Muhammad Speaks

 c2021BLGreene

He was unknown the first time I saw him.  He wasn’t supposed to be on television that night.  But, an unexpected early knockout left the Friday Night Fights telecast with some time to kill. 
It was a four-round bout.  Two skinny’ young Black men, teenagers really’ took turns landing big shots on one another.  This frenzied bout saw both hit the canvas before the kid named Cassius finally prevailed.  He said nothing after the fight.  No interview.  Just another Gillette Blue Blade commercial and a quick sign-off.  

The two fledgling warriors I’d seen were a guy called Curly Lee and his opponent Cassius Clay.  The record doesn’t reflect this fight. Maybe it was an amateur or Golden Gloves bout?  Still, I swear this is who I saw.  As sure as I can still repeat the lyrics of the Gillette commercials, (Look sharp! Feel sharp! Be sharp)! Lee vs. Clay was the extra fight that night.  Far as I can tell, it was sometime in the late 1950s during the 10-year-old days of my life.  The days when everything televised was black and white.  Mostly white, though because the only Black people on TV were either athletes or stereotyped servants, entertainers or buffoons, mostly from old movies. 

By the early 1960s and high school, Mr. Clay had mustered an impressive record winning 19 in a row.  He’d made the main event now.  His 1962 bout against the wiley veteran Archie Moore, was a turning point in his career.  Archie was a favorite of mine, but I knew he was no match for this young up-and-comer.  The world hadn’t seen a heavyweight with this combination of power and speed. The fight gave young Clay another chance to shoot off his mouth and predict the outcome with his biting rhymes. 
“Moore will fall in four” was the operative phrase for this latest venture.  This10th grade poem of mine inspired by my new hero tells the tale:

     Cassius Clay came to town,

     His job, one thing, to put more down.

     “Moore in four,” said Clay, I’ll do,

     And Moore went down, right on cue,

     So if you ever doubt him, better take this tip,

     Never underestimate the Louisville Lip

Ten extra credit points ensued.

When the 1960s became rife with Civil Rights demonstrations, an unpopular, if not illegal war, and full-blown counter culture, it was not difficult to follow that young, successful boxer.  When he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, became a member of the Nation of Islam and defied the draft, I found more reasons to identify with him.  Though he explained his new name, many sportscasters from the good-old-boy network resisted an accurate call.  Those Afro-centrist days saw other high-profile Black athletes join Ali.  I was in the room in Haines Hall in 1967 when young Lou Alcindor told Ron Takaki’s first Black history class that his name was now Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  He held up a Life Magazine with his picture on the cover.  Because he was 7 feet tall we all saw the picture easily.

  By 1968 things heated up with the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy and the anti-war movement and the Black Panther Party responding with renewed energy.  Ali was in the forefront of media coverage when he refused induction, in Houston, Texas telling a frenzied press corps, “No Vietnamese called me nigger.”  His power and influence outside the ring were beginning to crystalize. Soon afterward, Ali was stripped of his title and his case was languishing in court.  

That’s when Ali began a national speaking tour.  He was especially fond of speaking at college campuses where he usually got an enthusiastic welcome. Late in 1968, he was scheduled to speak at UCLA. It had been quite a roster of guest speakers that year.  The list included presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy an openly anti-war candidate, and the likes of James Baldwin and H. Rap Brown, one of the founders of the Black Power movement.  When Muhammad Ali was announced as a speaker, people knew the seating would be limited and the campus was abuzz with expectations. 
I chanced to ask a friend of mine who was on the student committee produced these events what time I needed to go to Pauley Pavillon to attempt to get a seat.  

Leo, my friend was aptly named for his lionesque appearance.  He was a Jewish-Italian with an enormous golden brown natural.  I could pick him out of large crowds easily and often did at music and political events.  

“I don’t know what to tell you, Bruce,” he said, “but perhaps I can help. Why don’t you meet me in the student union at 12:30 on that day and you can come in early with me?” I jumped at the chance.  

The speech was to begin at 3:00 sharp.  Doors would open at 2:00 p.m..   I met Leo at the appointed time and we made the short walk over to the arena.  

“Just walk aside me and keep talking to me,” Leo said.  “They know me and won’t question you if we enter together.”

The campus police barely blinked and we entered Pauley Pavillon easily. Leo showed me a place where I could hang out until the audience arrived.  The arena had been cut in half, which is divided down the middle with a large curtain blocking the right half which would remain empty.  Still, thousands of people were expected to fill the remaining half.  As instructed beforehand, I brought some reading material to occupy my time and found a spot on the bottom row of seats off to the side.  Workers scrambled around me setting up the sound system and generally sweeping up and setting the stage with a couple of seats.  A ring of campus police surrounded the periphery, but they never questioned me and I expect they were equally as excited to hear what Ali had to say.  By 1:30, most of the prep work had been completed and the arena fell into an uncommon quiet.  A few people occupied their positions but I was essentially alone in my spot on the floor. 

That’s when I looked up and saw two figures appear across from me at the opposite end of the arena.  Slowly they made their way forward, stopping now and then to take in the size and scope of their surroundings.  As they neared me I became unmistakably aware that it was Muhammad Ali accompanied by his manager Herbert Muhammad.  I recognized Herbert from all the films and articles I’d ever seen or read about Ali.  If they were aware of this student sitting on the floor with a book in his lap, I couldn’t tell.  I think not.  Of course, I had the impulse to ask for an autograph but quickly quashed any notion of interrupting or speaking to them.  I decided, instead, to keep my head down but my ears open.  

Fortune gave me its fickle smile in that moment.  In this horrendous year of division, war casualties, unprecedented violence and political upheaval, Muhammad Ali was standing right in front of me.  That’s when he and his manager stopped and surveyed their surroundings one last time.  Ali turned to Herbert and smiled broadly before speaking.

“Look at this beautiful building, he said. “In a few minutes, it will be filled with thousands of college students and their professors.  They are coming here to hear me speak.  Me, who barely finished high school, and they all want to hear me speak.”  Herbert Muhammad nodded but said nothing.  They continued walking until they were met by a representative of the university and taken to the temporary green room.  

Of all the things that Muhammad Ali said to his adoring fans that day, that brief moment in time where he hovered right in front of me remains the clearest.  He spoke about the current political malaise, he gave his oft-repeated remarks about the Vietnam War and he reinforced the burgeoning “Black is Beautiful” rhetoric so important during this time.  He was witty, incredibly funny, and very poignant when he wanted to be.

I knew that Ali was often sensitive about not being college-educated, that he’d been an indocile student, if not a class clown, but I was really taken by his observation in that brief moment.  As I followed his career after his title was reinstated I never forgot that day sitting on the floor of Pauley Pavillon. Ali’s career and later life are almost common knowledge now. He’s gone from pariah to cultural icon in the last 10 years. His legacy is firmly in place but there is something else I feel compelled to say.  Although thousands saw and heard him that day, he had an impact on countless millions more. Not just the boxers that dreamed, or the brothers and sisters that struggled with their own cultural heritage and identity.  But with the young men and women who agonized with the moral and ethical questions surrounding participation on a brutal war.  No wonder he filled arenas worldwide.  One final thing needs to be said.  From my perch that day, as he was standing just a few feet away, I could see that yes, He was an extremely good-looking man. In my book, he could say, “I’m so pretty,” all he wanted. He certainly was.