Malcolm had discovered the Nation while serving a prison sentence for armed robbery, and he used its teachings to transform himself from thief and hustler into the acid-tongued spokesman of black rage. “How could he say those things?” Ali asked later. As the public face of the Nation, Malcolm X was the perfect vehicle to bring about Clay’s conversion. The Nation mocked the nonviolent stance of Martin Luther King, preaching that violence would be met with violence (although in practice, the Nation only used violence against other African Americans). In the young, semi-literate but supremely self-confident boxer, Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam found an ideal audience: according to the Nation, blacks weren’t equal to whites, they were superior and destined to rule the world. When the “Brown Bomber” Joe Louis won the title in 1937, his seven commandments for personal behavior included “Never have your picture taken with a white woman.” Although Louis became a national hero after knocking out Germany’s Max Schmeling, black athletes continued to face racist aggression from opponents and fans even as other major sports slowly integrated.īeneath his polite demeanor, Clay seethed at the constant reminders of second-class status - the police harassment, the segregated hotels and clubs. Johnson’s flamboyance kept later black heavyweights from a title shot for more than two decades. During his reign as heavyweight champion (1908-15), black boxer Jack Johnson infuriated the white world by living opulently, taunting outclassed white opponents, and worst of all, flaunting his relationships with white women. African American athletes, particularly boxers, were heedful of this unwritten code. When Cassius Clay won gold at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he adhered to the script for athletes of the era - be humble, praise your opponents, let your skills do the talking. Without Malcolm, Muhammad Ali would have never become the ‘king of the world.’” “Under Malcolm’s tutelage, embraced the world stage, emerging as an international symbol of black pride and black independence. “The relationship between Cassius Clay and Malcolm X signaled a new direction in American culture, one shaped by the forces of sports and entertainment, race and politics,” the authors write. Armed with redacted FBI files and rare archival material, the historians challenge standard accounts of the friendship and use their revision to illuminate the moment when the civil rights era, anti-colonial struggles and the baby boomers’ coming of age coalesced to reshape the world in ways that still resonate. In “Blood Brothers,” Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith attempt to restore the men behind the myths by delving into their intense two-year friendship, a bond that altered both lives and affected those of millions of others. the Louisville Lip, fast-talking and self-described as “pretty,” jabbing circles around more stolid heavyweights political Ali refusing induction into the Army during the Vietnam War with “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” “Rope-a-dope” Ali relying on endurance and guile in championship fights against Joe Frazier and George Foreman and finally, the trembling figure disabled by Parkinson’s who has become a genial stepfather to the world.
Muhammad Ali’s longer life and genius for self-creation has allowed him more roles, all equally oversimplified. Almost 51 years after his death, Malcolm X has become a T-shirt superhero of African American militancy: Malcolm carrying a rifle, Malcolm “By any means necessary,” one hand raised above his bespectacled face.
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