Muhammad Ali: Never the White Man's Negro

Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, was a black boxer who refused to conform to the expectations of white society. Despite pressure to be a submissive figure, Ali embraced the Nation of Islam and changed his name. He also refused to serve in the army due to his political beliefs, facing backlash and punishment. His refusal to comply with the draft resulted in a fine, revoked boxing license, and halted his professional career. Muhammad Ali, Never the White Man's Negro, by Joyce Carol Oates. Cassius Clay, born in 1942, was the grandson of a slave. In the United States of his boyhood and young manhood, the role of the black athlete, particularly the black boxer, was a forced self-effacement. White male anxieties were evidently greatly roiled by the spectacle of the strong black man and had to be assuaged. The greater the black boxer, Joyce Louise R. Timur S.R. Charles, the more urgent that he assumed a public role of caution and restraint. Kindly white men who advised their black charges to be a credit to the race were not speaking ironically. And yet, the young Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, refused to play this emasculating role. He would not be the white man's negro. He would not be anything of the white man's at all, converting to the Nation of Islam at the age of 22, immediately after winning the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. He denounced his slave's name, Cassius Marcellus Clay, which was also his father's name, and the Christian religion. In refusing to serve in the army, he made his political reasons clear. Ali got no quarrel with the beefcone. An enormous backlash followed, where the young boxer had been cheered, now he was booed. Denunciations raised upon his head. Respected publications, including the New York Times, continued to print the slave's name, Cassius Clay, for years. Sentences to five years' imprisonment for his refusal to comply with the draft Ali stood his ground. He did not serve time, but was fined $10,000, and his boxing license was revoked, so that he could not continue his professional career in the very prime of that career.