The Knockout That Shocked the World:

An Oral History on the Rumble in the Jungle Fight

Between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali

on October 30, 1974

Interviewer: Will Yore

Interviewee: Jerry Izenberg

Instructor: Alex Haight

February 11, 2019

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Table of Contents

Interviewer Release Form ………………………………………………………… 2

Interviewee Release Form………………………………………………………… 3

Statement of Purpose……………………………………………………………… 4

Biography…………………………………………………………………………. 5

Rumblings in the Jungle and in the U.S…………………………………………... 7

Interview Transcription…………………………………………………………. 18

Interview Analysis……………………………………………………………….. 49

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………... 55

Appendix………………………………………………………………………… 57

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Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this project is to obtain a historical comprehension of the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali on October 30th, 1974. Interviewing

Mr. Jerry Izenberg provides a firsthand account of the experience of attending the fight as well as personal memories between him and the fighters. This interview will allow historians to compare and contrast evidence provided by history books with that of someone who experienced the event live and was able to gain a full understanding of the perspectives of each boxer. Furthermore, this interview will contribute to historical discussions about the lives of Muhammad Ali and George

Foreman as well as provide personal insight on what the fight meant to the participants along with those watching.

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Biography

Jerry Izenberg was born in 1930 in Neptune City, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers

University on the Newark campus. During his education at Rutgers, Mr. Izenberg began his journalism career in 1951 when he got a job with the Newark Star Ledger. After working there for only one summer, he enlisted in the Korean War and served for two years. During his 60-year career, Mr. Izenberg covered numerous important topics throughout the world of sports, but among his most significant was his long-lasting relationship and writings about boxer

Muhammad Ali. [See Appendix 1] He covered many of Ali’s fights, and the two became very close friends over five decades. Mr. Izenberg also developed numerous other personal relationships with professional boxers he covered. For example, he was also very close with

George Foreman, who was Ali’s opponent in the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” fight. Mr.

Izenberg does not only cover boxing. In fact, he is one of only three journalists to have covered every single Super Bowl, and he will be attending this year’s Super Bowl as well. Mr. Izenberg was inducted into the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame in 1977. In 2000, he was also recognized for his work when he won the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors. In Yore

2006, he wrote an eight-part memoir for the Newark Star Ledger to commemorate 55 years of journalism. He was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, as well as the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. Also, in 2016, he was inducted into the Boxing

Hall of Fame. Mr. Izenberg has also written 13 books over the course of his career, the most recent being “Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing.” Along with his career as a print journalist, Mr. Izenberg has also been a writer, narrator, or producer of thirty-five network television documentaries. One of these, “A Man Called Lombardi”, earned an

Emmy nomination. Mr. Izenberg is now semi-retired. He has four children and nine grandchildren, and now lives with his wife in Henderson, NV, where he continues to watch boxing and baseball, and still enjoys writing.

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Rumblings in the Jungle and in the U.S.

Newark-Star Ledger reporter Jerry Izenberg described Muhammad Ali as, “an aging ex- champ and a man who, without whining, had taken more crap from his own government than all the white-collar criminals in America.”1 Although this is a sentiment that can be attributed to Ali throughout his entire career, there are specific events that define his legacy as one of the most important and influential athletes of all time. The influence of professional athletes on modern society expands far beyond Ali and has been a trend throughout most of history with figures like

Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and even more recent players like Colin Kaepernick making big impacts on the racial and cultural tensions of their given time periods. Out of Ali’s sixty-one career fights, the one that changed the world’s perspective on sports and civil rights at the same time was Ali’s bout with George Foreman on October 30th in 1974. This fight took place in a small African country named Zaire. The legendary fight is now known as the Rumble in the

Jungle. However, to truly understand the Rumble in the Jungle one must examine the racial tensions of the time, Ali’s influence on the public, and the significance of the fight’s location as well as gain a first-hand perspective from a legendary reporter who was there.

During the 1960s, racial tensions were no small aspect of American life, and Muhammad

Ali did not shy away from the subject, serving as one of the most controversial figures of the time while still maintaining his reputation as one of the most revered athletes and public personalities. Sports writer George Plimpton noted that, “Ali’s behavior outside the ring is just as

1 Jerry Izenberg, "Muhammad Ali: Why they called him 'The Greatest' and why I called him my friend," New Jersey Real-Time Sports, last modified June 4, 2016, https://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2016/06/former_heavyweight_champ_muhammad_ali_dies_the_gre. html.

Yore controversial; it has made him a historical as well as a sports figure.”2 The most notable development of the time period was the Civil Rights Movement spearheaded by figures like Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X that began in 1954 and lasted all the way through 1968, finally giving African Americans the basic human rights they so desperately deserved. The progressive atmosphere of the period is best described by black revolutionary Eldridge Cleaver, when he stated that, “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.”3 This era greatly divided America’s population, but after all was said in done, justice and liberty were the victors of the tireless struggle. Although the two sides of oppression and equality split much of the country, this movement also served as a catalyst that brought thousands of Americans, black and white, together through the common fight for justice. There were countless protests and riots, culminating with the March on Washington on August 23, 1963, as well as the March on Selma from March 7-21, 1965. Both of these marches were led by Martin Luther King, who, along with

Ali, was known as one of the most important figures of the period and to date. The movement was an achievement that was long overdue in American history and provided an extremely crucial stepping stone in America’s ongoing fight for equality.

One theme of the 1960s that continually shocked the country and often kept it in shambles was the continual assassinations of major world figures. Over the course of the decade, multiple extremely important figures in the US were killed. This list most notably includes names such as President John F. Kennedy in 1963, black civil rights leader Malcom X in 1965,

2 George Plimpton, "Down But Determined to Fight His Way Back to the Top, Muhammad Ali Turned 1974 Into a Year of Great Triumph," SI Vault, last modified December 23, 1974, https://www.si.com/vault/1974/12/23/628163/muhammad-ali-sportsman-1974.

3 Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 221.

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Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy, again in 1968. This constant violence and turmoil within the country created a feeling of great hostility, and only further added on to the racial oppression that figures like King and Ali were vouching for. An appropriate reflection of the decade’s terror is reflected in a quote from President Lyndon Johnson in 1971 when he solemnly states, “It’s a terrible thing for me to sit by and watch someone else starve my Great

Society to death…Soon she’ll be so ugly that the American people will refuse to look at her; they’ll stick her in a closet to hide her away and there she’ll die. And when she dies, I, too will die.”4 This is a view that was commonly shared by the American people, and is what sums up this dark period in American history.

Another moment of controversy that solidified Muhammad Ali’s legacy came after the start of the Vietnam War, which began on November 1st, 1955. The war did not end until 1975, however, the issue occurred in 1967 when Ali was stripped of his heavyweight championship due to his refusal to enter the draft. Although Ali’s refusal to enlist was a major point of discussion and outcry from the American people, he is not the only one who looked upon the war unfavorably. Historians Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin describe the war as, “The most demoralizing for Americans, plunging the nation into its most bitter civil conflict in a century.” It would also lead to the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese.5 Many often questioned the motivation for the US’s involvement in the war, and one often used explanation was that they were defending the country’s “credibility” which, at best, can be described as a “murky and ambiguous goal.” The common consensus around the war was that it was mostly unnecessary, and Ali was one of the first major figures to openly challenge that and

4 Isserman and Kazin, America Divided, 187.

5 Isserman and Kazin, America Divided, 67.

Yore stand up for what he believed in. Ali is famously quoted saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them

Vietcong.”6 This is a quote that fully embodies the type of man Ali was, and the extremeties he would got to in order to preserve his pride and his dignity. The removal of Ali’s championship title was one of the major elements that factored into his fight with Foreman’s location being in

Africa, rather than America.

Controversy and constant media attention was something Ali dealt with his whole career, and even welcomed, where he is quoted saying, “Boxing was just a means to introduce me to the world.”7 Born January 17, 1942, Ali began his life and boxing career with his birth name of

Cassius Clay. In 1964 at age 22, Ali won the world heavyweight championship from Sonny

Liston, and promptly after changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. He did this as he considered his first name to be his “slave name.” This was just the birth of the incredible legacy that Ali would build over the course of his life. Along with losing his heavyweight title and receiving extreme amounts of criticism and anti-American accusations, Ali was sentenced to

5 years in prison and fined 10,000 dollars for his refusal. His reasoning for this was plain and simple; he did not want to go overseas to fight for his country and its freedom when he would not be coming home and receiving that very freedom he would be fighting so hard for. He was someone who always stood up for what he believed in and was not afraid to challenge societal norms, even when almost all others around him were afraid to do so.

Prior to the legendary fight in Zaire, Ali had sustained a record of forty-four wins and two losses, with thirty-one of those wins coming by way of knock out. The first of his two losses

6 David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero (New York, NY: Random House, 1998), 287.

7 Muhammad Ali and Richard Durham, The Greatest, My Own Story (Place of publication not identified: Graymalkin Media, 2015), 0.

