Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (7 page)

The impact of the second Louis-Schmeling fight would be felt for years to come in sports and in society at large. Jackie Robinson would credit the new acceptance of a black athlete for creating the climate that allowed him to re-break baseball’s color barrier less than a decade later.

The victory was without a doubt one of the most important events in the history of American race relations, but the reaction of the celebrated sportswriter Paul Gallico underlined the reality that Louis’s popularity was due in no small part to his understanding of the Negro’s role in America: “Louis is what is known definitely as a’good nigger who knows his place,’” the celebrated author wrote in the
New York Daily News.
“He has been carefully trained in the sly servility that the white man accepts as his due.” If this message wasn’t driven home by Gallico’s assessment, it was made clear in almost every speech by every mayor who invited the champion to receive the keys to his city. The same words emerged at each reception and parade. “He’s a credit to his race,” they chorused—the highest praise they could imagine for the new hero. Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon underscored the liberal condescension of Louis’s new admirers when he wrote, “He’s a credit to his race—the human race.”

If Louis was admired by white Americans, he had become a genuine icon to blacks. Years later, at the start of the civil rights movement, the generation of black Americans who grew up worshipping Joe Louis and digesting the message that they would be tolerated if they “kept in their place” were uneasy about their sons and daughters engaged in radical activities sure to incur the wrath of whites. It was this attitude of their elders that often posed the first obstacles for the young militants hungry for change.

Louis’s unprecedented influence on black Americans is recalled by Martin Luther King Jr. in his manifesto
Why We Can’t Wait.
He tells the story of the black convict on death row in the 1940s who was the first victim of poison gas as a method of execution. A microphone was set up to record the convict’s reaction to the gas. “As the pellet dropped into the container,” wrote King, “and gas curled upward, through the microphone came these words:’Save me Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis.’”

Louis cemented his legend after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Early on, he traveled to army bases, putting on exhibitions and entertaining the troops. He donated the entire purse from his 1942 title bout with Buddy Baer to the Navy Relief Fund, which earned him wide spread praise in the American media for his patriotism. In February 1942, Louis enlisted in the army, where he was assigned to Special Services, continuing his role of entertaining the troops. The U.S. government took full advantage of Louis’s war effort. Almost every news-reel spotlighted his activities, and every American was aware of his patriotism, elevating his national status as a hero even higher.

But behind the government’s campaign to trumpet Louis’s wartime contributions was a concerted effort to mask an ugly reality. While Blacks were being urged to enlist in the army and fight for freedom, some Blacks—especially the black media—recognized the hypocrisy of the fact that the army was completely segregated. Blacks were assigned to the most menial tasks and, when they did go into battle, it was often as cannon fodder, suffering casualty rates far higher than their white counterparts.

It soon became clear that Louis’s role was to convince Blacks they had a patriotic duty to go to war. Frank Capra was hired to direct a propaganda film called
The Negro Soldier,
with Sergeant Joe Louis as the centerpiece, declaring “There may be a whole lot wrong with America, but there’s nothing Hitler can fix.” Despite—or because of—its inaccurate implication that black soldiers had often glamorous duties and served alongside whites, the film did much to boost black morale and successfully achieved its goal of increasing enlistment.

After Louis retired in 1947, he was repaid for his patriotism and his service to the government with a massive tax bill. His white promoters had reneged on a promise to turn over their share of gate receipts to the armed forces charities to which Louis frequently contributed. As a result, his large donations were not tax exempt. Louis was no longer any use to them, and the government refused to recognize his loyal service. Louis never quite recovered from the financial hardship. He was forced to come out of retirement twice past his prime, only to suffer humiliating defeats. The rest of his life was spent in a buffoonish series of attempts to pay his back taxes, including embarrassing stints as a professional wrestler and a shill for the mob, acting as a “greeter” at various Las Vegas casinos. He died penniless in 1981.

Cassius Clay was only five years old when Joe Louis retired as heavyweight champion. Cassius Clay Sr. would later recall that “around our house, Joe was a hero. We listened to all his fights. There was no one like Joe.”

No one like Joe. Within a decade and a half, much of the world would be saying the same thing about his son, Cassius Clay Jr., Muhammad Ali. And it would continue to be said for years, until Louis had faded into obscurity in the collective memory. Because as much of an impact as Joe Louis and, for that matter, Jack Johnson, had on boxing and American society in general, their legacies would pale in comparison to that of Ali, a man who—as a threat to the white establishment and a messiah to the black underclass—was a combination of Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, and then some.

CHAPTER THREE:

A Modern Crusade

W
HEN HE RETURNED FROM
R
OME
with his gold medal in 1960, Cassius Clay gave an interview to
Newsweek
sportswriter Dick Schaap. “You know I’ll be a credit to my race,” he declared emphatically For the new Olympic champion, those words had a very different meaning than they did for Joe Louis.

It didn’t take long for the newly minted professional to prove Rome was no fluke. In quick order and with ease, he disposed of challenger after challenger as he worked his way up the heavyweight ladder. But it wasn’t his boxing skills that were attracting the most attention. It was his personality—a mixture of charm, chutzpah, and wit—that caused people to take notice. After his seventh straight knockout, he revived his old amateur trick of calling the round in which his opponent would go down.

