Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Unfiltered by Muhammad Ali Recalling Muhammad Ali – His life, impact and influence on his daughter Maryum. Days before Ramadan, a deeply spiritual month, Maryum “May May” Ali buries a man whom the splintered world collectively mourns. That the two coincide during such vitriolic times seems an extraordinary coincidence. The loss of Muhammad Ali – the only globally celebrated black and Muslim athlete – becomes a necessary paradigm for the intolerant present. “ [My father] looked at his religion and the inequalities in the world and he saw himself being equal to every other African-American or downtrodden person,” Ali’s eldest daughter, Maryum, reflects a week after her famous father’s burial and televised memorial. Indeed the legendary boxer’s draw was his stentorian voice that confronted injustice and represented his beliefs on the public platform. He was the quintessential alpha male, his daughter recalls. “There was not a wave of energy that went against him,” she adds. His well-documented life attests to how defiantly Ali charted his own course. That confidence to stand for something earned him the love and respect of the people who saw themselves in him. “I am them and they are me,” he once told his daughter. The poignancy of his words within the context of his deeds is what made him The People’s Champ. Even in death, his connection with people was palpable. Though relatively obscure in the public eye, Ali’s daughter isn’t much different. She too sees herself in her community and uses her platform to help at-risk youth. And like her father, Maryum’s natural certitude permeates her often-unfiltered speech, challenging current political rhetoric and socioeconomic discrepancies. Problems like mass incarceration and economic disparities that plagued her father’s time are still relevant today, she feels. But nobody challenges them the way he did, she thinks. Ali went beyond symbolic gestures of protest and consistently resisted oppressive norms, even when it touted controversy. His was no silent or scripted rebellion. When some athletes stood against police brutality toward African-American men in the past, “they got torn apart for [it],” Maryum reveals. Others were instructed “not to be a hero in the neighborhood.” Their activism was relegated to selective philanthropy. Muhammad Ali with his daughter Maryum. Maryum believes that her father’s existence informed institutions how to condition others so they wouldn’t follow suit. “[They] didn’t want a bunch of Muhammad Alis running around, you better believe that one,” she states. Apart from his intrinsic candor, Ali made conscientious choices to be who he was regardless of his wealth and fame. “I don’t care about the money. I gotta die and meet [God],” he’d exclaim. What’s Right Now. The difference in Ali’s choices was also a result of his strong faith, which the media generally glosses over when highlighting his trademark confidence – behind the rope and the mic. “If he contemplated anything, it was based on ‘what does my faith tell me to do.’ He didn’t care about what John was saying over in the corner. John didn’t hold a candlelight to his God,” his daughter contends. Ali’s religion gave his voice reason, his mind strength, and his relationships guidance. Shunned by white America, how Muhammad Ali found his voice on campus tour. T ime had sanitized the past. Portraits of Muhammad Ali’s activism in the wake of his death at 74 on Friday paint a picture of a fighter who helped change American culture with his refusal to be drafted into the US military but cannot explain how dire his situation actually was in 1967. Much of America hated and feared him. He was facing five years in prison for saying no to the military. He was through as a fighter, stripped of his license by the New York State Athletic Board and facing a long court fight to overturn his conviction. “Everyone turned on him,” fellow boxer told CNN on Saturday. “I mean literally everyone. I hadn’t even gone into boxing yet. No one wanted to be in his presence. No one wanted to be his friend and he was dropped.” This was one of the toughest parts of Ali’s life. As his backers in the Nation of Islam pushed him further into activism, much of white American shunned him. His passport had been taken away. He complained, at one point that: “I’m not allowed to work in America and I’m not allowed to leave America.” And yet the three-year period – at the height of his sporting powers, from when he refused to step forward as draft officials in Houston called his name to 1971 when the supreme court overturned his conviction and five-year sentence – helped shape the Ali who would later become beloved. It became the time that he grew into his voice. Ali embarked on a series of college tours across America delivering lengthy soliloquies on his faith, his decision to conscientiously object to the war in Vietnam, and his experiences of racism in America. At first the speeches were stunted, narrowly repeating Nation of Islam dictums. But quickly Ali began to thrive, sparring with students who challenged his views and delivering characteristically pithy