Yore came on March 8, 1971, where he lost to Joe Frazier in fifteen rounds, ending Ali’s perfect record of thirty-one wins and zero losses. Only two years later on January 22, 1973 however,

George Foreman managed to knock Frazier out in a fight known as the “Sunshine Showdown” held in Jamaica. This Foreman victory only added extra hype and anticipation for the meeting between Ali and Foreman, as it gave Ali even more incentive to want to beat Foreman, and not just beat him, but knock him out. Another factor that only further grew this intensity was when the fight was decided to be in Zaire, where the president paid ten million dollars for the fight, five going to each fighter. At the time, Zaire was an extremely small country that many people had never heard of, and even Ali himself was quoted saying, “No one - including me – had ever heard of Zaire.”8 The fight’s setting was perfect for Ali, as the last place he wanted to fight was in America, where he felt he had been so wrongfully treated and not to mention stripped of his title. Ali never felt quite welcome or comfortable while in the US, so it was only fitting for his first fight back to be located in an African country against an opponent who had already knocked out the only fighter to have ever beaten Ali at the time.

Once the fighters actually arrived in Zaire, they immediately started an intense training schedule to prepare for the fight. Ali quickly took a liking to his surroundings, and even started using them to his advantage. Zaire was a Belgian colony before gaining its independence in

1960, so Ali, knowing that the Zaireans disliked the Belgians, told the media that the actually

Texan born Foreman was Belgian. When Foreman had first arrived in Zaire, he had also brought along his dog which was a German Shepherd, the same kind of dog that the Belgians had used in

Zaire to keep the populace in line. This put Foreman at a social disadvantage very fast, and he

8 Paul Campbell, "From the Vault: The Poetry of the Rumble in the Jungle," The Guardian, last modified October 30, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2012/oct/30/from-the-vault-poetry-rumble-in- jungle.

Yore was never quite able to overcome it. Ali made great use of his favorable publicity with the country and led chants all over town while he was there where people would say “Ali Bomaye”, or “Ali, kill him!” Some may argue that this was an unfair advantage that Ali was gaining, but that encapsulates the true competitor he was, and he was willing to do whatever it took to win and reclaim his championship title. Although Ali found connection with the country of Zaire through the spirit of competition, his fondness actually went deeper than most thought when he expressed his appreciation for the country by saying:

“I saw black people running their own country. I saw a black president of a humble black people who have a modern country. When I was in training there before the fight I’d sit on the riverbank and watch the boats going by and see the 747 jumbo jets flying overhead, and I’d know there were black pilots and black stewardesses in ‘em, and it just seemed so nice…In Zaire, everything was black – from the train drivers and hotel owners to the teachers in the schools and the pictures on the money. It was just like any other society, except it was all black, and because I’m black oriented and a Muslim, I was home there. I’m not home here (in the US) I’m trying to make it home, but it’s not.”9

This relationship and sense of belonging he felt with the country and the society transformed the entire feel of the fight, with it now feeling like Ali was fighting as a representative of the people, battling against Foreman.

Ali’s trash talking was just one of the multiple adversities Foreman was forced to deal with in the weeks leading up to the fight. For example, during one of Foreman’s sparing matches, he was punched in the eye, causing it to bleed profusely, and forcing the fight to be postponed. There is even some controversy that has been recently brought up by Foreman about whether or not he was drugged before the fight. In his memoir published in 2007, “God In My

9 Campbell, "From the Vault," The Guardian.

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Corner: A Spiritual Memoir”, Foreman states that before the fight his manager gave him a drink that made him:

“Almost spit it out…[I told my trainer] ‘Man, I know this water has medicine in it,” He also wrote, “I climbed into the ring with that medicine taste still lingering in my mouth…After the third, I was as tired as if I had fought 15 rounds. What’s going on here? Did someone slip a drug in my water?”10

Although this is a bold claim for Foreman to have made, there has still not been any concrete evidence provided to prove this theory correct, only some speculation from some doubters of

Ali’s ability. This doubt however, was not unwarranted. Foreman was the heavy favorite going into the fight, and most thought that Ali did not stand a chance at beating him and would only be embarrassed in the ring.

However, when the night of the fight arrived, embarrassment was the last thing that could have been associated with Ali’s performance. To kick off the event, there were numerous musical performances by extremely famous artists, which only drew more viewers and attraction to the event. Some of those performing included James Brown, B.B. King, and Miriam Makeba.

Ever since training had started, Ali had been practicing his conditioning and stamina in order to implement a technique known as “rope a dope”, which he used on Foreman from the very first moment of the fight. The main point of the strategy was designed for Ali to allow his more powerful opponent to swing at him and punch until he tired himself out, which would then allow

Ali to use his speed and precision to take advantage of Foreman’s low energy. The strategy worked to near perfection, as Foreman started pounding away at Ali at the beginning of the fight, but by the end of the third round relatively, Foreman’s fatigue was visible to all sixty-thousand

10 N/A, "Foreman Claims He Was Drugged Before Loss to Ali," ESPN Sports News Services, last modified May 22, 2007, http://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2878507.

Yore people in attendance. One notable person who was not in attendance though, was the president of

Zaire himself, Mobutu Sese Seko, who watched the fight from a small television in his office, for he feared he would have been assassinated if he actually attended the event. The fight also took place at the ridiculous hour of 4 AM in Zaire, which would then make the fight viewable at a reasonable hour for those in the US. As the fight continued, Foreman appeared to grow more and more tired, and finally, in the eighth round, Ali ended the fight. He sprang a series of punches upon the worn out Foreman and sent him tumbling to the canvas, securing Ali’s knockout victory and allowing him to regain the championship he believed to be rightfully his. [See Appendix 2]

This was clearly a major point of achievement for Ali, where in an article by George Plimpton, he stated that from his seat in the arena Ali was audibly yelling, “You got my championship! I’m taking it back!”11 at Foreman during the fight. After Ali’s victory, the arena was electric, as it now felt not only like a victory for Ali, but a victory for all those he had swayed during training, as well as a triumph over prejudice; a final last laugh over all the controversy that had surrounded his decision in regards with Vietnam. It was a victory for those who stood up for what they believed in, or better described by reporter Jerry Izenberg, “He was simply a guy who said what he thought.”12

The day after the fight, newspapers all across the world were filled with articles about the spectacle and influence of the fight. Even though the fight was only a day old, these journalists already knew that this fight was going to go down in history as one of if not the most important fight of Ali’s career. One example of this recognition comes in an article from the New York

Daily News where the author Phil Pepe stated, “In the most stirring, most spectacular fight of his

11 Plimpton, "Down But Determined," SI Vault.

12 Izenberg, "Muhammad Ali," New Jersey Real-Time Sports.

Yore career, the 32-year-old former, and once again, heavyweight champion of the world became only the second man in boxing history to regain the heavyweight title last night.”13 This opinion was general common consensus with most reporters, as the actual thrill of the fight combined with all of the extra cultural, and political factors influencing the public proved to be far more important than any of Ali’s other fights throughout his career. The magnitude of the fight is well captured in article from the Newark Star Ledger the day after the fight where the author Anthony

Marenghi states, “In the TV theatre last night, a wild, uproarious, exulting Ali crowd was already leaping atop seats as the first of the killing punches flew in the eighth. It was a scene probably repeated in hundreds of other theatres.”14 This article not only showcased the fight’s importance worldwide, but it also highlighted Ali’s influence upon the crowd and the climate of the arena, as the crowd is described as an “Ali crowd” in the article. The newspapers on the day of the fight attempted to grasp the fight’s true importance, but they were only scratching the surface of the legacy it would eventually maintain.

The historiography of the fight has been one that is ever evolving, yet the main interpretation has remained the same: This fight was the most important of Ali’s career, and is still one of if not the most important sporting event of all time. For example, in the book “Once

There Were Giants” [See Appendix 3] by sportswriter Jerry Izenberg published in 2017, he confirms Ali’s influence and the fight’s magnitude immediately following Ali’s victory by saying, “In that instant I think I knew what his gesture meant. In that instant he was, indeed, the

13 Phil Pepe, "Ali Wins by KO in 8," New York Daily News (New York City, NY), October 30, 1974, Sports.

14 Anthony Marenghi, "'Adaptable' Ali Used Foreman's Strategy," Newark Star Ledger (Newark, NJ), October 30, 1974, Sports.

Yore king who had come home and claimed his crown.”15 That type of atmosphere and significance has been created by very few people in history, and Ali is one of the most notable to do so.

Another interpretation comes in a sports journal by writer Lewis Erenberg who claims that this was a fight, “Whose symbolic significance transcended sports.” He also quoted boxing promoter

Don King saying that the fight showed the world, “That there is more to Africa than beads, bones, and beating drums.”16 The legacy of the Rumble in the Jungle has only grown since

October 29th, 1974, and there has been multiple books and even a documentary titled “When We

Were Kings” made about the fight’s impact and importance. Ali’s influence will never fade, and along with it, neither will that of the fight.

As previously stated by Erenberg, Ali and his bout with Foreman transcended sports and made an impact on the lives of people all across the world. It served as a turning point in

American culture where the hostile forces at home and abroad clashed with each other in this worldwide event. The purse of the fight was the most lucrative on record, but it also was the first heavyweight title match in Africa and, “the most spectacular global media event in boxing history.”17 One factor that also sets this fight apart from all the others was how much it meant to

Ali himself, along with all those watching. He was able to regain his title he felt was wrongfully taken from him in a country where he actually felt at home and did so on one of the largest sets in the world, with the fight being televised across numerous countries. Jerry Izenberg had an

15 Jerry Izenberg, Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, a Herman Graf Book, 2017), 100.

16 Lewis Erenberg, "'Rumble in the Jungle': Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in the Age of Global Spectacle," JSTOR, last modified 2012, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5406/jsporthistory.39.1.81.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4bdd3a9943691 ea02dbf146f0e540b7d.

