Ali stands alongside the Black greats

LOUISVILLE, KY- IN 1960, a young boxer named Cassius Clay returned to the United States from the Rome Olympics with a gold medal dangling from his neck. It might as well have been a noose.

That same year, I was arrested, along with seven classmates, for trying to borrow books from a public library in my hometown, Greenville, S.C. Despite winning glory and gold for his country, the fighter could not have used that library, either. He could not eat in a number of restaurants in downtown Louisville, Ky., where he grew up.

His God-fearing, taxpaying parents could not vote or use a public toilet along Southern highways. Horses in the Kentucky Derby received more love and respect than black citizens.

The story was the same from Texas to Florida to Maryland. Most people adjusted to the soul-numbing viciousness of American apartheid. For years, they had resented having to go to the back of the bus. They hadn’t liked it, but they had gone.

Cassius Clay, the fighter, would not adjust. He changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and in the process helped change the nation.

Ali stands tall in the lineage of struggle, victory and transformation against the odds. Over his lifetime, he went from disgrace to amazing grace. He was rewarded, reviled, rejected and redeemed.

I first met Ali in person in Chicago in the mid-1960s, not long after he knocked down Sonny Liston. I was a young seminary student about to join the freedom struggle full time, as a member of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

By then, the South had become a war zone. We had seen sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C., the voting rights marches from Selma, Ala., fire hoses and snarling police dogs and church bombings in Birmingham. In 1964, the year Ali first became heavyweight champion of the world, three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were murdered just outside of Philadelphia, Miss., by members of the Ku Klux Klan abetted by their police allies.

Those were turbulent, perilous times, yet Americans saw Ali as controversial. What was controversial was to send young men to fight and perhaps die for democracy on the other side of the world, but to deny them the right to vote when they came home. What was controversial was to let democracy and segregation exist side by side.

Ali was not controversial. He was maladjusted to the evils of racism. When you are oppressed, you can silently adjust or actively resist. Ali chose to resist.

In the beginning, Ali did not take part in the marches, sit-ins and picket lines. But once he got involved, he shook up the world. He had the capacity to transform himself and everyone around him.

My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,”

Ali said.

And shoot them for what? They never called me n..., they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father...How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to take jail."

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before Dr. King’s assassination, the S.C.L.C. executive director, Andy Young, and I sat with Dr. King in his hotel room in New York. Dr. King was putting the finishing touches on his famous antiwar speech “Beyond Vietnam,” which he delivered that night at Riverside Church.

As Dr. King worked, there was a knock at the door. Into the room walked the football legend Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali.

Dr. King was fascinated by Brown’s economic union, in which top athletes pooled money, not just for themselves, but for the betterment of black and poor people. Dr. King also strongly supported Ali’s refusal to be drafted, and told him so.

Most conscientious objectors had little to lose materially, but Ali had made millions as a fighter. Yet he chose dignity over dollars.

The stand that Ali took against the war gave Dr. King a world-famous ally at a time when many had abandoned him over his opposition to the war. They both faced public rejection, and the media crucified them. Their peers, too, turned away: Ali was attacked by fellow athletes; Dr. King was criticized by other ministers and civil rights leaders.

As the day went on, the talk was of the war, and the waste of lives and treasure. In that hotel room, Ali and Dr. King found mutual reinforcement. They were kindred spirits, soul brothers.

They were on the right side of history, yet they paid a high price. Choosing peace over war cost Dr. King support and protection; it cost Ali the best years of his career — he was stripped of his belt and banished from boxing for more than three years.

When he did return to the ring in 1970, it was a black man, another son of the South, who made it possible. After Illinois, Nevada and New York had all refused to grant Ali a license to fight, it was Leroy Johnson, a Georgia state senator, who persuaded the mayor of Atlanta to allow Ali to fight in their state.

I joined Ali in his dressing room before the fight in the old Municipal Auditorium. We prayed together. Ali was confident and focused. He knew that riding on his fists were the dreams of a whole people.

I joined the entourage that walked him to the ring, and there he defeated Jerry Quarry in three rounds.

The King of the World was back.

Some loved Ali because he knocked down other fighters. I loved him because he fought until his last breath to knock down the system of segregation, the evil of racism, the folly of war. The sacrifices he made left the world a better place.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.