They all must fall
In the round I call

When he felled the former heavyweight champion Archie Moore in round four and then proceeded to knock out pro football player Charlie Powell in round three—both as promised—the pundits stopped dismissing the brash fighter as a loudmouthed braggart.

But Clay wasn’t content to let his ring exploits alone build up his reputation. He helped his cause along whenever he could with his natural genius for self-promotion. Once, early in his pro career, a freelance photographer named Flip Schulke shot Cassius Clay for
Sports Illustrated.
While Schulke took photos, his subject asked him who else he worked for. The photographer responded that he did a lot of photos for
Life
magazine and that one of his specialties was underwater photography. “Man, how about shooting me for
Life,”
the boxer pleaded. Schulke explained he wasn’t famous enough to get into
Life
—at the time the most popular publication in America. Thinking fast, Clay concocted a story on the spot. He explained that one thing accounted for his blinding speed. Just as runners sometimes train in weighted shoes so they feel lighter and run faster when they put on normal sneakers, he said he regularly trained in a swimming pool up to his neck, punching in the water. Two months later,
Life
ran a five-page photo spread of Cassius Clay in the water up to his neck headlined H
E’S ALL WET
. It was the first time he had ever set foot in a swimming pool. He couldn’t even swim.

“Life
was convinced he trained underwater,” recalled
Sports Illustrated
writer Neil Leifer, who witnessed the deception. “Now that’s a genius you don’t see in people very often. Genius and a bit of a con man, too.”

Even when Clay’s fight predictions didn’t come true, he found a way to put on a positive spin. Before his fight with Doug Jones in 1963, he prophesied:

This boy likes to mix
So he must fall in six

A
few days later, he got cockier:

I’m changing the pick I made before
Instead of six, Doug goes in four

When the fight took place, Clay won—but it took a full ten rounds. When reporters queried him about his flawed prediction, he had a ready explanation. “First, I called it in six. Then I called it in four. Four and six, that’s ten, right?”

The Broadway Showman, Billy Rose, loved Clay’s brash style, advising the young fighter “keep it up. The more obnoxious you are, the more they’ll pay you to fight some white Hope. They’ll pay high to see you beat. Remember the bigots got most of the money in this country.”

The media and the public didn’t quite know what to make of him at first. What would have passed as distasteful arrogance in most people endeared him to many sportswriters. Even the fans who came out to root for his opponents and urged them to “button the Lip” did so in a good-natured way. Clay was seen as the lovable clown, spouting doggerel as he dismissed his opponents in summary fashion. He first endeared himself to the country when he went on the
Tonight Show
in 1962 and recited a poem for host Jack Paar:

This
is the story about a man

With iron fists and a beautiful tan

He talks a lot and boasts indeed

Of a powerful punch and blinding speed

But as he edged closer to a title bout, a number of observers looked beneath the clownish exterior and discovered some substance. In March 1963—a full year before he first won the heavyweight championship—
Time
magazine published a laudatory cover story entitled “Cassius Clay: The Dream.”

The article credited Clay for breathing new life into a sport “which had been a bore for years.” The influential publication seemed to anticipate the epic future in store for the young boxer, proclaiming, “Cassius Clay is Hercules, struggling through the twelve labors. He is Jason chasing the Golden Fleece. He is Galahad, Cyrano, D’Artagnan. When he scowls, strong men shudder, and when he smiles, women swoon. The mysteries of the universe are his tinker toys. He rattles the thunder and looses the lightning.”

Cast in such heroic terms, Clay could have easily taken the message that the country was ready to accept him as another Joe Louis. The embrace of white America was his for the asking.

If
Time
magazine was the opinion-maker of the white establishment, its counterpart in the black community was
Ebony,
and the two publications saw a very different side of the same subject. The same month Clay adorned the cover of
Time,
the popular black magazine profiled him in very different terms, declaring, “Cassius Marcellus Clay—and this fact has evaded the sportswriting fraternity—is a blast furnace of racial pride. His is a pride that would never mask itself with skin lighteners and processed hair, a pride scorched with memories of a million little burns.”

It wasn’t yet time to reveal the news, but
Ebony
was as good a place as any to provide a hint. Cassius Clay was trained not to let his guard down, but for years he had been harboring a secret, and he was itching to let it out.

In 1897, a man named Elijah Poole was born in Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. Poole dropped out of school in grade eight and led a fairly mundane life as a door-to-door salesman until he moved to Detroit in 1930. It was the beginning of the Depression, and blacks were suffering its devastating effects. One day, Poole encountered a mysterious man named W. D. Fard preaching his gospel on a ghetto street corner to a group of unemployed black men.

He told them he “came from the East” and recited a number of parables from the Bible. After gaining a large following, he finally revealed himself to be a Muslim from Mecca who had come to spiritually cleanse the “so-called Negroes” who were trapped in the “wilderness of North America.”