17 Erenberg, "'Rumble in the Jungle,'" JSTOR.

Yore encounter with Ali the day after the fight that asserted the victory’s personal meaning to Ali.

Izenberg recalls Ali standing by the Congo river and describes,

“The day before, he had stood in that same spot as a heavy underdog, an aging ex-champ and a man who, without whining, had taken more crap from his own government than all the white-collar criminals in America. Now he turned and walked toward us as heavyweight champion of the world again. Proud. Strong. Both arms raised skyward.”18

This is the demeanor with which Ali lived his life, and by doing so, he was able to influence and instill a sense of self-empowerment and courage that has never been seen again and may never be matched throughout the rest of history.

18 Izenberg, "Muhammad Ali," New Jersey Real-Time Sports.

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Interview Transcription

Interviewee/Narrator: Jerry Izenberg

Interviewer: Will Yore

Location: Interview by telephone

from Jerry Izenberg’s home in Henderson, NV

Date: December 28, 2018

Will Yore: [1:54] So first off, let's get some background. Do you think you could tell me what your childhood was like?

Jerry Izenberg: What was my childhood like? I was locked in a room for like 40 years and then after that happened, I was so eager to get out the door. That’s not what happened. My childhood was pretty good more or less. There wasn’t much money in the house. I was born in 1930, and that's the Depression. And my old man was a minor league baseball player.

WY: Oh really?

JI: Yeah, there was kind of a bond between us in many ways. He gave me the appreciation for that. And he never pushed me or anything, and he couldn’t because I didn't have any real skills.

But we would work. He worked in a dye house, and he would leave at 5:30 in the morning. And in the summer, he’d be home by 6 or 6:30, and it would be lights out. And he’d say go get the glove, and we’d go out in the alley and we’d play catch. And I wasn’t very smart, so I didn't Yore realize that about ten years later that he really didn't even want to do that. He was so tired. He was not going to cheat me out of it. So I had a very caring father and mother and that was good.

He was very athletic. He didn’t push me that way. He was very encouraging. We lived in a one family house that they bought for six thousand dollars. And during my childhood the biggest thing in my life was the Newark Bears baseball team games, because they were to play internationally. And in 2001, they were voted the greatest minor league franchise in history of baseball.

WY: Wow

JI: And they won the pennant by 25 and a half games in 1937, and it was the Yankee farm team, so all those guys went to the Yankees, guys like Troy Keller and Spud Chandler, and you know most of the stars came from there. But the ones who didn't were sold to other teams. That 1937 team was called the Wonder Bears. Everybody except one guy went to the majors the following year. And I learned at an early age how to sneak into the ballpark. So I would cut grammar school and go down here. And in those days Newark was a great, great city. A kid could go anywhere by bus and not be bothered. I had to take two buses to go down there, and I’d sneak in.

I’ll tell you an anecdote of what happened to me down there. You could sneak into the bleachers, and the big challenge was going into the grandstand. And they would leave you alone if you sneaked into the bleachers on a weekday because there wasn’t any crowd. [5:03] So one day I get in the grandstand and find a discarded scorecard. There was a little green fence. The place was Ruppert Stadium named after the guy who owned the Yankees. A little low green fence, and

I leaned across it near the bullpen. And guys walk into the bullpen before the game to warm up. Yore

And I think I was a snotty kid, because I didn’t take no for an answer. Sign, sign. I probably had two autographs from the guy already, and he said to me, “Not today kid.” When you're 9 years old you don't realize that these ballplayers are people. Sometimes they're constipated, sometimes they’re sick. They got a sick kid. They got things on their mind like everybody else, but you don't realize that. So he said to me, “No, not today, not today.” I said, “C’mon c'mon c'mon.”

And he took the scorecard tore it in half and dropped it on the ground. I was absolutely crushed. I mean if it had been a Baltimore Orioles or a Toronto Maple Leaf or other minor league teams, I could have understood, but this is my guy, the Bears. I was crushed and just about that time a woman came up to me and said, “Come with me.” I said oh great, she probably worked with the club and was going to pull me out of the stadium. She takes me down a third base line where a bunch of women were sitting and said, “You sit here, and I'll be right back.” And I sat down. I don’t know these people, and she leans over the rail and reaches into the dugout. She comes back up with a baseball and said “this is for you. I saw what that guy did to you. Nobody should do that to a kid. This ball has all the players names on it.” And I said wow. And she said, “do you know who George Stirnweiss is?” And I said yeah, yeah. I don't know what the hell I was talking about. And she said, “Well I'm Mrs. Stirnweiss and she said these women here are all wives of players.” And she said, “Ladies look at this boy. What did you say your name was? Jerry. Look at this boy if you see him getting into trouble in the ballpark, help him out next time.” So I was in love. That was the greatest thing in the world. She was my baseball goddess. Well he went up to the Yankees, and it was wartime, and he won the American League batting title with the lowest average in the history of winners at that point. And then he played for several years, and then he became a football coach and a baseball coach and became a stockbroker. So fast forward now all those years maybe 25 years later the worst train disaster in the history of the state of New Yore

Jersey, train goes over the side Newark Bay and a record number of people who die. I'm working as a columnist, and I'm in the wire room with AP. And I pull this story off and it talks about how a stockbroker named George Stirnweiss who drowned, and it was the same guy so I sit down and write a column about my baseball goddess. And then about a week later, I get this neatly typed envelope, and I opened it up and inside is a typed little note and writing and I can't read a single word. The note says I am Mrs. Stirnweiss’s nurse and she insisted on trying to write you. But in case you can't read any of this she wanted you to know that she'll never forget the little boy with the baseball glove. That’s a lovely end to the story, but it’s not the end of the story. Years and years later, I did my autobiography and I was checking something. And I knew that she had lived in Newark as I did, and he came in from I don’t know where to play baseball and they got married. I tried to get some of those facts straight, and I found out that he had a daughter who was tending bar in New Jersey. So I called the bar, and they said she doesn’t work here anymore, but she comes in here on weekends. I can give her a message if you want. I said ask her to call me. I want to straighten out something about her father and mother. So another week went by and I got a phone call, and she said is this Mr. Izenberg and I said yes. She said, “at last the little boy with a baseball,” and her mother had told her the story a thousand times. It was great and had a big impact on me.

WY: [10:19] Wow, That’s really great.

JI: Well you know I don't think it could happen today.

WY: Yeah, I don’t think so either. Yore

JI: The ballplayers are different and the money gap. You know when I first broke into the business and probably the Yankees were my first team. You know the western most city was St.

Louis so we never flew anywhere. We went with the players and we talked with them, and we’d bullshit with them and we ate in the dining car with them and then you play cards with them. It was all different. Their salaries are very low but not as low as a newspaper guy’s salary. But close enough that we could talk. Money has become such a big deal now and then television came because you all want to be on television. And now most of the guys go in business go into it not because we have a feel for writing or whatever because they think it's a shortcut to get themselves on television. So, you know we've lost a vital resource which is curious people, two vital resources, intellectual curiosity among readers and intellectual curiosity among writers. And after a long gap, that was the beginning.

WY: [11:40] So I have another question. When did you first meet Muhammad Ali?

JI: When did I meet him? In Rome 1960 at the Olympics. He won the Light Heavyweight

Championship, knocked out a guy I don’t know where he was from. Belgium. I think

Yugoslavia. But anyway, I didn’t see the fight. Winning the light heavyweight championship in the Olympics was like being elected rain-dance chief for the Apaches today. I mean it meant nothing. I didn’t even know he was there whatever, but now I’m sitting in the Olympic village.

But it's always crowded with people walking up and down. And all these people are passing by, and he’s sitting on these steps with the Olympic medal, and he's hollering at everybody who goes by. “I got the medal, I got the medal. I'm going to be the greatest fighter one day, you watch.” Yore

And probably 40 percent of the people who pass by didn't know what he was saying because they couldn’t speak English. But the one thing I noticed, they all laughed. The one thing I noticed was the female athletes when they got about 10 feet away, they all turned back for a second look. I said you know this guy is worth watching in the future. And then we talked a little bit you know, but we really started to get close when he fought a guy named Charlie Powell. You could look it up in boxing records what day it was. In Pittsburgh, he called me on the phone, and he said it Angelo Dundee, his trainer and he knew me. He said you got to get this guy because he’s a good writer. And he didn’t even remember we met in Rome. And he called me up and he says you’ve got to come you've got to come. I’m fighting Charlie Powell. He’s a killer. He says

I'm going to knock him out in the second round in Pittsburgh. I said listen. I hardly want to stop for gas in Pittsburgh. I’m not coming to see you fight some a guy who happens to be a professional football player. Well he did knock him out and he called me back later on and said told you so, told you so. And little by little I got to get interested in him. And the first time we really clicked, there was a hearing in the New York State Assembly about banning boxing in

New York. And a guy from the Garden, the PR guy said you come up covering the hearing. And

I said yeah. And he said well you know a lot of fighters will be on the train. Why don’t you take that train up, so I did. And he was on the train doing magic tricks running up and down the aisle.