retorts. In one adversarial speech, just months after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in April 1968, Ali told a packed auditorium at Union College in Schenectady, New York: “We don’t hate white people – we know them too well.” Adding: “And the only solution to today’s racial problems is separation.” According to college newspaper reports the entire address was received with cheers, applause and laughter. Ali, dressed in a double-breasted silk suit, continued: “Even Tarzan, king of the African jungle, is a white man swinging around each week with diapers on.” Bill Siegel, director of the documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali, argued these years not only helped Ali forge his dissident voice, but showed him he was part of a broader, younger, grassroots anti-war movement. “It forced him to become even more himself and develop himself as an independent thinker, and also to recognise that he had allies that he didn’t know he had, meaning white college students, who were coming around to where he was,” Siegel said in an interview. But the tours were also born out of financial necessity. Ali, then in his mid-20s and a young father, could no longer make a living from boxing following his criminal conviction. Ali ended his address to students at Union college with a short rhyme: “I like your school and admire your style, but your pay is so small, I won’t be back for a while.” “It’s one thing to be a marcher at a symbolic rally,” civil rights leader Jesse Jackson told CNN on Saturday, “[But] he lost of all of his wealth, he almost became a pauper, [going] school to school giving speeches because he’d gave it all up for his principles. That made him a very different guy.” Former Washington Post and Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Dave Kindred, who knew Ali well and wrote a book about the fighter’s relationship with broadcaster Howard Cosell called Sound and Fury, believes Ali enjoyed the college tours. “I think he was surprised at finding an audience that he never really knew existed,” Kindred said. To Kindred the hardest thing about that time for Ali was that he could not fight between the ages of 24 and 29, which are the peak years for most athletes. As successful as his boxing career was, he might have had even greater success in the ring had his license not been taken away. “I don’t think he suffered much in other ways,” Kindred says. “Money didn’t matter to him at all. He wanted money just to get by. The Nation of Islam was supporting him as best as they could.” Ali feared the Nation and their leader Elijah Muhammad. After Ali’s friend and adviser Malcolm X was banished from the Nation by Muhammad and later assassinated, Ali worried the same thing could happen to him. He once told Kindred he didn’t want the Nation to kill him, too. “Ali was not a leader, he was a follower,” Kindred says. “Ali wanted to be guided – as independent and eccentric as he wanted to be. He attached himself to leaders. All the racist harangues, the “white man is the devil” – that was the Nation’s ideology and he became its most vocal mouthpiece. He was coached by the Nation.” But Ali’s words were heard. The more he spoke them on college campuses and the more they reached new ears, the bolder he became. “He loved the sound of his voice,” Kindred said. “His voice at that time was getting a lot of attention.” After the three-time heavyweight champion retired in 1981 that voice grew silent, however. Aside from the occasional commercial or interview he did not appear much as his body started to feel the effects of Parkinson’s disease, which slowly took away his ability to move and speak. He was no longer the raging presence in the ring or on college campuses. He was just gone, re-emerging before the world as the surprise torch-lighter at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. “I don’t think there was any relationship with America,” Kindred said. “Then when he reappears frail and trembling and vulnerable he was embraced. It was kind of a guilt. Look at what he gave for us as a fighter.” Muhammad Ali. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Muhammad Ali , original name Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. , (born January 17, 1942, Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.—died June 3, 2016, Scottsdale, Arizona), American professional boxer and social activist. Ali was the first fighter to win the world heavyweight championship on three separate occasions; he successfully defended this title 19 times. What is Muhammad Ali known for? Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest boxers in history, the first fighter to win the world heavyweight championship on three separate occasions. In addition, he was known for his social message of black pride and black resistance to white domination and for refusing induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. What awards did Muhammad Ali win? Muhammad Ali was a member of the inaugural class of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990, and in 2005 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. What were Muhammad Ali’s achievements? Muhammad Ali achieved renown as a boxer through his speed, superb footwork, ability to take a punch, and tremendous courage. His final record of 56 wins and 5 losses with 37 knockouts has been matched by others, but the quality of his opponents and his overwhelming success during his prime placed him among boxing’s immortals. Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., grew up in the American South in a time of segregated public facilities. His father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., supported a wife and two sons by painting billboards and signs. His mother, , worked as a household domestic. When Clay was 12 years old, he took up boxing under the tutelage of Louisville policeman Joe Martin. After advancing through the amateur ranks, he won a gold medal in the 175-pound division at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and began a professional career under the guidance of the Louisville Sponsoring Group, a syndicate composed of 11 wealthy white men. In his early bouts as a professional, Clay was more highly regarded for his charm and personality than for his ring skills. He sought to raise public interest in his fights by reading childlike poetry and spouting self-descriptive phrases such as “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” He told the world that he was “the Greatest,” but the hard realities of boxing seemed to indicate otherwise. Clay infuriated devotees of the sport as much as he impressed them. He held his hands unconventionally low, backed away from punches rather than bobbing and weaving out of danger, and appeared to lack true knockout power. The opponents he was besting were a mixture of veterans who were long past their prime and fighters who had never been more than mediocre. Thus, purists cringed when Clay predicted the round in which he intended to knock out an opponent, and they grimaced when he did so and bragged about each new conquest. On February 25, 1964, Clay challenged for the heavyweight championship of the world. Liston was widely regarded as the most intimidating, powerful fighter of his era. Clay was a decided underdog. But in one of the most stunning upsets in sports history, Liston retired to his corner after six rounds, and Clay became the new champion. Two days later Clay shocked the boxing establishment again by announcing that he had accepted the teachings of the Nation of Islam. On March 6, 1964, he took the name Muhammad Ali, which was given to him by his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad. For the next three years, Ali dominated boxing as thoroughly and magnificently as any fighter ever had. In a May 25, 1965, rematch against Liston, he emerged with a first-round knockout victory. Triumphs over Floyd Patterson, George Chuvalo, Henry Cooper, Brian London, and Karl Mildenberger followed. On November 14, 1966, Ali fought Cleveland Williams. Over the course of three rounds, Ali landed more than 100 punches, scored four knockdowns, and was hit a total of three times. Ali’s triumph over Williams was succeeded by victories over Ernie Terrell and Zora Folley. Then, on April 28, 1967, citing his religious beliefs, Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army at the height of the war in Vietnam. This refusal followed a blunt statement voiced by Ali 14 months earlier: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” Many Americans vehemently condemned Ali’s stand. It came at a time when most people in the United States still supported the war in Southeast Asia. Moreover, although exemptions from military service on religious grounds were available to qualifying conscientious objectors who were opposed to war in any form, Ali was not eligible for such an exemption, because he acknowledged that he would be willing to participate in an Islamic holy war. Ali was stripped of his championship and precluded from fighting by every state athletic commission in the United States for three and a half years. In addition, he was criminally indicted and, on June 20, 1967, convicted of refusing induction into the U.S. armed forces and sentenced to five years in prison. Although he remained free on bail, four years passed before his conviction was unanimously overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on a narrow procedural ground. Meanwhile, as the 1960s grew more tumultuous, Ali’s impact upon American society was growing, and he became a lightning rod for dissent. Ali’s message of Black pride and Black resistance to white domination was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement. Having refused induction into the U.S. Army, he also stood for the proposition that “unless you have a very good reason to kill, war is wrong.” As Black activist Julian Bond later observed, “When a figure as heroic and beloved as Muhammad Ali stood up and said, ‘No, I won’t go,’ it reverberated through the whole society.” In October 1970, Ali was allowed to return to boxing, but his skills had eroded. The legs that had allowed him to “dance” for 15 rounds without stopping no longer carried him as surely around the ring. His reflexes, while still superb, were no longer as