Blood Brothers (35 page)

By the time the heavyweight champion sat in his living room, though, Elijah had changed his mind about Herbert's involvement in boxing. He reminded his son that crooks ran the sport. Con men, he warned, would try to dupe Ali. “Make sure nobody robs him or takes advantage of him.” Elijah told Ali that he could trust his son, and that Herbert would treat him like a brother. In time, Herbert would become Ali's financial adviser, mentor, and confidant. Most importantly, he served as Elijah's eyes and ears, following Ali everywhere.
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That weekend, when Ali first met Herbert at his studio, the fighter did not know much about him, except what Elijah had told him. Herbert had photographed many famous black men, including Kwame Nkrumah, Prince Faisal, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and other statesmen whom he promised Ali would meet when they visited the Middle East and Africa. But when Herbert began traveling with Ali, he refused interviews and photographs. He did not want to do anything that would raise questions about his personal life. The last time his name made headlines was in October 1962, when a white woman pressed charges against him for shattering her jaw in four places. Herbert's former mistress told police that he stalked her, broke into her apartment, and threatened to kill her if she ever left him. The Muslims adamantly denied the charges, claiming that the woman was not even white—she
was black—and that Herbert was being framed, all in an attempt to “smear and malign” the Nation of Islam.
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Although the story disappeared from the front page of the
Chicago Defender
, it caught the attention of the FBI. When special agents began investigating Herbert, an informant told them that he carried on extramarital affairs and was nearly “possessed” with taking nude photographs of women and making pornographic films. According to a “reliable” source, Herbert convinced women to pose for his camera in exchange for gifts of jewelry and mink coats. Of course, Ali did not know about any of this. He had only just met Herbert, after all, and Elijah had said that he could trust his son. Ali never questioned the Messenger. He simply did what he was told.
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M
UHAMMAD
A
LI
'
S LIFE
had become a daily news story, unfolding across the pages of America's newspapers. Since he took his first military entrance exam, writers had speculated that he would be drafted any day, ending America's nightmare of having a Muslim boxing champion. On March 20, the army announced that Ali had failed his second entrance exam, disqualifying him from serving in the armed forces. One report claimed that he scored 78 on an IQ test, placing him well below a passing grade. Embarrassed by his poor performance, Ali admitted that he struggled to comprehend the questions. “I said I was the greatest, not the smartest,” he quipped.
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After returning to New York, he fielded questions from reporters at an impromptu press conference from the Hotel Theresa. Writers' repeated queries about his intellect angered him. When a reporter addressed him as Cassius, he snapped, “Don't call me Cassius Clay. My name is Muhammad Ali. It is a beautiful Arabic name.” It was the first time that he insisted writers use his new name. When another reporter made the same mistake, he corrected him. “Don't call me Cassius Clay anymore. I am
Muhammad Ali
, the heavyweight champion of the whole world.”
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Later that night, he attended a welterweight match between Luis Rodríguez and Holley Mims at Madison Square Garden. Expecting a champion's introduction, Ali was stunned when promoter Harry Markson refused to let the ring announcer use his Muslim name. Standing
near the aisle, about twenty rows away from the ring, Ali declared, “Cassius Clay is a slave name. My real name now—from now on—is Muhammad Ali. I'll be introduced as Muhammad Ali—or there'll be no introduction.” Fans booed the champ until he bolted out of the arena.
⁴⁵