But you know he had magnetism with him, and I saw it when we went to the hearing room because all of the secretaries had rushed in to see him. He was a handsome, dynamic guy, and the guy who was running the hearing was an assemblyman named Hayward (?Blumador?). I’ll never forget that name. It was rigged. [15:00] There was a middleweight boxer named Henry

Armstrong who was going blind in one eye and it probably was from boxing. I can't say it, and neither could they. Why are you blinking Mr. Armstrong? Is the light bothering your eyes? They Yore were setting up a case. So when it came to Ali, he got up. Blumador was always looking for politicians are always look for headlines. You're in the right city to know that. So he said, “Mr.

Ali, I think your flights are crooked.” He said really. He said, “How is it you could say what round your fights will end in?” Well I have my own theories and everybody else did. They're irrelevant at the time because he’s building a record anyway. He said, “you know you read the

Bible I’m sure. You should know about prophets. I'm a prophet. I can prophesize what's going to happen.” And we all laughed. And he said, “well I think it’s crooked.” And Ali looked him in the eye and said “Maybe Mr. Blumador. It takes a thief to know a thief. What does that say about you?” And wow I mean that just turned the whole hearing on its ear. It was snowing, winter and icy. We took the train back to New York. We had like six, seven hours to kill. We went back to a hotel where we had registered. And he came in and he said I need a room. I said I’ve got a suite.

Take my bed. I'm going to type, you won’t bother me. So, I gave him my bed. And he said what he says to everybody, but he says the first time he said to me. Afterwards I said you put that guy in his place. And he said you ain't as dumb as you look. That was our first exchange that meant anything. And after that it continued around the world.

WY: [17:22] And so what made for Ali and you to become such unlikely friends outside of the relationship of reporter to athlete do you think?

JI: Yeah well first of all, the case was the biggest thing. You know what I'm talking about? You know when I was a little kid some kid on the radio I would listen to a show called Town Meeting on the air. It fascinated me. They had some of the most incredible minds in America coming on to debate an issue and this particular night. Everett Dirksen a senator and Barkley who was vice Yore president and had been senator from Kentucky. He was a great speaker and he would the subject was the Constitution. Did we need a new one, and I remember exactly what he said to I'm going to quote it exactly what he said on that show because it stuck with me. He said, “the Constitution is not dead. It's a living document. And if it does die they'll take it and put on some shelf in the back of the museum to get it done. Right now, it's active and it's alive and I believe in it.” Well the Constitution guaranteed Ali a bunch of rights that were constantly violated. And that really drew me to his case. And I remember the first column I wrote about the case Liberty and Justice for All. And I remember full well, I traveled around the country and they took his license away.

He had been convicted of anything. And they took away his title. He hadn’t been convicted. And it was a series of things. A good example for you is at the end of it. He’d been out of boxing for years. He wanted to fight anywhere. And a guy named, I can’t remember his name, he figured out about how you could project fights into theaters. I forget the name of the company. He had an interest in Ali too. So they went to the governor who was a jerk, named Lester Maddox. And he said okay you could fight here. And then the veterans came and everybody else came. And he changed his mind. And I knew Maddox because I had covered the Democratic convention when he ran for president. Are you familiar with Lester Maddox?

WY: No

JI: No? Don't be afraid to say no. And he had a barbecue joint. You know Brown vs. Topeka

Board of Education. They didn’t pay attention to it. And he was not going to serve black in his barbecue joint and he had a barrel in the lobby with pick ax handles. And he had a sign on it that said, “Feel Free to Use on Any Nigger That Comes in Here.” So, when he ran for president I Yore went to interview him in Chicago at a place called the Water Tower Hotel. And nobody was talking to him anyway, so he was delighted to talk, and he never forgot nor did I the first sentence of my column the day after I interviewed him. It said if Lester Maddox ever goes to war, his battle flag will be crossed pick axe handles rampant on a sea of A1 barbecue sauce. And that didn’t go over to well with him. Now years went by, a couple of years went by. And this time Ali was trying to fight in Georgia and couldn’t and Afro-American State Senator named

Johnson. [22:00] You could check that. He represented Fulton county where Atlanta was, and he discovered there was no boxing commission. So, the governor really had no right, so he created the Atlanta City Boxing Commission, and they invited Ali to fight and that was his comeback against Jerry Quarry. And typical Ali, it couldn’t be in an old gym, it was in the municipal opera house. When you walk through the front door you can see the statue of Enrico Caruso, the great

Italian opera singer and that was the venue for it. And so, I was doing a show for public television. It was called the 51st State. And I had a segment where I would say whatever was on my mind without a script. And they wanted me to do something because I went there in my capacity as a columnist. You couldn’t film the fights because of rights. But I did do a piece that started with a weigh in where each one of them got a scale and my background music for that was. Quarry gets on the scale and we play This Land is Your Land. And then Ali gets on this is my land. And it went well, we did man on the street or whatever. But I wanted Maddox on the show. So, the day before the fight I made arrangements to interview him, and he remembered, and he didn't know it. He got on the phone and really cursed me out. And I said, let me tell you something. My word is my bond. I will give you a minute and ten seconds. And if don’t use profanity, I will not cut a second of it out whatever you want to say. It’s public television. You have my word. So, he said, I’ll come. I remember the shot opened with a top of the Capitol dome Yore and the confederate flag the Georgia state flag. And then it cut to his desk with a pair of praying hands and a confederate cannon on his desk. And then he said, and I quote exactly as you said it.

He said, “I think it is a sad and tragic day in the history of the state of Georgia when a man who will not fight for his country will get in the ring and fight for dollars. Therefore, I have proclaimed tomorrow night as night of mourning in the state of Georgia.” And then I played Ali right after Maddox. And then I had him say, “if Lester wants to mourn, let him mourn. I’m going to the fight.” And I remember something about that. It was the first poignant moment we ever had. When I was defending him, we didn’t see each other. He wasn’t fighting. I did see him once when he made a speech in New Jersey at a college. But it was tough on him. I do remember he played a Broadway show called Big Buck White, and he sang a song called Mighty Whitey, and he asked me what I thought of it. I went to see the show and I said, “I loved it because you buried an American folk myth. Not every black guy can sing, and you ain’t one of them.” He got a big kick out of that. We laughed a lot. But anyway, before the Quarry fight, remember I’ve known him since 1960 when I was 30 years old. So, I was getting older and he was getting older and he wasn’t in shape either. So, we’re sitting in a ratty, in disarray, gym. I don’t know if it was ever used much by anybody where he trains for the fight and we're sitting in a dressing room and you can hear, nobody is there but the two of us. You could hear the shower leaking in the background. So, he leans over and pats my head and says, “you know when I first met you, you had hair.” And I leaned over and patted his stomach. And said, “when I first met you, you weren’t carrying around this spare tire.” And we both laughed. He was in a good frame of mind for the flight, but he really wasn't ready for it. And if you ever saw a film clip of the fight, he put on tremendous display in the first round. [27:03] I mean all of the frustration of those missing years, feet were moving, tassels were popping. He looked like the old Ali, which he was not at Yore that point. But when he came back to the corner after the round, he looked like a beached whale he was breathing so hard. He was very fortunate about a cut that stopped the fight. He wasn't ready, but they made him fight three times to get to Frazier because they were worried that he was going to go to jail at that point and he had to fight a guy named Oscar Bonavena who could knock a wall down. And he fought Ali, and in those days, we had 15 rounds fights. This was an eliminator. I don’t remember if it went 12 or 15 you have to look it up in the boxing record. But he was losing the fight. He was losing by a hair and in the last round, he knew what he had to do.

And he planted his feet which Ali seldom does and he threw a great, great left hook and knocked him down and I believe out. And after that he had to get ready to fight Frazier. So, we get to do stuff above and beyond. I'll tell you an anecdote you'd like to hear an anecdote about the Frazier fight.

WY: I just have a different question because we have a lot of questions.

JI: Whatever you want to do, it’s your interview.

WY: [28:54] So I'd like to know how did you deal with all the public reaction you received while you were defending Ali’s choice?

JI: We had a lot to deal with. We got about 5,000 letters.

WY: Wow.

Yore

JI: And they were all against me. And that's ok. I told you that thing about the Constitution.

That column I wrote was about why I believe in the Constitution, and I said in a column about

Muhammad was my friend But, that’s not why I’m defending him. I defended him with people I didn’t like, like my brother in law. I defended him simply because it was right for America. I mean he had to be allowed all of the remedies that the Constitution and the courts accorded him, and I got a lot of heat for it. The letters meant nothing to me. We got bomb threats for the paper.

It had to be evacuated. We had the postal inspectors up there. They found feces in a letter sent to me. The letters were pretty rough. Like we missed you at Buchenwald but we’ll get you the next time around. That kind of stuff.

WY: Wow.

JI: And one day I was working in the little office. I was working at home and my son came running and he said hurry up and I ran after him. Two guys in a gray Toyota had sledge hammers and knocked out the windshield of my car. Now I have to believe it was over Ali. I can't imagine anybody who could ever hear do that for another reason. So the cops came and they say, “well do you have anybody who doesn't like you?” And I said, “listen pal, it’s like Sunday morning at the delicatessen. Take a number and you'll get served. I don't worry about these guys but if you want to patrol, it's up to you.” And about two weeks later, I had the car fixed. And I'm going to my office. In those days I drove a gray Monte Carlo car and it's at an intersection and on the left side of the intersection is my newspaper building. And I stopped at the intersection because I got a red light. Down the hill toward the paper comes another gray Monte Carlo and it pulls in and parks. But I can't move with the light changing. And all of a sudden two guys with sledge Yore hammers knock out his windshield. They think it’s me, and the guy is standing there with his mouth open. He can't figure what happened. I'm going over and was laughing and tried not to.

