Ali: How ‘The Greatest’ fought war and racism

Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X . . . Buddies in the fight against racism


Garikai Chengu Correspondent

Boxing changed American history. The sport of boxing had more to do with the advancement of the civil rights movement than any other sport. From Jack Johnson to Joe Lewis to Muhammad Ali.

Sunday marked the 74th birthday of arguably the greatest and most beloved Black athlete in history: Muhammad Ali.

No sport has exploited athletes, particularly black athletes, quite like boxing.

The very first boxers in America were African slaves.


Even after the abolition of slavery, boxing became the first sport to be desegregated so that white boxing promoters could continue to exploit blacks and make money from the deep racism in American society.

Eugenics was used to justified slavery, and the pseudo science of the time “proved” that blacks were not only mentally inferior, but also physically inferior to whites.

Ironically, early white fight promoters unwittingly created a space where black boxers could destroy white supremacist ideas of society and racial hierarchy.

The 1910 victory of Jack Johnson against “The Great White Hope” launched one of the greatest nationwide race riots in US history. Out of that embarrassment, in which a black man defeated a white man, Congress passed a law outlawing boxing films.


Boxing has a tendency to both attract and indeed prey upon talent from underprivileged minority communities. Through boxing, one can read a direct chart of underprivilege in America: highlighting which minorities struggle to make it up the ladder, until they succeed and then disappear from the boxing scene; and which minorities are still in the ring, because they are still at the bottom rung of America’s societal ladder.

You had the wave of Jewish boxers, then successful Irish boxers, Italian-American boxers, African American boxers, and now, increasingly Hispanic boxers.

In a society that is so violently racist, the sport of boxing became an escape valve for people’s anger. Boxing symbolised a twisted manifestation of the American dream, where minorities have to, literally, fight their way out of poverty.

The modern image of Muhammad Ali, portrayed by the establishment, is one of a black man dancing in the ring and shouting “I am the greatest!” His image is now used to sell everything from luxury cars to soft drinks.

Despite the establishment’s whitewashing and Santaclausification of Ali’s image, history shows that the true Muhammad Ali was a staunch black nationalist, who was good friends with Malcolm X and a member of the Black Power group, The Nation of Islam.


Muhammad Ali grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, as the black freedom struggle was heating up and beginning to boil over. Born in Louisville as Cassius Clay to a house painter and domestic worker, Ali was immersed in America’s racist nature from birth.

After winning the Olympic gold medal at the age of 18, Ali was so proud of his medal that he said he wore it round his neck almost all the time. Fellow Olympian W. Rudolph remarked: “He slept with it, he went to the cafeteria with it. He never took it off.”

Days after returning from the Olympic Games, Ali was eating in a restaurant with the medal swinging around his neck and he was denied service by the white restaurant owners. Ali then threw the gold medal into the Ohio River.


With the Nation of Islam, Ali rejected the name Clay, because black Americans’ last names were inherited from their slave masters.

At a time when most of the country were in favour of the Vietnam War, Ali asked:”Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10 000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”



There ultimately has never been an athlete more vilified by the American press, more persecuted by the US government, or more defiantly beloved across the whole world than Muhammad Ali.


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