Many Americans were just as outraged that the army had rejected Ali as he was that they refused to use his Muslim name. Furious citizens, soldiers, and veterans grumbled that Ali was certainly smart enough to peel potatoes, scrub a ship deck, or polish boots. A real American, they complained, would certainly find a way to serve. In Philadelphia, a concerned Irish Catholic mother, whose son had been recently drafted, resented the special treatment Ali seemed to receive from the military. She could hardly believe that Ali failed the military's entrance requirements. In a letter to President Lyndon Johnson, she asked why the army did not draft the famous boxer. “Is it because he is a millionaire and pays lots of taxes? Is it because he is heavyweight champion of the world? Is it because he is colored and colored people are being handled with ‘kid gloves' these days?”
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Those who knew Ali well were not really surprised that he had flunked the military exam. Petros Spanakos, a bantamweight teammate of Ali's during the 1960 Olympics, wrote to columnist Red Smith, explaining that he had no doubt that his old roommate could not pass the written exam. When they roomed together in Rome, Spanakos “spelled out, corrected, and finally wrote [Ali's] letters home.” Louisville Sponsoring Group member William Faversham told a writer that he had also witnessed Ali struggle to read. While he could read a newspaper column in three or four minutes, it could take Ali more than twenty. Faversham recalled that in January 1963, shortly after Ali fought Charlie Powell, he suggested that Ali could schedule a match against Doug Jones in March. Uncertain if he had enough time to train, Ali asked, “How many months until March?”
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From every angle, Americans scrutinized Ali's intelligence. J. Edgar Hoover was so convinced that Ali had deliberately failed the test that he ordered special agents to obtain the champ's high school transcript, which only proved that Ali lacked a rigorous academic education. Critics emasculated him as simple-minded and childlike. Others reduced him to the big, dumb boxer, as ignorant as Amos Jones's friend Andy Brown, a bombastic and buffoonish black man.
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A few days after the army disqualified Ali, Robert Lipsyte ventured into Harlem to interview the champ, but first he dropped by Lewis Michaux's bookstore, where he interviewed Malcolm X. Accompanied by the reporter's friend, comedian and activist Dick Gregory, Lipsyte found Malcolm lounging in a back room, rapping with Michaux. Malcolm spoke “warmly” about Ali, “less like his guru than an older brother or uncle.” Divulging no hard feelings, he had nothing but nice things to say about him. When the writer asked Malcolm if he had tried to persuade the champ to join MMI, Malcolm shook his head and explained that Ali would have to decide for himself how he would live his life. As Lipsyte turned toward the door, Malcolm praised his fight coverage as among the best. Lipsyte smiled and thanked him. Later, when he recounted the story to an editor at the
New York Times
, he received a flippant reply: “That's just great, we'll put it up on the [newspaper] trucks, ‘Malcolm X Loves Lipsyte.'”
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After departing Michaux's bookstore, Lipsyte and Gregory crossed the street to the Hotel Theresa, where the champion was staying in a suite just a few floors above Malcolm's second-story office. In the most popular accounts, Ali immediately cut Malcolm out of his life and stopped seeing him after March 6, but that would be hard to believe since Ali was staying in the same building where Malcolm worked. The reality was that neither man had let go of the other. After Ali returned to Harlem in late March, a reporter from the
New York Post
interviewed Malcolm and noted that “a parade of visitors” entered his office, including Ali, who dropped by “for a swift low-voiced chat.” Ali may have been “a follower of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad,” the writer observed, “but schism has not damaged an old friendship with Malcolm X.”
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While Elijah's lieutenants scorned his friend as a hypocrite, Ali had not yet rejected Malcolm's friendship, despite telling Elijah what he wanted to hear. Unquestionably, after Ali visited Elijah in Chicago and returned to Harlem, he and Malcolm saw each other. Most likely, they met on March 22, the same day that Malcolm held a rally at the Rockland Palace. Earlier, Malcolm had acknowledged to a television reporter that he had “a long meeting with” Ali, but he refused to discuss the details of their conversation. “We are brothers,” he told the newswoman, “and we have much in common.” What he did not tell her was
that they could no longer be seen together in public. Instead, Malcolm implied that he still advised Ali. However, a few hours after the WBA announced its intention to vacate Ali's title, Malcolm clearly had heard nothing about it. He no longer knew what Ali was really doing. When the reporter asked how he would counsel the champ about his career, Malcolm found himself speechless. All he could say about the matter was “no comment.”
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Instead, Malcolm talked about Ali's potential as a cultural force, a global hero inspiring people around the world. Americans misunderstood the boxer, he explained. The champion was an ideal role model for black youths, living a clean life, avoiding alcohol and cigarettes. And, Malcolm reminded the reporter, Ali had never been involved in any legal trouble. “He's actually an all-American boy, or an all-African boy.” The problem, he charged, was that the media distorted his image and attacked his religion, damaging America's reputation abroad. Malcolm had received stacks of letters from Africans who admired Ali and everything he represented. “Cassius is in a better position than anyone else to restore a sense of racial pride not only to our people in this country, but to people all over the world.”

Malcolm's conversation with Ali made it difficult for the boxer to completely divorce his friend. While Ali hated the idea of disappointing Elijah Muhammad, he also wanted to avoid hurting Malcolm. In his private moments, he must have wondered if he had made the right decision. When a writer from
Jet
asked him if he would ever see Malcolm again, he answered, “Elijah Muhammad will determine my future associations.” Then, in a wistful moment of sincerity, he disclosed his true sentiments. “Malcolm,” he said, “is still a friend, however.” It was not the kind of comment that would please the Messenger.
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I
N THE WEEKS
after he announced his independence from Elijah, Malcolm spoke at rallies, met with reporters, and began planning a trip to the Middle East and Africa. The excursion would serve two needs, one personal, the other political. When he broke from the Nation of Islam, his religious foundation cracked. As a “servant of Allah,” he sought a renewed faith and a broader understanding of Islam. In a quest to fulfill his religious evolution, he prepared for the pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest Muslim city in the world.
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The journey to the Middle East would also help him realize his vision for internationalizing the black freedom struggle. In Cleveland on April 3, he preached the “gospel of Black Nationalism,” arguing that blacks needed to control their own communities, their own politics, and their own religion. At the Cory Methodist Church, Malcolm espoused a message fusing together electoral politics, self-defense, and Pan-Africanism, framing the civil rights movement as part of a global struggle against racial oppression. “We need to expand the civil rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights,” he suggested.
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Focusing on civil rights made blacks too dependent on the United States government, a government that had failed to protect their legal rights. Human rights differed from civil rights, he explained. Human rights were “your God-given rights,” recognized by the United Nations. “And anytime anyone violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court,” he promised. At the UN, “our brothers” from Africa, Asia, and Latin America would finally hear the charges against the US. “Uncle Sam's hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this country.”
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If Uncle Sam would not defend black citizens, then they needed to defend themselves “by any means necessary.” “If we don't do something soon, I think you'll have to agree that we're going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet,” he argued. If Uncle Sam denied them the vote, they must rise up in arms. “It'll be liberty or death.”

Malcolm spoke that night not as an American but as a black man. “No, I'm not an American,” he declared. “I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of the American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim.” Bristling, he concluded, “I don't see any American dream. I see an American nightmare.”

Malcolm's rhetoric altered the way many blacks viewed themselves and their country. In “The Ballot or the Bullet,” he spoke about what it meant to be an American. He reminded them, “Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.” How could a black man call himself an American as long as he was denied basic freedoms? If black
men and women were Americans, then they would not need civil rights legislation. “You and I,” he declared, are “African-Americans—that's what we are—Africans born in America.”

Muhammad Ali also began to see himself as an African born in America, interpreting his title in global terms. After meeting with African ambassadors who praised him as an international hero, he began to view himself as something more than an American champion. When he changed his name and announced that he was a Muslim, critics vilified him as unpatriotic and un-American. He understood, as Malcolm had said, that being born in America did not make him an American. In his search for self-discovery, he decided to travel to Africa. When he returned, he came back a new man, one who defined himself as a global citizen, declaring, “I'm not an American. I'm a black man.”
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