And I said don't get upset, it's only business with those guys. But it went on that way for a long long time. And at your age, of course you wouldn’t remember anything. But you know this is the most divisive time. The only time that equals this is happening right now. The direction we’re going with this president. Hippies and hardhats fought in Time Square in New York over Ali and the war. But he never lost control of what he was doing and why he wanted to do it. There are so many stories that I could tell you about him and the war.

WY: I'd like to shift focus now to the Rumble in the Jungle fight versus Foreman if that's alright with you.

JI: Whatever you want to do, it’s your interview. Be forceful, don’t ask me if I approve of it. I agreed to it. I should do it. Now go ahead.

WY: OK.

WY: [32:50] Thank you. How did the atmosphere in Zaire during the weeks leading up to the fight compare to the one in America?

JI: Ali won the fight, but Africa had Foreman beat before the fight. I have to go back and tell you something technically.

Yore

WY: OK.

JI: Ali, most people never knew it. Ali had arthritis in both hands.

WY: Really?

JI: For a long period of time and it prevented him from punching with any great cut into the number of punches and the speed at which they would be delivered. But the power wasn’t quite there for all of this period of time. There was a guy at camp named Gene Kilroy who was a business manager and a camp facilitator. He kept the leeches away from Ali. He took Ali to

Philadelphia to a famous orthopedic doctor and said we’re not getting anywhere. He said, “how are they treating him?” He said, “he gets a shot before a fight to help with the pain.” So the doctor said, “OK, no more shots. Anybody comes at you with a needle, run away. No more shots of any type. This is what you're gonna do. You're going to soak your heads in hot paraffin three or four times a day as hot as you can take it. We’re not going to heal your hands, but if you do it before the fight, it will eliminate pain in punches.” And I didn't know anything about that at that time. So now a fellow named Jerry Lisker who is the sports editor of The New York Post and I go up to Deer Lake to see him train a week before he's leaving for Africa. We walk in and I can't believe I’m seeing him hit the heavy bag which he hasn’t for a year and a half. Lisker is looking at me. Ali I’m convinced had at least one eye in the back of his head. He knew we were there and pretended he didn’t know. And now he's putting on a show for us. He’s punching the bag and he's saying I'm gonna knock that sucker out. I'm going to knock that sucker out cold. I’ll knock him out. And he looks up. “Oh, hi fellas,” like he discovers we're there, and I know he did Yore that for our benefit. So then he said we’re getting ready to leave. And said, “Jerry what do you think of what you saw?” I said I saw a different Ali. He said, “well how do you feel about the fight now?” I said, “I'm going to pick him by a knockout.” He said how can you do that. I said let me tell you something. A long time ago, he told me if I say a mosquito can pull a plow, don't argue with me. Hitch him up. And I’m hitching my prediction to that quote and what I saw in the gym today. And he did too. So, we were the only two people in Africa who predicted Ali to win by a knockout and he did.

WY: Wow.

JI: As far as the question you asked me, I haven’t quite answered. The week was crazy. The plane lands with Ali, and this is about three weeks to a month before. The plane lands, and Ali turns to Kilroy and he says who do these people hate? And Gene he says well I can't say white people because I'm white. So I said the Belgians because they occupied them. It gets to that terminal. He’s coming down the stairs and he stops and there are a couple of thousand locals there to greet him yelling and screaming and he says, “I pronounce to you George Foreman is a

Belgian.” And they go wild. And they’re starting to chant “Ali bomaye.” Which I’m sure you’ve heard which means in Lingala. And it means Ali, Kill him. Everywhere he went on the streets, he led these cheers. And Foreman heard him. And that was the first step. And then Ali trained in a place called N’Sele’s which was a military compound. Foreman trained downtown in some gym, but he was also in the best hotel in Kinshasa. Ali, I saw him in the gym. I remember this. He started it really. He would take the microphone, and he would walk around the ring after he finished training. [38:00] And he'd answer questions any comments or whatever. So he looks at Yore them, and he said hey, did any of you see that big dog? Didn’t the Belgians put dogs on you people, and they’re all nodding. Any of you people see that big dog George came with? That dog is a Belgian Shepherd. It was a German shepherd actually. And, it’s obvious George is black, and he has them convinced George is a white guy. And everything got back to George and everything irritated George and he sulked in his room a lot. And then his sparring partner hit him with an elbow. I don't know if you knew about this.

WY: Yeah.

JI: And cut his eye and the fight is now going to be postponed for five weeks. And Ali and

Kilroy go to a guy by the name of Mandungu Bula who was running the fight for Mobutu. And says you George is going to go home. He's going to sneak out. He’s not going to keep his contract. You should put an armed guard at his door. And the next day George opens his door to walk out, and there's this guy with a tommy gun. And all these things weighed on George over and over and over, and he didn't know how to cope with it. And, therefore, he decided my day of reckoning is coming. We'll find out when we get in the ring. Well, he found out. He found out he could beat him. Well you want me to talk about the fight itself now?

WY: [39:51] Yeah that actually is the next question. I was wondering, what was it like being inside the arena during the fight?

JI: Well first of all, it was a crumbling soccer field for a team called the Zaire Leopards, the national soccer team, and it was all makeshift. It was badly done. And there weren't 60,000 Yore people there. That’s the danger of the crooked internet. Somebody makes a mistake and it lives forever right. Who will correct it. Newspapers print a retraction the next day. The internet never does. Some idiots said that. They gave away tickets at the end to try to get a respectable crowd.

And you know there's a rosin and generally fighters have put their feet in it for the bottom of the boxing shoes, so you won’t slip in the ring. George was putting rosin on his shoes, and Ali is right there in his face. And he’s saying, “pop pop pop pop pop pop. That's what I'm going to do to you tonight. No rest nothing. Pop pop pop. I’m gonna knock you out sucker. I’m gonna knock you out.” And it had a real impact on George. Nobody ever talked to him that way because he was a big bully. And I say this in George’s defense. The George Foreman that I got to know much later was not that George Foreman. But anyway, bell rings, and George is going to kill Ali and he’s out early in the first round. George hurt him with a great body blow, and it hurt, and it’s supposed to hurt. Ali went back to the ropes with his hands up try to collect his thoughts. How's he going to fight this guy? There’s no such thing as the rope a dope, it was never planned. It was all bullshit. He was back there trying to get himself together to see what he can do. Well, George in my opinion and George agrees with me, when he was world champion the first time, he didn’t know how to fight. It was too easy. He bullied the trainer, he didn’t want to run. He didn't really know how to fight. So, he's going to put his right hand between the gloves. It's ludicrous. He's not going to get them through. Now he realizes by the second round, hey you know what. Look at the size of this guy's arms. He's got to get arm weary. I could take it because I’m not getting through and instead of going to the body while his hands are up. He's got to go try to get his gloves through those gloves. He's not going to be able to do it much. A little bit yeah. So, by the third round and the fourth round and they're screaming for him to get off the ropes, get off the ropes and he goes back to the corner. Dundee says, “get off the ropes or you’re going to get Yore knocked out.” And Ali looks at all of them and says, “shut the hell up. I know what I'm doing.”

And that was Ali because he really trained himself. And now when we get to the seventh round.

There was a little indication, the knockout came in the 8th I believe. Well we get to the seventh round, and there were little indications. George’s arms are coming down. He’s thrown a billion punches, and he’s not doing any damage. And all through it Ali is saying, “is that the best you got? You punch like a girl.” He’s really getting to George. Then when they come down just a fraction too much, Ali explodes. Right hand lead. Drives him back. Left hook. Right hand lead.

He’s on his way down. Ali hits him again with a left, and he’s going down. George is so big he fell in sections. He looked like his ankles fell and his knees and then George fell. And it was absolutely shocking and unbelievable. I'd like to continue that narrative a little bit for you. It’s useful information. Ali goes back. You know there's no press conference at that point. He wants to get out. It’s starting to rain a little bit. We have an absolute African storm. The kind that makes sludge. I mean unbelievable. If that happened during the fight they could not have finished the fight. It could be a little canopy over the middle of the ring. I mean they just couldn’t have done it. But that's the way it works. So he's gone, and we finished writing and we have to sit around and wait for the rain to stop and get on the bus. And I’m sitting next to Dave Anderson from the Times and we get back there, and I say, “you know Dave, I want to see him now.” We were so rushed. [45:16] I don't know. It might have been a good piece. But you never think it’s a good piece when you write that fast. And I want to take another shot at it. What do you think. He said, well I’d love to. Where are we going to find him? This is a military compound with hundreds of acres. I said, “let me tell you something. Because of him, God and spirituality, we’ll find him down by the river, let’s go look.” And sure enough, there he was. That was one of the three of four most memorable scenes in our relationship. He’s standing at the edge of the of the Yore

Congo River and he’s not moving. He’s staring across at the other side what used to be French

Congo. He’s just motionless. We’re behind him by about maybe 50 yards, and it’s a rise so we could see him, he’s talking and singing and laughing whatever. We can't hear it. But we could see him, and it seemed like an hour. But it was about five minutes, three minutes. He doesn’t move. And suddenly he throws his hands to the sky in the Rocky pose and stands there. And I don't know if he’s shouting, but he turns to walk back, and he sees us. And he comes up to us, the two of us and he says, “fellas, don't ask me what tonight meant to me because I couldn’t begin to tell you. You wouldn’t understand it, and I couldn’t phrase it right. That was the most important night of my life.” There are two ways I remember him, and one way I always remember him is with his back to us. Remember, he was a performer. He was doing this for him.

