Ghosts of Manila (5 page)

But Clay had no import in Muslim decision-making; he was merely a follower, a useful idiot with a name to them. Yet his lack of empathy stung followers of Malcolm. Clay had been far more than just nurtured
by Malcolm. He had listened to his every word and wanted desperately to be like him, even to the point of taking on his mannerisms. Clay, like Malcolm, would turn away from the camera while a question was posed, then look directly and challengingly into it while answering; like Malcolm, he would also poke the index finger of his right hand into his cheek while listening. When Malcoln was on the ropes with the Muslims, Clay asked him if he should stay in the movement. Fearing for his own life, Malcolm told him to stay in line—for the moment.

At the time, the police were wary of a black civil war. Only hours after Malcolm was killed, a fire broke out in Clay’s second floor apartment at Seventy-first and Cregir on the Chicago South Side. Conveniently, Clay was having dinner with his wife, Sonji, at the Arabian Sands Hotel in Chicago when John Ali, the Muslims’ executive secretary, called him with the news. Firemen later called the blaze an accident, but it looked suspicious; the neighboring apartments were hardly damaged. Insiders believed the fire was an attempt by the Muslims to remind Clay to stay in line. Much more worldly and observant than Clay, Sonji suspected that her husband was being watched and tracked closely by the Muslims, and hinted to him that the Muslims had set the fire. “Nobody knew where we were having dinner,” she said. “The night of the day Malcolm X was murdered! It was too coincidental.” Retaliation by followers of the fallen Malcolm would come later, not against Ali but Elijah. While the bomb squad was summoned to his Chicago mansion, only to spend a long time opening a delivery that contained a ticking grandfather clock, the real thing later exploded in his Harlem mosque. Elijah was cordoned off, and Clay relied on a small group of guards, called the Fruit of Islam (Fruit of the Loon to detractors), who walked about with ears laid back and dead eyes. They would always be at Clay’s side. Tex Maule, of
Sports Illustrated,
who could forgive Clay almost anything, showed up at Clay’s quarters prior to the
Folley fight, and he was amazed how easily the Muslims pushed him around.

Maule was trying to console Ali about the military draft, saying, “The way they’ll treat you, it will be like you’re on vacation.” Ali was clearly agitated, like a man who was seriously divided about a decision he must make, and time was running out. He asked Tex if he had ever been in jail. “Tex!” one of the Muslims intruded. “Man with that name never been to jail. He
put
people in jail.” He was referring to the fact that Maule was from Texas. Another Muslim added: “He say no problem. Why, that white trash out there send your ass to Nam in a second. And they’ll lynch you way up in a banana tree.” Tex tried to dispute their fantastic analysis of Ali’s situation. A Muslim waved him off, saying: “Some bullneck cracker corporal put a blade in him before he even get to Nam.” Another quickly added: “You be doin’ the stockade shuffle. Jist ’cause you don’t wanna wash dishes.” Tex urged Ali not to believe “this bullshit.” Ali said: “I don’t know what to believe.” A Muslim walked over to Ali: “Champ, go take a walk.” Ali said, “I don’t feel like it.” The Muslim said: “Listen to me! Jist get out, okay?” When Ali left, the three Muslims moved close to Maule, one of them pointing his finger and saying, “You best stay outta our business. Now haul your white ass outta here. You got nothin’ to say here.”

Current hagiographers have tied themselves in knots trying to elevate Ali into a heroic, defiant catalyst of the antiwar movement, a beacon of black independence. It’s a legacy that evolves from the intellectually loose sixties, from those who were in school then and now write romance history. The sad truth was that Ali was played like a harp by the Muslims, a daft cult with a long record of draft dodging from Elijah (who went to prison) on down. His posture was not about unjust war, it was mainly a stratagem by the Muslims to keep themselves on the revolutionary scoreboard, to flex their power and image. Everyone who knew anything about racial politics then knew the
press exposure given them was extravagant. They were into profit and running things like Papa Doc ran Haiti. They were, in fact, anti–civil rights, despised Martin Luther King, and nowhere near as serious as the Panthers, who
were
anarchic, helpful to the poor, and “ready to die on the spot.” Malcolm X had wanted Ali to be a man of the world, to be a leader; Ali, mindlessly or fearfully, settled for being attached to a string on an old man’s hand in Chicago.