fast as they had once been. Ali prevailed in his first two comeback fights, against Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena. Then, on March 8, 1971, he challenged , who had become heavyweight champion during Ali’s absence from the ring. It was a fight of historic proportions, billed as the “Fight of the Century.” Frazier won a unanimous 15-round decision. Following his loss to Frazier, Ali won 10 fights in a row, 8 of them against world-class opponents. Then, on March 31, 1973, a little-known fighter named Ken Norton broke Ali’s jaw in the second round en route to a 12-round upset decision. Ali defeated Norton in a rematch. After that he fought Joe Frazier a second time and won a unanimous 12-round decision. From a technical point of view, the second Ali-Frazier bout was probably Ali’s best performance in the ring after his exile from boxing. On October 30, 1974, Ali challenged George Foreman, who had dethroned Frazier in 1973 to become heavyweight champion of the world. The bout (which Ali referred to as the “ Rumble in the Jungle”) took place in the unlikely location of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Ali was received by the people of Zaire as a conquering hero, and he did his part by knocking out Foreman in the eighth round to regain the heavyweight title. It was in this fight that Ali employed a strategy once used by former boxing great . Moore called the maneuver “the turtle” but Ali called it “ rope-a-dope.” The strategy was that, instead of moving around the ring, Ali chose to fight for extended periods of time leaning back into the ropes in order to avoid many of Foreman’s heaviest blows. Over the next 30 months, at the peak of his popularity as champion, Ali fought nine times in bouts that showed him to be a courageous fighter but a fighter on the decline. The most notable of these bouts occurred on October 1, 1975, when Ali and Joe Frazier met in the Philippines, 6 miles (9.5 km) outside Manila, to do battle for the third time. In what is regarded by many as the greatest prizefight of all time (the “ ”), Ali was declared the victor when Frazier’s corner called a halt to the bout after 14 brutal rounds. The final performances of Ali’s ring career were sad to behold. In 1978 he lost his title to Leon Spinks, a novice boxer with an Olympic gold medal but only seven professional fights to his credit. Seven months later Ali regained the championship with a 15-round victory over Spinks. Then he retired from boxing, but two years later he made an ill-advised comeback and suffered a horrible beating at the hands of Larry Holmes in a bout that was stopped after 11 rounds. The final ring contest of Ali’s career was a loss by decision to Trevor Berbick in 1981. Ali’s place in boxing history as one of the greatest fighters ever is secure. His final record of 56 wins and 5 losses with 37 knockouts has been matched by others, but the quality of his opponents and the manner in which he dominated during his prime placed him on a plateau with boxing’s immortals. Ali’s most-tangible ring assets were speed, superb footwork, and the ability to take a punch. But perhaps more important, he had courage and all the other intangibles that go into making a great fighter. Ali’s later years were marked by physical decline. Damage to his brain caused by blows to the head resulted in slurred speech, slowed movement, and other symptoms of Parkinson syndrome. However, his condition differed from chronic encephalopathy, or dementia pugilistica (which is commonly referred to as “punch drunk” in fighters), in that he did not suffer from injury-induced intellectual deficits. Ali’s religious views also evolved over time. In the mid-1970s he began to study the Qurʾān seriously and turned to Orthodox Islam. His earlier adherence to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad (e.g., that white people are “devils” and there is no heaven or hell) were replaced by a spiritual embrace of all people and preparation for his own afterlife. In 1984 Ali spoke out publicly against the separatist doctrine of Louis Farrakhan, declaring, “What he teaches is not at all what we believe in. He represents the time of our struggle in the dark and a time of confusion in us, and we don’t want to be associated with that at all.” Ali married his fourth wife, Lonnie (née Yolanda Williams), in 1986. He had nine children, most of whom avoided the spotlight of which Ali was so fond. One of his daughters, however, , pursued a career as a professional boxer during which she went undefeated in 24 bouts between 1999 and 2007 while capturing a number of titles in various weight classes. In 1996 Ali was chosen to light the Olympic flame at the start of the Games of the XXVI Olympiad in Atlanta, Georgia. The outpouring of goodwill that accompanied his appearance confirmed his status as one of the most-beloved athletes in the world. The dramatic period of his life from 1964 to 1974 was the subject of the film Ali (2001), in which Will Smith starred as Ali. His life story is told in the documentary film I Am Ali (2014), which includes audio recordings that he made throughout his career and interviews with his