While reading Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon by Michael Ezera, I start to realize that Ali truly embodies the “New Negro.” Muhammad Ali, formerly known as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., was an outspoken, cocky individual that gain the respect of millions of Blacks during the 1960s’. The year 1960 proved to be monumental for Ali. He graduated from high school, won his sixth Kentucky Golden Gloves title, and Olympic Gold Medal. Even though Ali was an Olympic gold medalist, he realized that life for him would not change. He couldn’t get a cheese burger served to him at a restaurant in Downtown Louisville. Ali later threw his gold medal in the Ohio River, which to him served as a gesture of racial defiance of American Hypocrisy.
Ali became more and more attracted to Islam. After winning the world heavyweight title for the first time, he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, which means “worthy of all praise.” Malcolm X believed that that Ali was “the finest negro athlete he has ever known, the man who will mean more to his people than Jackie Robinson, because Robinson is white man’s hero” (Ashe, 1993). February 1966, Ali was reclassified 1-A by the selective service. He issued a negative response in a form a poem: “keep asking me, no matter how long. On the war in Viet Nam, I sing this song; I ain’t got no quarrel with Viet Cog” (Ashe, 1993). Ali said “he refused to go ten thousand miles to help murder and kill and burn poor people simply to help continue the domination of white slave masters over the darker people” (Ashe, 1993). Ali’s stance on the War and the refusal to participate in the killing of innocent people, demonstrated that the “New Negro” was willing to do whatever it took to prove a point. The WBA and the NYSAC did not wait for indictment; they stripped Ali of his title. Prominent black athletes came to support Ali publicly, Lew Alcindor, Bill Russell, Sid Williams, Walter Beach, Curtiss McClinton, Bobby Mitchell, Wille Davis, Gale Sayers, etc. The traditional black civil rights leaders did not publicly support Ali, they became very cautious. It did not matter; Ali was declared free and went after his title that was stripped from him. Ali became the first man in boxing history to win the title three times. His rise to fame came in the midst of the black social revolution of the 1960s and America’s suffering over the Vietnam War. Ali’s activism during the War demonstrated why he is in conversation with the New Negro concept.