The press coverage of Ali (seldom called by that name) and his troubles was as misguided and excessive as the throwing of flowers in his path today. Being on the same page of empirical right, the press followed the nation and was too eager to finger a symbolic villain to stand next to a growing number of body bags being sent home and the hated anti-war movement on campuses. Why should this clown-black militant stay home to burn down your city and home? World War II and Korea were still fresh emotional wounds for Americans and newspapermen, many of whom served as war correspondents. To Jimmy Cannon, the
New York Journal-American
columnist and favorite of Ernest Hemingway, Clay was an affront to all the young boys he had seen die. A traditionalist, he also saw him as the embodiment of a disintegrating culture. But to say—as some liberal columnists have ventured—that Cannon was a racist who liked only good blacks like Joe Louis is absurd and politically correct to the point of being addled.

It could hardly be said that Milton Gross, of the
New York Post,
was a racist. He was a rigorous liberal on a paper often hit for being a cut above Communist. He detested Ali, mainly for his shameful treatment of Floyd Patterson, and measured Ali’s courage against the grunts in Vietnam. What about the usually well-modulated Red Smith, the kindly fly fisherman, who noted the screech of Clay “who makes himself as sorry a spectacle as those unwashed punks who object to the war”? These men were simply conditioned by another time. Their peers were Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Rocky Marciano,
and Joe Louis, whose character was in their work—not their rhetoric and politics. They were sharp drama critics, with no interest in statistics and the endless hype that dominate today, but in performance and backstage. They tried to bring performers to life, sometimes without interrogation and with a bit too much sentimentality. They didn’t prattle about role models. Hardly saintly themselves, their private sins were ignored. If they had a central complaint against Clay, it was they believed him to be a phony and, sin of all sins, unheroic.

Not all of the perspective on Ali was a mountain slide. Jerry Izenberg, of the
Newark Star-Ledger,
was one of the first to rally to Clay’s side, along with
Sports Illustrated.
Missing was Howard Cosell at ABC, who would eventually never lose a chance to characterize himself as a tower of journalistic boldness on the subject of Ali. Early on George Plimpton had gone to see Cosell to enlist his support. Cosell said his life would be snuffed out in a second if he said over the air that Ali should be allowed to fight. “I’d be
shot!”
he said. “Right through that window!” How could Cosell bear the drama of his life? He added: “There’s a time and a place for everything, and this is not it.” He would ultimately join himself to Ali’s hip, use him as a prop to promote himself as a man of intrepid, compassionate wisdom.

C
lay was certainly not winning any PR wars across the country. He had been under steady heat from politicians and from those within boxing, beginning with Harry Markson, a staunch liberal and head of Madison Square Garden boxing. He viewed him as a dangerous force, and when Clay showed up for the Patterson-Chuvala fight at the Garden, Markson refused to let him be introduced as Muhammad Ali. Clay walked out. Arthur Daley, of the
New York Times,
urged a boycott of the fighter and his hate group. Congressmen like L. Mendel Rivers (South Carolina) and Frank Clark (Pennsylvania) came down hard on him. Said
Clark: “The heavyweight champion turns my stomach…a complete and total disgrace.” He wanted to see empty movie houses (the venue then for closed-circuit fights), “and that would be the finest tribute to that boy whose hearse may pass by the open doors of the theater on Main Street, U.S.A.”

If we are to believe a Louisville friend who grew up with him, knew him like a brother, Clay was far removed from the depiction by the press and politicians. The prospect of being drafted paralyzed him with fear. The white world was a threatening environment, what more the military. “He finds it safer to be with Negroes,” the friend said. “It allays his fears of all those things his father used to tell him the whites do to him. He’s scared to death to venture away from it. The idea of going into the army with all those strangers, to put himself into that strange environment, with
white
people at that—man, that really hit him where he lived! He was scared to death. That was the
real
Cassius Clay!”

Clay’s lawyers made a final effort in Houston on April 25, 1967. Their contention was that there were no blacks on the Louisville draft board that had called him up. They were after an injunction to prevent any arrest of Clay if he refused induction. Clay took the stand and delivered his standard speech. He said he had given up a pretty wife for his religion, given up a “fortune of business offers,” and wrapped it up by saying: “War is against the teachings of the Holy Qur’an. I’m not trying to dodge the draft. We are supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or The Messenger (Elijah). We don’t take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.” Ali was at ease on the stand, and he looked like he might find being a martyr a nice fit to the grand estimation of himself.