intimates. Ali was a member of the inaugural class of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990, and in 2005 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Ties That Bind Muhammad Ali to the NFL Protests. A new biography reveals new details about the history of the boxer—“a heavyweight of contradictions” Muhammad Ali first spoke out publicly against the Vietnam War in 1967, when the legendary boxer and reigning heavyweight champ told a reporter from the Chicago Daily News , “I don’t have no personal quarrel with those Viet Congs.” He went on to file paperwork to excuse himself from service as a conscientious objector, becoming the most famous antiwar figure at the time. Related Content. Muhammad Ali's Brother on Racism and the Medal Myth Headgear Fit for a Champion: What Muhammad Ali Left Behind. The legacy of his activism would end up matching, if not surpassing, his incredible achievements in the boxing ring. His visibility led other Americans to ask questions about the war, its utility, and the dissonance between African-American troops fighting abroad for a country that showed them little respect at home. The literal trials and tribulations Ali endured are legendary. He was stripped of the championship title he had been working toward his whole career. Athletic commissions across the country suspended his boxing licenses, leaving him out of the ring for more than three years. As Jonathan Eig writes in his new book, Ali: A Life , the legendary boxer learned firsthand what happens when a world-famous black athlete speaks out against racist forces at home. Ali wasn’t a saint, but his remarks almost ruined his life. Writers and politicians questioned his intelligence and called him an anti-American traitor. One sportswriter compared him to Benedict Arnold. For Eig, watching the backlash against athletes like Colin Kaepernick, who are taking a public position against racism by refusing to stand for the national anthem, the similarities to Ali's story are uncanny. Prejudice and racism die hard, he says, and people’s anger has spoken volumes. “It’s been eerie to watch it, that we’re still having these debates that black athletes should be expected to shut their mouths and perform for us,” Eig says. “That’s what people told Ali 50 years ago.” Ali: A Life. Jonathan Eig’s Ali reveals Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding important new light on his politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition. Ali is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world. To write this comprehensive biography of Ali, Eig talked to the boxer’s former wives, all of whom revealed intimate stories about the difficulties, and at times abusive dynamics, in their marriages. Eig dug into government records, tracking how closely the FBI surveilled Ali and the Nation of Islam, of which he was a member, tapping his phone and looking for informants within his close circle. More than anything, Eig delves into the complexities of Ali's relationships. The boxer might have been kind to strangers on the street, but often he mistreated his wives and when his estranged friend Malcolm X was assassinated, Ali “showed no remorse,” says Eig . “My goal is to be as honest as I could, and really show Ali as truthfully as I could,” Eig says. “And the truth is that he was insanely complicated and often contradictory. He was a heavyweight of contradictions.” At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, sports curator Damion Thomas met me for a tour of the museum's exhibit on Ali. “Boxing is an interesting sport, because in many ways the heavyweight championship was a symbol of masculinity,” says Thomas. “The boxing matches have taken on symbolic meaning far beyond the ring.” The museum displays a small assortment of Ali's possessions, including a beat-up gym bag, his Everlast boxing headgear and terrycloth training robe. Ali was born Cassius Clay, Jr., the great-grandson of an enslaved worker owned by the family of Kentucky senator Henry Clay, the so-called Great Compromiser. He grew up in Louisville, a city segregated not by Jim Crow law but by custom and white residents’ belief that it was “intrinsic, natural and inevitable,” says Eig. Clay’s father, Cassius Clay, Sr., would tell him and his younger brother, Rudolph, that his own life had been stunted by racism and his career as a painter had never taken off because of it. When 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi, Cassius Jr. was just one year younger, and his father made sure to remind his children of it when he showed them pictures of Till’s mutilated face. “The message was clear,” Eig writes. “This is what the white man will do. This is what can happen to an innocent black person, an innocent child, whose only crime is the color of his skin.” Only money—and lots of it—could win black people the respect of white America, Cassius Sr. told his sons. So Cassius Jr. grew up hell-bent on fighting for the respect and prosperity that eluded his father. Cassius Jr. obsessed over two things: his body and attention. He exercised constantly by racing the school bus, and swore off anything that could hurt his