Muhammad Ali’s passing comes just when it seems black people are running out of heroes.
There are celebrities aplenty, and Ali, of course, was one of the greatest.
But heroes carry the burdens the rest of us don’t even consider picking up.
In 1967, the year Ali refused to be inducted into the military to fight in Vietnam, black people in the urban areas were just beginning to speak out against the lack of employment, slum housing and unjust policing.
Despite these inequities, young black men in mostly impoverished communities were being swept up in the draft.
OPINION
Given the nation’s racial turmoil, it was absurd to think that any black man would want to risk life and limb to fight overseas when black people were getting killed in America for demanding equal rights.
“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor, hungry people in the mud for big, powerful America,” he told reporters.
“And shoot them for what? They never called me ‘n—–,’ they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father,” he said.
In the ring, Ali was a trash talker.
But when he spoke about the racial injustices his people were suffering, he wasn’t just spouting off.
He was showing us how to stand.
After Ali was stripped of his heavyweight championship title, sentenced to five years in prison and denied an opportunity to compete in just about every big city in America, he could have disappeared into obscurity.
But because he was on the side of right, the inequities of this life could not beat him down.
Even his long battle with Parkinson’s disease did not destroy his inner strength.
When the news broke that Ali had left us at age 74, I was surprised the first person I heard from was Haki Madhubuti, founder of Third World Press.
Both men were born in 1942 and like Ali, Madhubuti changed his name from Don L. Lee during the ’60s.
Though the two men were not friends, they were brothers in the struggle.
Ali’s refusal to accept induction into the military during the fight for civil rights was an “act of selflessness and courage,” Madhubuti said.
“It brought instant domestic hate from whites and some Blacks. . . . In their eyes he had become public enemy number one, costing him millions of dollars in legal fees and earnings. Domestically hated by many, but globally beloved and honored among Blacks, Pan-Africanist, Nationalist, Civil Rights workers, Black Power and Black Arts and cultural workers and progressives, he was our unambiguous voice for that which was good, just, right, spiritual and politically correct,” Madhubuti wrote in an unpublished essay.
Black people love Muhammad Ali because he stood up for his truth. In standing up for himself, he stood up for us all.
A nationally acclaimed poet, Madhubuti wrote the following in tribute to this American hero:
“Ali shuffled and
rope-a-doped in the ring of life
all while dancing to the progressive
tunes that placed Black people in the
center of a new world conversation,
luminous in thoughts and ideas,
Black against Empire and lies.
he was our butterfly, bee and hawk,
principled actor on an international stage that
gave us voice, nerve and spiritual depth,
he shook up the world.
