The premise of this article wrong on so many fronts and all of it stems from your lack of understanding or full appreciation of the historic and present hell black folks were catching during and before Ali’s time period.

Add to that an unpopular war and a draft, then you can understand and maybe even appreciate how Ali became such a folk hero.

To many of the voiceless, his defiant speech and rhetoric was redemptive. To many of the powerless, his ass kicking dominance was a source of pride. Ali was not who you or established white america pre approved as an exceptable hero for blacks. That in itself was empowering.

Again, your mini book report on the NOI and Islam movement in america at that time with out clearly pointing out the sicking conditions that created these movements is intellectually dishonest.

It’s real easy to sit back and pass judgement and pick apart a persons life when you cannot even fathom what it would be like to exist under the dehumanizing conditions of racism, segragration, Jim Crow, lynchings, fear, and intimidation with no recourse through the law for justice.

What was the real reason for this article other than you felt like regurgitating some crap you read in book you got from the right wing weekly reader.

Keep up the good work! I look forward to reading more!

Our parents may have been the greatest generation during the big war, but afterwards they installed a suffocating socially stagnant culture in te 50’s.

what was that caradoc said? something about “recent generations of self indulgent conformists?” You little pricks dont want to back there. You wont like it.

Elvis, Kerouac, Bruce and Ali, et al, were our tickets out of it. It wasnt all about who Ali really was. It was about his impertinents, irreverence, his disdain for the status quo “authority.” Something the creators of this blogsite should appreciate, Tex included.

Reading all these corn cob posts makes me want to think maybe this generation hasnt come that far. NOooooooo……!

Scip, at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I am a huge admirer of your writing and can’t imagine why someone would spend 50 cents a day to read Kirk Bohls or Mike Lupica when your stuff’s available for free. It is free, right? I’m not paying if it’s not and I take back the nice things I said if I like owe you a check or something now that I’ve read this. You’re not getting dime one from me!

On the other hand, images do count, such as your example comic book cover. I was a middle school kid during the war, and Cassius/Ali’s draft issue. I lived on a military base and at that point we were all still pro war. But here Ali said “I ain’t got nuthin’ against no Viet Cong”. Of course I was ignorant to all the NOI matriculation you reference, but in that sentence Ali spoke the truth to this particular kid. I became a sceptic.

Further, I thought, selfish little white trash I was, that I just plain wouldn’t risk my world champ status with draft dodging. Just wouldn’t. Now, you say his motivations were not all that, and I don’t argue against it. Just saying, the impact on me was as real anyway. Being against the war was something “worth” giving things up for, for some people. I had never considered that up to that point.

Besides his athletic achievements, his impact on society was hardly all or mostly bad. No doubt this is also part of his lingering image. Again, not to disparage any of your points.

I still like my iconic Ali. Sort of like, would you still like Shakespeare if others actually wrote those plays. I’d kinda like the idea of Shakespeare.

I’m a 20-something, and I’ll say that I have different opinion of DiMaggio. It seems to me that it is common in the newsworld today that DiMaggio was a Nixon-esque asshole who trusted no one around him and ended friendships as soon as anyone had the gall to ask him if he’d “autograph a baseball for my son.” If nothing else, he is certainly not viewed with “a positive feeling.”

It seems that history is starting to move back to the center on both of these guys — which, although not very pertinent to the point of your article — seems interesting given history’s tendency to reduce every figure to two or three words.