Blood Brothers (33 page)

Clay fidgeted throughout his press conference, appearing uncomfortable with the entire affair. Rubbing his eyes, he complained that he was tired and just wanted to go home. After answering a few questions, he signed autographs using the name that people had always recognized. Elijah Muhammad may have given him a new name, but he had not yet fully embraced it. “I plan to fight under the name Cassius Clay, unless,” he said, “I'm ordered not to.”
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During his stay in Louisville, he visited a local radio station, answering questions from listeners. A nervous boy called and addressed the champ, “Cassius?” The champ replied, “Cassius speaking.” He did not correct the young fan for failing to use his Muslim name or denounce his “slave name.” He did not deliver a harangue about integration or sermonize about the wisdom of Elijah Muhammad. His fans in Louisville did not want to hear him hollering about the Nation of Islam. They wanted to hear from their hometown hero. When a caller suggested that he should boast less and show more humility, Cassius surprised the man
with a clever lesson. “Well you keep this in your books,” he said. “A wise man can act a fool, but a fool cannot act a wise man.”
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Stunned, the caller did not know what he had just heard. “Uh-huh,” he said.

Impressed, the show's host, Milton Metz, said, “That's pretty good. Where's that quotation from?”

“Oh, that's something I figured out,” Clay replied.

“Sounds like Shakespeare.”

Cassius laughed. “Might be. I heard it somewhere.”
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He knew exactly where he had heard the maxim. He had been reciting it ever since he fought Henry Cooper in London. Now, about a week after he said that he had fallen in love with Malcolm watching him debate on television, he could not even utter his friend's name on the radio.

Chapter Fourteen

AN AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

            
The Negro has long since learned that his real heroes are always depicted as villains by the white world.

—
LIBERATOR

A
merica was unprepared for the name “Muhammad Ali.” Seldom had a man's new name mattered so much to so many. He was not the first boxer to change his name. Countless other fighters changed their names too, many the sons of immigrants, who willingly adopted a new identity to make themselves more acceptable, more marketable, and more “American.” But none, until Muhammad Ali, chose a name that was freighted with such racial and political meaning.

Fight fans, promoters, and sportswriters had no problems using the other aliases, yet for political reasons, many refused to say the name “Muhammad Ali.” It sounded too foreign and too subversive. Skeptical of his sincerity, the
Chicago Tribune
printed an editorial assailing his religious beliefs: “It needs to be made quite clear that the ‘Islam' which heavyweight champion Cassius Clay has adopted is a far, far cry from the religion practiced in the Arab world.” Mocking Ali, columnist Jim Murray referred to him as “Abdul the Bull Bull Ameer.” Sonny Liston dismissed the champ's new name too: “Ahmed Mali, Mamud Wally, who's that? I met you as Cassius Clay and I'll leave you as Cassius Clay.” Recognizing the champ's Muslim name would have meant accepting Ali's freedom to define himself, a freedom that many whites—and even some blacks—were unwilling to acknowledge.
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Muhammad Ali worshipped Elijah Muhammad. So did his brother Rahman. Both men denounced their “slave name”—their father's surname—and embraced Elijah's paternal authority. As Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion became the most valuable commodity in the Nation of Islam. With Ali at Elijah's side, Malcolm X became expendable.
Associated Press

For the crusty, cigar-chomping crowd of old-school reporters—Red Smith, Dan Parker, Dick Young, Arthur Daley, and Jimmy Cannon—Ali was a national disgrace, the scourge of American sports. Cannon could not hide his disgust for Ali. He wrote, “I pity Clay and abhor what he represents.” The Black Muslims, he insisted, were “exploiting Clay” the same way that the “Communists used famous people” during the Great Depression. Now that Ali had become champion, boxing, Cannon feared, had reached its nadir. “The fight racket, since its rotten beginnings, has been the red light district of sports. But,” he lamented, “this is the first time it has been turned into an instrument of mass hate.”
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At a time when minorities held half of the major division boxing titles, it appeared that black and brown men dominated the entire sport. The days when boxing made “white men rich and black men cripples” were long gone. White writers and white fans lamented the loss of an
era. Whites, they said, never got a shot at the heavyweight title anymore. It seemed that the black man had taken over everything: the cities, the streets, the old neighborhoods, even sports. More blacks could be seen on television playing baseball, basketball, and football. And now the black man had taken over boxing too. “Now that the equal opportunity movement has brought such an improvement to the lot of the Negro,” Dan Parker asked, “when are the white heavyweights going to start picketing the weighing-in scales at boxing commission offices for the same deal[?]”
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The moment Ali defeated Liston, sportswriters and politicians revived their campaign to abolish boxing. In the greatest uproar since the death of Benny Paret, moralists demanded an investigation into the sport, questioning the legitimacy of Ali's victory. “The odors of the Clay-Liston thing continue to assail the nostrils,” Arthur Daley wrote. Weeks after the match, Daley and other writers were still stunned that Liston had lost. Ali had looked unimpressive during his training camp, Daley argued, but overnight “became transformed into a clever” fighter. And Liston, usually an indomitable force, was unrecognizable sitting on his stool by the end of the sixth round.
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Conspiracy theorists suspected that Ali had won the match for only one reason: the fight was fixed. They said that Ali had wanted to quit the fight, but his corner would not let him. They said that Liston wanted to continue, but his corner would not let him, either. That was why Liston, considered the toughest man in the game, complained that his injured shoulder prevented him from continuing. And of course, Sonny had ties to organized crime. But the most damning evidence, critics claimed, was that before the fight Ali had signed a contract with Liston's promotional agency for fifty thousand dollars, guaranteeing International Promotions the right to name the new champion's first opponent in a title defense. Ed Lassman, president of the World Boxing Association (WBA), insisted that the agreement violated their rules on return bouts, despite knowing all about the arrangement before the match. Since Liston was president of International Promotions, Lassman argued, he stood to benefit financially from a rematch with Ali, even though boxers often held a stake in promotional agencies.
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There was no real evidence of a betting conspiracy involving Liston or Ali. Bookmakers insisted that the “smart money” was bet on Liston,
and the gambling odds against Ali actually increased from 7–1 to 8–1 on the day of the match. If the fight was fixed for Ali to win, why did he beg Dundee to end the fight? If the fight was fixed for Liston to lose, why did he try to blind Ali? Every conspiracy theory about the fight crumbles under the weight of inconsistencies.