The next day Clay reported to the induction center without a traveling bag. He went through the physical, joked with the other twenty-six recruits. According to one, he said: “The Vietcong don’t scare me. If
they didn’t get me, some guy from Loosiana or Texas would. I’d have to watch for them slant eyes and the guys behind me, too.” He was given sandwiches for lunch and threw away the one with ham. There were protests of young blacks outside, some shouting Muslim refrains while others tore up their draft cards; nothing like the riot Clay had predicted. Clay refused three times to step forward for induction. He was warned of “felonious action,” then he signed a statement. Clay’s legal argument had four points; no war except for Elijah; no blacks on the draft board; exemption as a working minister; and as a black he couldn’t kill other people of color. Of the last it could be said by his critics: Who killed Malcolm X? Larry, Moe, and Curly?

The legal and illegal pace against Clay shifted into high gear. First, almost simultaneously with the induction procedure, he was stripped of his title by the New York State Athletic Commission, an action by political flunkies that, in the “best interest of boxing,” deprived him of the right to work. Forty-nine states followed the New York lead, and Clay was in a limbo that he and the Muslims hadn’t calculated. A violation of civil rights? Without question, it was an obscene example of vigilante moral vengeance in cold and blunt opposition to due process. On May 8, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston and pled not guilty. The man who signed off on the indictment was Ramsey Clark, LBJ’s attorney general, later the gushing conscience of the left and the rest of the universe.

Clay was in poor financial shape. The Louisville syndicate that had his contract could never contain his spending. He’d buy tickets for hundreds of Muslims and just about let anybody use his hotel tab. A pair of “virginal” Egyptian women at the Patterson fight once worked his bill like they were using play money, buying two-hundred-dollar evening bags and having their hair done every day. At his previous divorce hearing, he was asked where the money had gone; he had been close to jail for missing payments to Sonji. “Seventy percent,” he said, “goes to the
government. Then, I support my mother and father some. I owe my wife one thousand, thirteen hundred. I got eight hundred in a Chicago bank.” He pointed around the room, saying: “I owe him. I owe you. I owe everybody in this room.” His final divorce settlement was for $15,000, and $22,000 for her legal fees. Ali sent Sonji a note: “You give up heaven for hell.”

Sonji might not have agreed after seeing how her husband handled money. He drifted between being a miser (as Ali, this phase would disappear entirely) and a welfare office. When someone would come by to put the touch on him, he would play a record called “Your Friends.” The two would just listen, and the borrower would say, “You tryin’ to tell me somethin’.” “Oh, no, brother,” Clay would say. “It’s just a pretty tune. But some truth in those words, don’t you think?” He and his father, Cash, fought the Louisville Syndicate fiercely over a $50,000 pension fund. Wisely invested by smart heads—which they were—the pension deductions surely would grow into a minor, maybe handy fortune. “It was always a battle with them,” a member of the Syndicate said. “They didn’t understand money.” Clay mainly liked the feel of cash. He’d carry $40,000 around Louisville in a satchel, and when he went to Chicago, he would put thousands on display. “I’ve seen him do it,” a close friend said. “He likes to feel it, run it through his fingers.”

After earning $800,000 for the two Liston fights, his box office draw began to descend coincident with his throwing in with the Black Muslims. He got $300,000 for Floyd Patterson, another fight that caused public disgust, and then he had to beat it up to Canada for $66,332 and a long night with George Chuvalo. The U.S. market was tight, and might get worse. With trouble in the wings—jail or the army—he took on a torrid pace, six title defenses in eleven months, two in England, one in Germany. He saw Europe as a source of treasure, ignoring the more serious problem that he was
fast running out of credible opponents. By the Ernie Terrell fight, another ugly affair, Herbert Muhammad, son of Elijah, had become his manager, placed there, as Elijah said, “to protect his money.” What did Herbert know about boxing, Angelo Dundee was asked. “He knows they use gloves,” he said. Clay’s father, Cash, chipped in: “Elijah meant to say protect
our
money.”