against segregation in the South to the fight for economic justice in the rest of the country, acknowledging that his movement’s legislative and judicial victories “did very little to improve the lot of millions of Negroes in the teeming North.” The civil rights leader was at first uncomfortable with the increasing militancy of the new generation of young black leaders, labeling Black Power a “slogan without a program” and fearing it would lead to violence. Indeed, black ghetto unrest had already resulted in a number of urban race riots as increasing numbers of blacks began to see Dr. King’s call for nonviolence as irrelevant to their situation. In October 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was formed in Oakland, California—the most militant of the Black Power groups to date. Their members carried rifles—to defend themselves against police brutality, they claimed.

  Martin Luther King Jr. rejected the tactics of the Black Panthers and other militant Black Power groups. But on one issue he was becoming increasingly sympathetic. In 1964, King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in civil rights. Privately, he would often note the irony that he was given the world’s most prestigious symbol of peace but could not speak out against the brutal war in Vietnam. In fact, he had made his personal views known in a number of interviews, but he had not yet linked the civil rights movement with the burgeoning peace movement.

  “Martin really agonized over the decision of whether he should come out sooner than he did,” recalls his widow Coretta Scott King. “He said, ‘People who were with me on civil rights will not be with me on this issue, and we have to count those costs.’ It was very difficult for him because he really felt very strongly from the very beginning on this whole issue of the Vietnam War and he could see the injustice of it all and how the people who were the poorest people in the country were more directly affected by it.”

  King was somewhat reticent about militant black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael. But he always seemed to have a soft spot for Muhammad Ali, despite the boxer’s early advocacy of black separatism and his rejection of integration—the cause to which King had devoted his life. “King was the only black leader who sent me a telegram congratulating me after I won the title from Liston,” Ali recalls.

  Attorney Charles Morgan Jr. served on the board of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was one of the few board members who advocated a public anti-war stand. Morgan, the only white on the board, also represented Julian Bond, who was still fighting to be seated in the Georgia legislature because of the outcry over his comments about Vietnam. He remembers that King greatly admired Ali’s courage in speaking out against the war.

  “Martin had opposed the war for a long time but his hands were tied by our Board,” recalls Morgan. “Then Ali spoke out publicly, he took the consequences, and I believe it had an influence on Martin. Here was somebody who had a lot to lose and was willing to risk it all to say what he believed.”

  Sitting with Morgan on the board of the SCLC was fellow lawyer Chauncey Eskridge, who had been retained by the Nation of Islam to represent Ali in his fight to stay out of the army. Eskridge, who also represented King, regularly reported developments in the Ali case to the civil rights leader, who was seriously considering a public declaration against Vietnam. Eskridge eventually recruited Morgan onto the boxer’s legal team, and together the two continued to persuade the board to come out against the war.

  The popular black entertainer Harry Belafonte was a close friend and political supporter of Dr. King and the most important financial contributor to the civil rights movement, repeatedly bailing King and other freedom marchers out of jail after they had been arrested for civil disobedience. He believes Ali’s public stand had an important impact on King’s own evolution. “Muhammad Ali was the genuine product of what the movement inspired,” Belafonte says. “He took on all of the characteristics and was the embodiment of the thrust of the movement. He was courageous. He put the class issues on the line. He didn’t care about money. He brought America to its most wonderful and naked moment. He said,’ I will not play in your game of war. I will not kill on your behalf. What you ask is immoral and unjust, and I stand here to attest to that fact. Do with me what you will.’ He was very inspirational. He was in many ways as inspiring as Dr. King, as inspiring as Malcolm. Out of the womb of oppression, he was our phoenix. He stood courageously and said,‘I put everything on the line for what I believe in.’ They could not break his spirit nor deny his moral imperative.”

  As King grappled with one of his greatest dilemmas, Ali’s case worked its way slowly through the system. His lawyers attempted a series of last-minute legal maneuvers to keep him out of the army. The media continued to portray him as a hate-monger for his affiliation with the Nation. But those who spent time with him saw a different side.

  Gordon Parks recalls a scene he witnessed while Ali was training in Miami. “I never witnessed the hate he is assumed to have for whites. But I did see him stand in the burning sun for an hour, signing autographs for Southern white children.”

  Miami Herald sportswriter Pat Putnam echoes Ali’s affinity for children. “It’s amazing,” he says. “Ali has always been drawn to kids and they have always been drawn to him. He has infinite patience for children and will never refuse a request for an autograph or a request to visit a kid in the hospital. Kids can always spot a phony but they are always drawn to him.”

  In February, Ali fought Ernie Terrell in the bout that had been cancelled a year earlier because of his Vietcong remarks. During the pre-fight hype, Terrell refused to call Ali by his Muslim name, prompting the champion to label his opponent an Uncle Tom and vowing, “I want to torture him. A clean knockout is too good for him.”

  The fight itself was brutal. Ali repeatedly pounded his opponent, screaming, “What’s my name?” with each punch. “What’s my name? Uncle Tom! You white man’s nigger!”

  The media’s reaction was somewhat ironic. The very same reporters who were mercilessly attacking Ali for not going to war were now lambasting him for being too violent in the ring.

  Gene Ward of the New York Daily News called the fight “a disgusting exhibition of calculating cruelty, an open defiance of decency, sportsmanship, and all the tenets of right vs. wrong”. Jimmy Cannon, Ali’s long-time nemesis, wrote, “It was a bad fight, nasty with the evil of religious fanaticism. This wasn’t an athletic contest. It wa
s a kind of lynching.” Responding to reports that Ali had applied for military exemption as a minister, Cannon wrote, “What kind of clergyman is he? The Black Muslims demand that Negroes keep their place. They go along with the Klan on segregation. It seemed right that Cassius Clay had a good time beating up another Negro. The heavyweight champion is a vicious propagandist for a spiteful mob that works the religious underworld.”

  Ali was puzzled about the commotion, explaining he was merely plying his trade. “It’s just a job,” he said. “Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.”

  Even before the fight, the Nation of Islam and Ali’s legal team had known that, for his conscientious objector claim to be taken seriously, it was essential to convince the world he was a legitimate minister. Ali’s apparent cruelty in the ring didn’t make this task any easier. But the Black Muslim public relations machine did its bit.

  On March 3, the Nation’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, carried a story headlined WORLD CHAMPION MOVES STEP CLOSER TO FULL-TIME TASK AS MUHAMMAD’S MINISTER. The article announced that Ali “took complete charge” of the Muslim mosque in Houston, replacing the regular minister while he went on a leave of absence.

  “Reaction to the young athlete’s assumption of his spiritual duties,” the article declared, “was not only highly favorable among the believers, but exclamations of admiration were many among leaders of the black community here.”

  Until that point, only two heavyweight champions had failed to receive an invitation to meet the president at the White House, Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali. On March 14, however, Ali received a different kind of invitation from President Johnson. It read:

  ORDER FOR TRANSFERRED MAN TO REPORT

  FOR INDUCTION

  FROM: The President of the United States