health, even soda. (He opted instead for garlic water, believing it lowered his blood pressure.) And although he did not excel in the classroom—he likely was dyslexic —everyone he went to school with knew that he was going to be something special. Before he left high school, he was travelling across the country for fight after victorious fight, confidently rubbing his ability in his opponents’ faces. All the while, Eig notes, he wasn’t all that interested in speaking about politics or race. “He wanted to fight. He wanted to be great. He wanted to be famous and wealthy. He wanted to have a good time,” Eig writes. “That was all.” That lack of awareness changed during a fateful 1959 trip to Chicago, where he first encountered the Nation of Islam and its founder, Elijah Muhammad, the man who would later give Clay the name “Muhammad Ali.” The group’s message of black pride resonated with him. Once home, Clay listened to a recording he’d picked up in Chicago of a song called “A White Man’s Heaven is a Black Man’s Hell.” Playing it over and over again, the words began to resonate: Why are we called Negroes? Why are we deaf, dumb and blind? Apart from boxing, Eig writes, this philosophy would become a great influence in his life. After winning gold at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, the narrative of Clay’s career is the one many are familiar with—making his professional debut later that year, winning an upset match against Sonny Liston and becoming the World Heavyweight Champion in 1963, and defeating boxing legends like Floyd Patterson. Along the way, though, he was becoming more and more aware of the complex role he would play on the world stage. In Rome, he had told a Russian reporter that, despite some troubles for black people, the United States was “still the best country in the world.” In the end, he said: “I ain’t fighting off alligators and living in a mud hut.” Thomas says that this kind of expression was common among African-Americans in the Cold War era. “You could criticize your country,” he adds. “But you had to express faith in the capitalist democratic system. That was what was acceptable.” But Ali shifted his tone over the course of the next few years, starting with an issue of a Nation of Islam newspaper he’d gotten on a Louisville street corner in December 1961. A cartoon caught his eye, one that he reflected on in a letter to the boxer’s second wife, Khalilah Camacho-Ali. “The Cartoon was about the first slaves that arrived in america," Clay wrote with his characteristic misspellings, "and the Cartone was showing how Black Slaves were slipping off of the Plantation to pray in the arabic Language facing East, and the White slave Master would Run up Behind the slave with a wip and hit the poor little [slave] on the Back with the Wip and say What are you doing praying in the Languid, you know what I told you to speak to, and the slave said yes sir yes sir Master, I will pray to Jesus, sir Jesus.” “And I liked that cartoon, it did something to me.” After that awakening, he took cautious steps toward the Nation of Islam. He attended his first meeting in 1962 in Louisville, knowing that he couldn’t be open with the press about his newfound immersion. The FBI had classified the group as “an especially anti-American and violent cult.” It would tarnish his shining, meteoric boxing rise. Nevertheless, he began to befriend movement leader Malcolm X. “Wiry, stern, and burning with passion, Malcolm was the man who truly made whites uncomfortable,” Eig writes. “Malcolm was the man who spoke and acted as if he really were free.” By the time Ali changed his name on March 6, 1964, his new identity fit him like a glove. “With that, he rejected the old promise that black people would get a fair chance if they played by the rules, worked hard, and showed proper respect for the white establishment,” Eig writes. When Ali was classified in February 1966 as immediately eligible to serve in Vietnam, he told the press that he wouldn’t go. At first, it was a matter of surprise; previous low marks on intelligence test scores had rendered him ineligible. Then, it became a matter of principle. He uttered his famous Viet Cong remarks and said that as a Muslim he wouldn’t go fight in wars “unless they are declared by Allah himself.” It wasn’t a matter of fear of dying on the battlefield; after all, Thomas says, if he had served, he likely would have been entertaining the troops with boxing exhibitions as Joe Louis had during World War II. Upon filing for conscientious objector status, people were furious. Politicians called for an upcoming fight in Chicago to be cancelled; his managers had to change the arena to one in Toronto. “At the moment when Ali should have been the king of boxing and the undisputed champion of sports commerce,” Eig writes, “he was so unpopular that he couldn’t get a fight in the United States.” He became what Eig calls “the most widely disliked man in America.” He eventually lost his license to fight in New York, then all other states. He lost his world boxing title in April 1967, and he was convicted of draft evasion in June. He had become not just an opponent of