Muhammad Ali passed away and I wonder if anyone can replace him in our National Hero Pantheon. Even trying to write a post about him is intimidating. He was a giant and I guess I sort of expected he would live forever; paradoxically, I also didn’t realize he was still alive.
Like almost everybody else my age, Cassius Clay sort of snuck up on me. Yes, he won the Light-Heavyweight class at the Olympics in 1960 but Olympic boxing is not a major sport. He fought professionally with increasingly better results, but it wasn’t until February 25, 1964 when he destroyed Sonny Liston in the 6th round of a heavyweight championship fight, that Clay became a household name. I was in Yokohama and I still remember that fight.
There were probably fifty of us, in a waiting room without any windows at the Haneda Airport, all waiting – for hours – to be loaded on a C-47 to be flown to Kimpo Airport in Korea. We all knew about the the Liston-Clay fight but most of us, including me, had no idea what time it was back in America or even what day it was for sure, when a young, very small, black kid picked up the fight on Armed Forces Radio. More accurately, he picked up the pre-fight and a doctor was talking about calling the fight off because of Clay’s heart rate which was sky high. All of us, I think, thought Liston would crush Clay and the black kid was betting on Clay; he was offering 10-1 odds and he had bet his whole paycheck, about $100. That kid walked away with about a thousand bucks and I still marvel at his confidence.
When Clay gave up his title, or had it stripped from him, because he wouldn’t go into the military, the conventional wisdom was the Clay was too stupid for the Army. In reality, he was too smart and too brave, saying, Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 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? No I’m not going…. That was 1967, and the world was changing, but it was still a treasonous statement. He had offended the white ruling class and was going to go to prison for it and almost everybody agreed that he had ruined his career and his life.
Very few people have that kind of nerve – sitting here now, I can count them all on two fingers, Clay and Chelsea Manning – and we love him for it now, but not many people did then. As an aside, I think that is worth considering that a fair amount of the people we admire for their bravery were reviled when they were being brave. End aside. Clay was a beautiful young man, he was a great fighter who would become even better as Muhammad Ali, he was a stellar poet, he became a powerful political force, but most of all, he was a moral example.
Often, when we say, Rest in peace, it is because the person did not have a peaceful life, but Ali did. He had a supreme confidence in himself, in his abilities, and in his moral judgement. The world is a little darker place without Muhammad Ali.