He didn’t think anyone was within a mile of him. So, he didn’t know we were back there. And the arms go up in the sky, and I remember saying to Dave later on, in that moment he was the king of the world. That's one way I remember him. Another way I remember him is the Holmes fight.

WY: [47:29] I think we're going to try to focus this interview just on Rumble in the Jungle. I have another question for you. I discovered this in George Foreman's memoir. What's your personal reaction to the statement he made in 2007. He says he was drugged before the fight where he says, “after the third I was just tired as if I had fought 15 rounds. What's going on here?”

JI: I don’t know who wrote that.

Yore

WY: Foreman did in his own memoir.

JI: Foreman didn’t write the book. He let the guy do it. Let me tell you how George really feels about that. By the way, it’s interesting. Ali, Foreman, Holmes, Frazier became four of my best friends afterwards, much later. Holmes was my friend at the beginning. It took a while for

George. Anyway, the point is that styles make fights. I'm going to prove to you right now that I could fight Joe Frazier 100 times. I will knock him out 100 times. I can fight Ali a hundred times. And if I’m lucky I can win one. But when the two of them fight each other, it's life and death because of the style and that's what this fight was all about, and I didn't know enough to know that I should have attacked the body. Whoever wrote the book, I don't know the motive.

It's not true and it’s not George. I don't know when did he write the book do you know?

WY: 2007

JI: I don't know why he agreed to it. He might not have. If you’re a ghostwriter of any piece of published work the subject has to initial every page, any proofs of it. And he might have just said, I don't care and initialed it because that did not happen. Who could drug him?

WY: He said his manager handed him a water bottle that tasted like medicine.

JI: That’s crap. I mean first of all the two guys in the corner were Archie Moore who was one of the great fighters of all time and Dick Saddler, an outstanding trainer. Those are the only two guys in the corner. And I don't know who managed him, but that's just not true. And if I called Yore

George right now and asked him, which I’m not going to do, and he would say no, not true. I had to sell a book.

WY: [50:18] Okay. And how do you feel America's opinion on the fight has changed since

1974?

JI: It's not the fight, it’s Ali. He went from an evil guy in a lot of people's minds by most of the country’s minds. And there was a generation, younger generation gravitated toward Ali. That’s another thing, he was the patron saint of the anti-war people. That was bullshit too. They didn’t take his side until he won. Then he was great for them you know. He was out there alone, and I know it because I was with him much of that time. He had strong feelings and I really like your question. But I can tell you how they screwed him on the conscientious objection. I don’t know if that’s what your question is about. Whatever you want. First of all, Ali is Ali. And if you give him a chance, he’ll charm you. I mean there's no other way to say it. And if he wants to, and he charmed the country. Remember the Vietnam war became the most unpopular war in our history.

You know before it was over. The country, we were divided right down the middle and began to swing more toward the thought that the war is wrong. The longer it lasted the more horror stories there were turned America off that we shouldn’t be there. And so, they began and he was the most vocal guy against it. You know I could tell you something about that. I don't know if it’s in your list or whatever. But I can tell you when I was convinced he’d go to jail. Would like to hear that?

WY: Yeah, sure. Yore

JI: They took away his title. He was supposed to fight Ernie Terell in Chicago and they threw the fight out, and he knew he had to keep fighting on the off chance he could get to Frazier. So he went to Canada, and he fought George Chuvalo, a wonderful guy with a great disposition and a chin made out of granite and not much ability to fight. And it was a one-sided fight. So I went up there and he was training at a place called Sully’s AC gym and it looked like a movie set because it looked like a gym’s supposed to look. The windows were so dirty you couldn’t see the street. And it was walk up a creaky flight of stairs. So I go up those stairs and into the gym, and there’s nobody there but a teenager hitting a heavy bag, and I said to him, “where is everybody?” and he points to the back. I go to the back of the gym and Ali is laying on a rubbing table and

Luis Sarria who always gave him massages. Luis was a Cuban exile who really was part trainer and part physical culturist. He did a lot of good for Ali. So he’s giving him a massage. Ali looks up and says, “what are you doing here?” I said, “well somebody said there's a fight.” He looked to me, and I said, “you know this is no fight.” And I said, “that’s not why I came anyway. You should be aware that a lot of American young men who don't want to serve for whatever reason are staying in Canada and getting political asylum. And I came up to see if you’re going to go back.” It was the only fight we ever had. He got so mad he jumped off the rubbing table and got into my face. He said you should know better than that. How can you say roughly what he said,

America’s my birth country, no one is going to chase me out of my birth country, and then he said, “I don't make the laws, and if they say I have to go to jail I will go. But I ain’t fighting in that war. I don't believe in that war. And if I thought it would help millions of black men in this country, you wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d go.” And that's when I knew he would go to jail. He would exhaust all his remedies, but he would have gone to jail, and he was scared to death of it. Yore

But he would have gone. One of the things that worked against him was the draft board, but I don’t know if your teachers want this or not because he was rejected the first time. As you know, they lowered the standards and that wasn’t because of him. They lowered the standards because they didn’t have enough people. [55:18] You know how they choose a conscientious objector?

The FBI does an investigation and then they bring in a court appointed arbiter who goes in a room, closes the door. And when they come out, he has decided whether the guy is or is not. And they picked a guy named Lawrence Grauman. He was a retired conservative Republican judge and he comes out of the gym and stuns everybody and says that guy is a conscientious objector.

And I don't know of any other case in history. There may be one or two that where the draft board overruled the examiner and went with the FBI report. And because of that you have a lot of suspect material. One of the things that made the Supreme Court change its mind about this was that we were tapping African Embassies and somebody called Ali from an embassy. The guy must have said something like well you could always come and live in our country. And the

FBI used that. Then when the lawyers, the new lawyers from the American Civil Liberties

Union, when they said Chuck Morgan, his name was, when they said we want to see those wire taps, they said no we’re going to have to convict him, so we withdraw that from the case. He said

I’m not going to let you withdraw and there were all kinds of doubts when it got to the Supreme

Court. And what you may not know is this. Ali did really not win in the Supreme Court. Did you know that?

WY: No, I did not.

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JI: He didn’t lose. Here’s what happened. It was an 8-person court because I can’t remember his name now. The guy who is the lawyer in Brown vs. Topeka who became the first black Supreme

Court judge. His name is slipping my mind. You could look that up. He had to recuse himself because he worked for the Justice Department when Ali was first convicted. So he couldn’t vote.

He would have voted for Ali, but he couldn’t. Thurgood Marshall, that’s the guy’s name.

Anyway, the vote went, it was an 8-man court and the vote went 5 to 3. The first time they voted.

A lower court goes in to speak. Do you have my boxing book?

WY: Yes, I do.

JI: OK, look at that. The guy’s name, and what he did was he was voting for prison. And the lower court brought him a book with writings of Elijah Muhammad who was then the head of the

Nation of Islam. The technical name was the Found Lost Nation of Islam. And not that he was any model, but he was the head of the thing and that's what Ali followed and you read, and you’ll see where Ali got his thoughts from. And I will, but it’s not going to change my mind. But it did change his mind. So he puts out the word he’s going to vote for Ali. So now they have the final meeting. Well it's an 8-person court and guess what it’s 4-4. So if it’s 4-4, it’s no decision. The

Supreme Court doesn’t print no decisions which means Ali has to go to jail. It’s the same as if they rejected it. And at that point another justice, and the story is in the book. I’m just bad on names. Another justice says wait a minute, do you really want to send him to jail? And most said no you really don’t. But, we don’t want to make a bad example where other people will start to distort the law. He says well here’s what you do. Go back and read the case again. [59:46] Most of them had their law clerks read it for them, and you will find three or four errors in the conduct Yore of the trial and he tells what they are. So we throw it out on the basis of the fact that he's been deprived of his rights. But we throw it back to the lower court. They’re not going to try him again, and that’s the end of it and that’s what happened.

WY: So, I have another quote.

JI: Sure, go ahead.

WY: [1:00:19] What’s your reaction to a statement read by boxing promoter Don King when he stated that the Rumble in the Jungle “showed the world that there is more to Africa than beads, bones and beating drums?”