the war, but a black man in opposition to the war, and the press coverage reflected that. White newspapers called him a coward and a traitor, while black ones like the Louisville Defender said that the public had targeted him. “When people are speaking truth to power, often they are not supported,” Thomas says. By the end of his career, though, Ali’s public image had softened. The Supreme Court overturned his draft evasion sentence in 1971, aided by a liberal law clerk slipping his boss, Justice John M. Harlan, the literature that had influenced Ali and that proved evident that Ali had in fact been a conscientious objector. He had been suspended from the Nation of Islam in 1969; Elijah Muhammad even rescinded his gift of Ali’s name “Muhammad,” which the boxer continued to use. The Vietnam War officially ended in 1975, and Ali hadn’t spoken out about it much in the years leading up to it. Jim Brown, a friend, football star, and controversial activist in his own right, went as far as calling Ali part of the mainstream. “I didn’t feel the same way about him anymore, because the warrior I loved was gone,” Brown said. “In a way, he became part of the establishment.” Ali later said that, looking back, he would have chosen his words differently during that 1967 interview about the war. When a Louisville reporter asked him in 1974 if he had any regrets in life, Ali said he wished he hadn’t “said that thing about the Viet Cong.” “I would have handled the draft different. There wasn’t any reason to make so many people mad,” he told the reporter. The lighting of the Olympic torch at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, proved a crucial moment for Ali's legacy, Thomas says. Those games, he says, were focused on introducing the world to the “New South” 30 years after the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and showing onlookers how much racial progress had been made since. He was markedly frail and shaking—Ali’s motor skills had been impaired by Parkinson’s disease—but nevertheless lit the torch. And the crowd erupted into a cacaphony of cheers . It helped to cement his status as a palatable symbol of civil rights, Thomas says. “I don’t know if a lot of people have accepted his ideas about race, and that’s the thing about Muhammad Ali,” Thomas says. “He can mean many things to many different people. And people find the Ali that they’re most comfortable with.” At his funeral in June of last year, then-president Barack Obama eulogized him in a statement, acknowledging the boxer’s contradictions and complications but settling on gratitude. “He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t,” Obama wrote. “His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.” Adds Eig, “I hope that people will remember that he was one of America’s important rebels, and this is a country built on rebellion,” he says. “We should embrace people who take a risk and try to change the country for the better.” About Natalie Escobar. Natalie Escobar is an editorial intern with Smithsonian Magazine. She is a senior at Northwestern University, where she majors in journalism and Latino Studies, and a 2017-18 ProPublica Emerging Reporter covering education. Muhammad Ali: Unfiltered by Muhammad Ali. Millions of words have been said about Muhammad Ali--at least half of those by the fighter himself. Brought to the world stage through boxing, he transcended the sport with his quick feet, quick fists, and even quicker mouth. Not content to be idolized as a celebrity, he reached out to encounter the world as it was, always striving to make it a better place for everyone. A foreword and a eulogy by the legend's widow, Lonnie Ali, sit alongside Muhammad Ali's wit, wisdom, and inimitably photogenic self to paint a rounded portrait of a man who strove to get the most out of life and live well. Including his extemporaneous "Getting Ready to Meet God" speech and featuring more than 200 rare and iconic photos, many rare or exclusive, Muhammad Ali Unfiltered brings you the Greatest of All Time like you've never seen him before. Boxer. Believer. Father. Husband. Legend. Muhammad Ali proved that one person can change the world. $28.00. More About Muhammad Ali Unfiltered by Muhammad Ali. Overview. Millions of words have been said about Muhammad Ali--at least half of those by the fighter himself. Brought to the world stage through boxing, he transcended the sport with his quick feet, quick fists, and even quicker mouth. Not content to be idolized as a celebrity, he reached out to encounter the world as it was, always striving to make it a better place for everyone. A foreword and a eulogy by the legend's widow, Lonnie Ali, sit alongside Muhammad Ali's wit, wisdom, and inimitably photogenic self to paint a rounded portrait of a man who strove to get the most out of life and live well. Including his extemporaneous "Getting Ready to Meet God" speech and featuring more than 200 rare and iconic photos, many rare or exclusive, Muhammad Ali Unfiltered brings you the Greatest of All Time like you've never seen him before. Boxer. Believer. Father. Husband. Legend. Muhammad Ali proved that one person can change the world.