Despite the lack of any evidence against the champ, Lassman announced that the WBA would vacate Ali's title because his behavior as champion was “detrimental to the boxing world.” Joining the Black Muslims, Lassman contended, made Ali “a very poor example for the youth of the world.” The WBA's commissioner, Abe Greene, echoed his sentiment. “Clay should be given the chance to decide whether he wants to be a religious crusader or the heavyweight champion,” he said.
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None of the most influential state athletic commissions supported the WBA's endorsement. And, after a few days of hearings in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, there was still no evidence that Ali or Liston had done anything illegal. The subcommittee recommended passing a bill that would create a federal boxing czar who would oversee the sport, but the proposal never materialized. Facing strong opposition, Lassman ended his campaign against the champ. Still, Arthur Daley maintained that the WBA's abortive efforts were inconsequential. “Boxing,” he wrote, “is beyond redemption. It should be abolished.”
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For many critics, the future of the sport remained in doubt, but one thing was certain: Muhammad Ali was not the savior that Cassius Clay had been.

M
UHAMMAD
A
LI HAD
made a world of enemies. While white critics denounced his membership in the Nation of Islam, blacks debated his relationship with the Muslims. Some feared that he would exploit his position as champion to recruit young blacks into the sect. Proclaiming his belief in separatism, Ali had created “more apprehension” among middle-class, integrationist blacks “than Malcolm X.” Black writers, entertainers, and activists compared his views to those espoused by the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens' Councils, and the Dixiecrats. “When Cassius Clay joined the Black Muslims and started calling himself Cassius X,” Martin Luther King charged, “he became the champion of racial segregation—and that is what we are fighting.”
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Joe Louis, considered the greatest heavyweight champion of all time, beloved by blacks and whites alike, declared that he would never cheer for the Muslim champ. “Clay will earn the public's hatred because of his connections with the Black Muslims,” he told reporters. “The things they preach are just the opposite of what we believe.”
What we believe
. Louis and many black Americans insisted that Ali no longer represented the race. He was an outsider, condemned for rejecting the ideals of the civil rights movement.
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Ali disappointed many blacks because he rejected the traditional responsibilities associated with being heavyweight champion. In a xenophobic outburst, Floyd Patterson condemned Ali as unfit to be a champion. He accused him of being ignorant of the Black Muslims' ideology and confused about their real goals. Ali “might just as well have joined the Ku Klux Klan,” he charged.
¹⁰

There was only one thing left for Patterson to do: save boxing from Muhammad Ali and the Nation of Islam. The good Catholic fighter challenged “Cassius X” to a holy war, announcing that he would fight him anytime, anywhere, even though the ninth-ranked heavyweight was in no position to proclaim himself a title contender. In his self-righteousness, Patterson made himself out to be more patriotic than Ali, a purer champion, and a better citizen. “I am an American,” he declared, implying that Ali was not—not as long as he belonged to the Nation of Islam.
¹¹

Ali dismissed Patterson's challenge. If anyone was exploiting boxing, he retorted, it was Patterson: “The only reason he's decided to come out of his shell now is to try to make himself a big hero to the white man by saving the heavyweight title from being held by a Muslim.” When Patterson attacked Ali's religion, the champion said that he might as well have been “attacking Cairo, Egypt, the Holy City of Mecca, Pakistan, Turkey, and 300,000” Muslim Americans. In defense of Islam, he began to see himself not just as an American but also as a global citizen, a guardian of all Muslims.
¹²

The feud between Patterson and Ali demonstrated that the backlash against the Muslim champ was as much about Islamophobia as it was about race. During the Cold War, many Americans linked Islam to the Middle East and Africa, a region perceived as backward, brutal, and politically oppressive. The vitriol aimed at Ali, therefore, derived from
Americans who considered Islam a destructive alternative to Christianity, and from fears that the Middle East had succumbed to the influence of the Soviet Union.
¹³

Americans' stereotypical views of the region as an endless sand trap, filled with genies, harems, sultans, sheiks, and camel-riding nomads, influenced their views of Ali. In a satirical column, Jim Murray portrayed him as “the Sheik of Araby,” fighting against infidels. “I think Cassius sees himself as Lawrence of Arabia or the Red Shadow rather than a guy licking stamps for hate literature,” he wrote. “Cassius has always had a lively imagination and it was only a question of time before he'd wrap a towel around his head and begin to play Saladin, the Saracen. I expect him to trade in his Cadillac for a camel any day now.”
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Jackie Robinson did not use Ali's Muslim name, but he recognized his right to practice Islam. “Clay has just as much right to ally himself with the Muslim religion as anyone else has to be a Protestant or a Catholic,” he wrote in his syndicated column. Robinson cautioned that there was no reason to think thousands of blacks would follow Ali because he had joined the Nation. Too many blacks had marched, fought, and bled for freedom to join a separatist movement, he argued.
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