JI: Ok, I'll tell you my reaction to it. And I’m going to tell you something that your teachers don’t know, and you don't know, and very few people know but I'm a damn good reporter as well as a writer, and I found it out. They had to get seed money for the fight. They promised them five million each, but King didn’t have any money. So, they had to go out and raise the money. There was a guy named John Daly who was the head of a company called Hemdale

Leisure Company. They did movies and stuff. He put up the money for the seed money so that they could go around and raise the other money. And Herbert Muhammad who managed Ali gets a call from a middle bureaucrat in Zaire saying I've been instructed to call you to say that we would like to host a fight. We want to show people this part is true. His claim is true, we have copper. We have diamonds we have all these things where people invested, and we want to bring

Zaire to their attention. The way to do it is with this fight. It all makes sense, but that’s what was Yore behind it. Now I find out that another company gets involved called the Risnala and you won't find it on the internet unless you find me. The company went under. The Risnala Investment

Company was an active manager for this fight. When I found that out, I called they were supposed to be Swiss. I called Geneva. I called Bern. I called one other place and the two biggest financial cities in Switzerland, and there was no such company. So what was it? I knew it started in Panama. I had a friend who traced it for me. It was a shell company. It was sold three times within a year to two people who needed a fake company to work for them. They were involved in the thing which meant that when it got to the money, half went into one pocket and half went to the other. One went to Switzerland and Mobutu Seko’s bank account. The other half went to the people of Zaire. King knew if because he met with all these people. It was a hustle.

Everybody was hustling. King hustled them for signatures when he didn’t have the money. Zaire hustled them to bring the fight there, cause, were they were really going to make the country better? It had three civil wars after it. Look I’ve known King a long, long time. And he’s a brilliant guy and he's a master of language. It's perfect for the moment. He fits the words with the deeds. I knew King so well he took me to that place where he kicked that guy to death which sent him to prison. He was in front of Art’s Fish House in Cleveland. So he's giving the kind of rhetoric that furthers everybody, and it’s really harmless rhetoric. I mean saying it’s evil to do it, but it’s far from the truth.

WY: [1:04:07] And so that actually brings me to my next question. So how do think the fight’s influence would have changed if it had been located in some other African country other than

Zaire?

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JI: Well what do you mean about the fight’s influence?

WY: As you know the fight had a major impact on both like the culture in Africa and in America after it happened.

JI: The fight had impact in America. It didn’t have any impact in Africa. I mean I challenge anybody to show me where. Have you ever read or heard anything that backs that up other than

King’s quote?

WY: No.

JI: Zaire had two revolutions afterwards. Everyone was starving there. I remember being at the bottom of the hill that led to the palace. Ali said we’re going to the palace, do you want to come, and I said yeah. At the bottom of the hill there were these kids barefoot, naked, stomachs down to almost their knees, dying of malnutrition. And then we went up the hill, and we came to this magnificent garden with a solid gold leopard cage, the national symbol and the leopard is roaming around. And Mobuto Seko came out and shook hands with everybody and whatever and then you went down the hill and you got back to the real Zaire. And it hasn’t changed at all.

They’re not achieving anything.

WY: Wow.

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JI: Actually, that part is invalid. I’m not challenging you because all this crap has been written. I don't like the crap that’s written about a lot of this. Why defend Ali so hard now and don’t ask for money to do it is because some guy goes to camp and sees him hit the heavy bag and he writes a book about him. And I will never write a book about him, because I knew him too well, and there are some things I think are private and I don't want to tell it. And I won't write a book that's not an honest book. But what I'm saying is somebody writes something in the Internet age.

Everybody jumps on it and picks it up. The real quality columnist would never write the drug thing and would never write this thing. Africa is Africa. I mean South Africa progressed. Kenya progressed, it still does. There’s nothing coming out of Zaire so that point is a fallacy. But how it had impact on America is very simple. David beat Goliath. Think about that. Think about all the implications within that. And Ali didn’t have five smooth stones to throw at Goliath. Ali out fought him, and the war was winding down. It wasn’t over by then. It was winding down. And this was the ultimate heroic story with a great ending. I’ll tell you the one impact on the black,

African American population. I have to tell you this story. I can only explain things with anecdotes, but this is an example of what that meant to the black population. When Ali fought

Holmes, I begged him not to, but he fought him, and it was horrible. I mean it was just a terrible night. He could have been killed because he didn’t throw a punch. And the referee had a big problem. Who’s gonna stop a fight of Muhammad Ali, but he should have stopped it. And it finally got stopped not because of his corner because Herbert Muhammad said word from his seat. Now call it off. Well afterwards, I’d seen him in his best hour. I don't hero worship any of these guys, but he was a friend. You know, he wasn’t an idol, he was a friend to me and I was to him. And I was sickened by it really. He shouldn’t have done it. It’s at Caesar’s Palace. And after that Sinatra’s making a speech. And I said I don’t want to hear Frank Sinatra talk. So I’m getting Yore madder. [1:08:50] It's 3:00 in the morning, and I walk into the men’s room. An elderly Afro

American guy in a white coat hands me a towel. Now I got to a stop right there and explain elderly, because then I was much younger, and he was much older than I. But today if I saw him he'd be younger than me. But at that point you know it was just like he just looked like a guy who had been around. He was not a guy handing hot towels. He was a guy who had lived. So I said, “can I ask you a question?” He said sure. I said, “did you bet on this fight?” And he said to me, “you bet I did.” And I said, “who did you bet on?” And he looked at me for a moment like he was exasperated. And he said the thing which talks about the impact on America. He said, “I bet on the man who gave me dignity.”

WY: Wow.

JI: One of the greatest quotes I've ever heard in my life. It could be the epitaph even. And so that

I think if your teachers are sharp, as you know that tells you about the impact on America.

WY: For sure.

JI: Because his whole life was a fight. And I'll put it this way, once the army got the picture, then his whole life was a fight. The draft and then this happened and that happened. And the country was in turmoil anyway and they were fighting, and you know like I said they were fist fights in Times Square between hippies and hardhats. The police had to come with a riot squad to break it up. But this changed the perception of Ali for a lot of people. Remember what I said, any time David beats Goliath, you got a hell of a story on your hands. Yore

WY: [1:10:56] Yeah. So now we're nearing the end of our time. This is going to be my last question. And so, as you know it's not your job as a reporter to be your subject’s friend. So why did you choose to make an exception for Ali?

JI: I didn't make an exception. You got to understand. Nothing I wrote about him until his death come out of friendship. I went to great pains when I wrote the first column. He was entertaining, and he was a young guy, and he was good to write about. But the only time I actually took his side. I explained his position more than anything because it was my position but the only time I really got emotional about him was when he died. I don't know if you have seen the obituary, but you get it, it’s on Google and we became close, we became friends because when you’re a daily columnist there’s always that dreaded whitespace in the paper staring you, and you’ve got to fill it. And he helped me fill so many of them. That was one thing and I really in a way, he almost chose me to be his friend as much as I chose him. Because a lot of little things would happen, and he would appreciate the fact that I was honest. If I didn’t like what he did, I wrote it. I never let that stuff influence me. Because you remember, Frazier and I were very close. Holmes and I were very close. And Foreman and I became closest of all. I was awarded the National

Humanitarian Award and Foreman came and presented it to me. I never forgot that because he put his arm around me and he said you people in this room about 1500 people, you don't know why you’re here because you don’t know each other but this guy has touched your life in one way or another. And I want to tell you he taught me more about life than anyone. He taught me more than anyone and not about boxing but about life and someone like that you have to have a friendship with. Yore

WY: Wow. That's great. Well thank you so much for this time it's been a real honor.

JI: My pleasure. My pleasure.

WY: I really appreciate this opportunity, and it's a real honor to talk to somebody as you with your stature in this field. OK thank you and happy new year.

JI: [1:13:35] Of course.

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Interview Analysis

The 18th Century writer and literary historian Samuel Johnson once said that, “All history was at first oral.”19 Even before the written word, oral history existed to gather the stories and memories from the past. Now the field continues, using state of the art recording methods. It is also a method often debated by historians, and there is evidence from both sides that show its positive aspects, as well as its negative. For example, in his book “Doing Oral History” by historian Donald A. Ritchie, he highlights one of the weaknesses of oral history stating that:

“Identifying too strongly with an interviewee can create obstacles. The desire to project to those we admire might cause us not to ask questions that might expose their prejudices and weaknesses, not follow difficult paths of inquiry, and even to sanitize the results of the interview.”20

Another common objection with oral history is that it is almost completely based upon the subject’s memory, which is something that can fade as time goes on, so not every interview can be confidently labeled as reliable and trustworthy. However, there are also many positives that come with an oral history interview. An example of this comes in an article by University of

California Santa Barbara’s director of oral history program David E. Russell, where he claims that:

“Because of their focus on the subjective, oral histories can provide insights not normally found in more traditional reviews or summaries…This approach makes possible a clearer understanding of the intent of the participants than could be inferred from a record of the events alone.”21

19 Donald A. Ritchie, The Oxford Handbook of Oral History (New York, US: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3.

20 Ritchie, The Oxford, 86.

21 David E. Russell, "Oral History Methodology, The Art of Interviewing," UC Santa Barbara Library, https://www.library.ucsb.edu/special-collections/oral-history/oralhlec.

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Oral history can also provide perspectives of people not usually ever discussed, like individual soldiers from a war or the families affected by the Great Depression. In an oral history with journalist Jerry Izenberg, an enhanced understanding of boxing history is gained through his personal descriptions of the Rumble in the Jungle fight between Muhammad Ali and George

Foreman. Two issues from the interview seemed to illuminate some conflicting stories, one from boxing promoter Don King surrounding the fight’s impact on Africa, and the other from one of the fighters, George Foreman about a controversy over whether or not he was drugged before the fight.

