Blood Brothers (36 page)

Chapter Fifteen

KING OF THE WORLD

            
Millions of so-called Negroes in this country have a distorted image of our homeland. They think Africans eat each other and live in mud huts. They've been brainwashed by the white man—why, I'll show you muddier huts in Harlem than they've got over in Africa.

—
MALCOLM X

            
I heard a voice once that told me one day I would be a world figure.

—
MUHAMMAD ALI

“T
he king! The king!” the crowd shouted, swarming the famous American as he sat in an open-top cream-colored convertible.

“Who's the king?” Muhammad Ali called, basking in the adulation and equatorial sunshine of Accra.

“You!” the locals assented, celebrating the arrival of the self-proclaimed “king of the world.”

From the moment Ali set foot on African soil, Ghanaians treated him like royalty, showering him with praise and gifts. At the Accra airport, on May 16, 1964, the minister of foreign affairs, the director of sports, the chairman of Ghana Boxing Authority, and other state officials welcomed him. President Kwame Nkrumah, the first national leader to embrace Ali, directed the government's radio stations and newspapers to promote the American champion as an African hero, “a source of inspiration to the youth of the world.” In the words of a writer from the state-owned
Daily Graphic
, “If there is one man who can assist positively to bring about [Nkrumah's] cherished aims of projecting the African personality”—an Africa freed from the vestiges of colonialism—and disprove “the superiority complex of the white man, he is Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay).”
¹

Muhammad Ali proclaimed that he was “the king of the world.” And sometimes it seemed so. In Lagos, Nigeria, during his tour of Africa, he was the vortex of swirling humanity.
Associated Press

Ali told reporters that he was “anxious to get around and see Africa and meet my own brothers and sisters.” Unsure how his words would translate in a foreign land, he spoke cautiously when he explained that white slave traders had captured his ancestors from Africa and sold them into bondage in America. “We are glad to be back home to see things for ourselves, meet pretty Ghanaian girls, take pictures, and tell our people that there are more things to be seen in Africa than lions and elephants.”
²

As Ali prepared to leave the airport, children shouted his name and waved welcome signs while policemen brandishing truncheons ordered the crowd to back away from the motorcade. Driving through the paved streets of Accra, Ali marveled at what he saw: streetlights; honking buses and taxis; apartment buildings; and department stores, hotels,
nightclubs, and restaurants where blacks and whites socialized amicably. The city came alive with the sounds of Highlife music blaring from storefront windows, laughing children running through the streets, and saleswomen bartering with customers in the Makola Market. He was surprised to see that Accra had “wide streets, tall buildings, and other modern features.” He explained to a local reporter that whites had so distorted the image of Africa that black Americans would not dare visit their homeland. “They never told us about your beautiful flowers, magnificent hotels, beautiful houses, beaches, great hospitals, schools, and universities.”
³

Like many Americans, Ali had imagined Africa as an exotic land, a vast jungle inhabited by wild animals, noble savages, and great white hunters. Most Americans knew very little about Africa beyond what they saw on-screen or read in magazines. In 1953, when Ali was eleven years old,
Time
published a feature article about the British Gold Coast that described the colony as “a rectangular patch of jungle, swamp, and bushland,” even though deserts, forests, and rolling savanna grasslands shaped its landscape. The British colony that would eventually become Ghana was nothing more than “a sun-baked wasteland,” filled with “primitive people” living “in holes in the ground; their women go naked with a tuft of leaves before and behind.” According to
Time
, the “happy-go-lucky Gold Coasters” crowded “their mud huts with radios, sewing machines, bicycles, and even TV sets (though there is no TV station to tune in to).”
⁴

Ali grew up in a culture saturated with myths about Africa. In 1960, during the Rome Olympics, he had compared America favorably to Africa, whose natives, he said, were still fighting alligators and living in mud huts. Unlike Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay thought very little about Africa and cared even less. In his view, Africans were not a celebrated people; they were the butt of his jokes. In 1962, he told sportswriter Myron Cope a story about an encounter with two African men. “Man,” he chuckled, “I was down at the beach with two of them Africans. They so black they almost
blue
, but they said to me, ‘Cassius, we have to leave now and go put on our turbans and uniforms 'cause, if we don't, people gonna think we're Negroes.'”
⁵

Yet when he accepted the name Muhammad Ali, he embraced the idea of being an African born in America. In Accra, he proudly declared,
“I am an African and my proper name is Muhammad Ali. There is greater dignity in my new name” than his slave name. In America, he explained, too many blacks “disgracefully bear the names of our masters.” Echoing Malcolm, he suggested that if “Negroes” could not find justice in America, then they should migrate back to Africa.
⁶