Over the course of the interview, Mr. Izenberg discussed numerous events and periods in his life that brought him to where he is today. He began by talking about his childhood, where he told stories about his love for minor league baseball and his bond with his father. His father had an impact on him from an early age. He then talked about his first interactions with Muhammad

Ali, where he met him at the Olympics in Rome in 1960. Nobody really quite knew who Ali was yet. After that, he discussed what made him and Ali such unlikely friends, stating that, “the case was the biggest thing.”22 Mr. Izenberg talked about all the hate and threats he received when supporting Ali’s choice to be a conscious objector during the Vietnam War. He told stories about how people mailed him feces, and even smashed in his car windows. He also revealed the true happenings of Ali’s court case, which most of the public was unaware of. Mr. Izenberg then compared the atmospheres of both America and Zaire in the weeks leading to up to the Rumble in the Jungle Fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. He stated that, “Africa had

22 Jerry Izenberg, interview by William Yore, Washington, D.C., US, December 28, 2018.

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Foreman beat before the fight” and talked about all of the controversy and adversity Foreman had to overcome throughout his time in Zaire, which really took a great toll on him. He also talked about Ali’s relationship with the people of Zaire, and how he immediately won them over onto his side, and almost as quickly turned them against Foreman, which resulted in the “Ali bomaye”23 (Ali, Kill him!) chants all the time. Mr. Izenberg then addressed the controversy raised in Foreman’s memoir where he stated that he was drugged before the fight and immediately dismissed it saying the person who helped write the memoir must have put it in without Foreman’s acknowledgment. To finish the interview, Mr. Izenberg talked about how special his relationship with Ali was, and how none of what he did and wrote about him crossed the line between reporter and subject. He ended the interview saying that Ali taught him, “more about life than anyone,”24 and that you just have to have a friendship with someone like that.

Other than the two boxers, one of the major figures behind the scenes of the Rumble in the Jungle was boxing promoter Don King. He was primarily responsible for bringing the two fighters together for this impactful event, and he believed that the fight did a lot more for the host country than most perceived. He is quoted saying that the fight showed that, “There is more to

Africa than beads, bones, and beating drums.”25 When asked about his point of view on King’s statement, Mr. Izenberg contradicted King’s beliefs. He quickly dismissed King’s claim saying:

“Zaire hustled them to bring the fight there, cause, were they were really going to make the country better? It had three civil wars after it. Look I’ve known King a long, long time. And he’s a brilliant guy and he's a master of language. It's perfect for the moment.

23 Izenberg, interview.

24 Izenberg, interview.

25 Lewis Erenberg, "'Rumble in the Jungle': Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in the Age of Global Spectacle," JSTOR, last modified 2012, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5406/jsporthistory.39.1.81.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4bdd3a9943691 ea02dbf146f0e540b7d.

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He fits the words with the deeds. I knew King so well he took me to that place where he kicked that guy to death which sent him to prison. He was in front of Art’s Fish House in Cleveland. So he's giving the kind of rhetoric that furthers everybody, and it’s really harmless rhetoric. I mean saying it’s evil to do it, but it’s far from the truth.”26

Mr. Izenberg’s point of view is different than the one of Don King’s because King was a promoter for the fight, and the more successful it was, the more he was payed. It was his job to hype the fight and make all aspects of its impact and influence appear to be overwhelmingly positive, while the reality of that was in fact far from his claims. Mr. Izenberg was looking at the aftermath of the fight with a neutral point of view, so naturally he would be able to immediately spot the falseness and manipulation in King’s claim, as events that happened in Zaire after the fight clearly contradict King’s solely positive analysis of its impact. The differing opinions of these two men highlight the importance of oral history, as it is always crucial to attain perspectives from both sides of a dispute, especially in a conflict as important as this. This oral history provides value, as it is one of the few accounts of one of these broad and general statements being truly taken into consideration. Not only that, but it also provides an argument with the statement and returns its relevancy, when it may never have been questioned or brought up for discussion otherwise.

Ali was the clear underdog going into the fight, so when he knocked George Foreman out in the eighth round, there was some skepticism surrounding his victory. Years after the fight, there was a controversy raised in Foreman’s 2007 memoir, “God In My Corner: A Spiritual

Memoir”, where the claim was made that he may have been drugged before the fight. In the memoir, he is quoted saying that he was given some water that tasted funny and he:

“Almost spit it out…[I told my trainer] ‘Man, I know this water has medicine in it,” He also wrote, “I climbed into the ring with that medicine taste still lingering in my

26 Izenberg, interview.

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mouth…After the third, I was as tired as if I had fought 15 rounds. What’s going on here? Did someone slip a drug in my water?”27

Mr. Izenberg had a very immediate and dismissive answer when he was asked to give his initial reaction to this quote. He attributed the statement to the ghostwriter of the book, saying:

“It’s not true and it’s not George… That’s crap. I mean first of all the two guys in the corner were Archie Moore who was one of the great fighters of all time and Dick Saddler, an outstanding trainer. Those are the only two guys in the corner. And I don't know who managed him, but that's just not true. And if I called George right now and asked him, which I’m not going to do, and he would say no, not true. I had to sell a book.”28

Mr. Izenberg is very close friends with Foreman, and is claiming that this statement is completely untrue, and was published with the sole intention of making a profit. At the same time, he also says that Foreman may not have even seen the proofs for the book in the first place and claims that Foreman does not actually believe this statement. So, of course, the two opinions would be different. This is yet another example of why oral history is important, as it contradicts a very serious claim that could alter Foreman’s legacy and the way the fight between Foreman and Ali is viewed for future generations. This oral history holds great value, as Mr. Izenberg not only disagrees with the claims made by Foreman’s ghostwriter, but he also disproves the claim that could have changed how history interprets two of the greatest boxers in history and their iconic fight.

During the process of this project, I learned many things both about how to conduct an oral history interview as well as the history behind the Rumble in the Jungle fight between

George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Before this project, I knew little to nothing about the fight,

27 N/A, "Foreman Claims He Was Drugged Before Loss to Ali," ESPN Sports News Services, last modified May 22, 2007, http://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2878507.

28 Izenberg, interview.

Yore and by the end of the process I had been introduced to a chapter of history that I had little to no prior experience with. I also had the pleasure of interviewing legendary journalist Jerry Izenberg, who enlightened me to many stories and perspectives surrounding the fight, stories that I would never have heard. His personal reflections about the interactions he had with Muhammad Ali, and what an impactful and inspiring person he was, will remain with me for the rest of my life. I also learned how to create compelling interview questions, how to analyze and evaluate my topic’s historical significance, as well as my own interview’s value to history. This was a project that will forever change how I approach my history assignments and has awakened inside of me a continuing interest for oral history that I perhaps may never have discovered without this project.

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Bibliography

Ali, Muhammad, and Richard Durham. The Greatest, My Own Story. Place of publication not identified: Graymalkin Media, 2015.

Campbell, Paul. "From the Vault: The Poetry of the Rumble in the Jungle." The Guardian. Last modified October 30, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2012/oct/30/from- the-vault-poetry-rumble-in-jungle.

Erenberg, Lewis. "'Rumble in the Jungle': Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in the Age of Global Spectacle." JSTOR. Last modified 2012. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5406/jsporthistory.39.1.81.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3 A4bdd3a9943691ea02dbf146f0e540b7d.

Isserman, Maurice, and Michael Kazin. America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Izenberg, Jerry. "40 Years Ago, Muhammad Ali Shocked George Foreman in 'The Rumble in the Jungle' -- and I Was There." New Jersey Real-Time Sports. Last modified October 29, 2014. https://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/10/forty_years_ago_muhammad_ali_shocked_ george_foreman_and_the_world_in_the_rumble_in_the_jungle_and_i.html.

———. Interview by William Yore. Washington, D.C., US. December 28, 2018.

———. "Muhammad Ali: Why they called him 'The Greatest' and why I called him my friend." New Jersey Real-Time Sports. Last modified June 4, 2016. https://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2016/06/former_heavyweight_champ_muhammad_a li_dies_the_gre.html.

———. Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing. New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, a Herman Graf Book, 2017.

Mailer, Norman. The Fight. Random House Trade paperback edition ed. New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2013.

Marenghi, Anthony. "'Adaptable' Ali Used Foreman's Strategy." Newark Star Ledger (Newark, NJ), October 30, 1974, Sports.

N/A. "Foreman Claims He Was Drugged Before Loss to Ali." ESPN Sports News Services. Last modified May 22, 2007. http://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2878507.

Pepe, Phil. "Ali Wins by KO in 8." New York Daily News (New York City, NY), October 30, 1974, Sports.

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Plimpton, George. "Down But Determined to Fight His Way Back to the Top, Muhammad Ali Turned 1974 Into a Year of Great Triumph." SI Vault. Last modified December 23, 1974. https://www.si.com/vault/1974/12/23/628163/muhammad-ali-sportsman-1974.

Remnick, David. King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. New York, NY: Random House, 1998.

Ritchie, Donald A. The Oxford Handbook of Oral History. New York, US: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Russell, David E. "Oral History Methodology, The Art of Interviewing." UC Santa Barbara Library. https://www.library.ucsb.edu/special-collections/oral-history/oralhlec.

Appendix Yore

Appendix 1

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Appendix 2

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Appendix 3