His Pan-African rhetoric pleased Elijah Muhammad. At a time when Malcolm, civil rights leaders, and the national media were criticizing the Nation of Islam, Elijah determined that Ali's trip abroad would overshadow their attacks, helping him legitimize his Muslim movement. Sending Ali on an international excursion would bring “universal recognition” to the Nation. Before the heavyweight champion left the US, he went on a tour of Black Muslim mosques, where he signed autographs, sold copies of
Muhammad Speaks
, and announced his future travels, crediting Elijah for his worldwide fame. “It is because I am a follower of The Messenger that has brought me personal invitations from Asia and African Presidents and Prime Ministers.”
⁷

Elijah predicted that Ali would receive a hero's welcome in Africa and the Middle East, but he reserved profound doubts about the regions. Romanticizing his own journey there in 1959, Elijah embellished the way Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser graciously welcomed him into his palace. While he enjoyed meeting Arab and African statesmen and Muslim clerics, he returned to America disillusioned by the extreme poverty he saw, which he interpreted as a weakness in the people. Before his trip, he had talked about building an emigration movement to Africa, but afterward he ceased considering the plan.
⁸

Years after his trek abroad, he complained that Africans still lived “a jungle life,” deriding them as “savages” in need of his civilizing influence. Although he praised the emergence of independent African nations, he remained uninterested in building any genuine relationships with African leaders. Malcolm was convinced that Elijah had sent Ali to Africa solely for personal gain. “You cannot read anything that Elijah Muhammad has ever written that's pro-African,” he charged. “I defy you to find one word in his direct writings that is pro-African. You can't find it.”
⁹

For Elijah, Ali's journey abroad served as a propaganda mission that he hoped would demonstrate his stature in the Islamic world, elevating his standing among black Americans. During his five-week trip, Ali was accompanied by Muslims and friends, including the champ's manager,
Herbert Muhammad; his brother Rudy, who had recently taken the name Rahman Ali; Archie Robinson, who now introduced himself as Osman Karriem; photographer Howard Bingham; and Ronnie King, an old friend. Herbert also hired Charles P. Howard, a United Nations correspondent, to write stories about Ali's journey for
Muhammad Speaks
.
¹⁰

By the time Ali's motorcade reached the government-owned, six-story Ambassador Hotel, it seemed as if the entire city was trailing behind it. Countless locals camped outside the hotel, hoping to get a glimpse of him. Not wanting to disappoint them, Ali emerged into view on the terrace, shouting below, “Who's the king?”

“You are!” the crowd thundered.
¹¹

In Africa, Ali discovered that he was more popular abroad than at home. While most Americans refused to recognize his Muslim name, strangers, writers, and dignitaries in Ghana, Nigeria, and Egypt, showed him respect by acknowledging it. Everywhere he went people cheered his name like he was
their
champion, a black hero whose name mattered as much as his accomplishments in the ring. “Muhammad Ali is in Africa, all over Africa,” he said later. “The name is in Ethiopia, Morocco, Syria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Algiers, Saudi Arabia. Muhammad Ali [was a common name] when I traveled. Muhammad is the most common name in the world.”
¹²

Ali's African journey marked a pivotal moment in his life, ushering in a new era when he would become one of the most recognizable and written-about people in the world. But he had become something more than famous. His name had global meaning. During an age of rapid global change, decolonization in Africa and Asia, and the emerging political power of the Middle East, Ali became a liminal figure, quite literally a man betwixt and between cultures. More than any other athlete, he put the “world” into the title of “world champion.”

In Africa, one could sense that Ali's views about himself, his country, and the world had changed. Something happened to him on that trip, something that stuck with Osman Karriem. “I'll remember that trip for as long as I live because that was where I saw Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali.”
¹³

A
BOUT A WEEK
before Ali arrived in Accra, another famous black American checked into the Ambassador Hotel, igniting rumors that the champ
had already arrived. While Malcolm X waited to meet his hosts, he sat in the dining room, overhearing conversations about the controversial ending to the previous evening's world featherweight championship match between Cuban Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos and Ghanaian Floyd Robertson. Perhaps people confused Malcolm with Ali because the Ghana Boxing Authority had announced that the heavyweight champion would attend the match, bringing greater attention to the first title bout ever held in Accra, but Ali did not arrive in Ghana until a week after the fight.
¹⁴

Malcolm had had no idea that boxing was so popular in Africa and the Middle East until about a month earlier, when he arrived in Cairo. In Egypt, he “was mistaken time and again for Cassius Clay.” Talking to Egyptians, he learned that theaters across the country had shown Ali's fight against Liston, and popular newspapers, like
Al Ahram
, had published pictures of them together in New York. Ali was so popular in “the Muslim World,” Malcolm wrote in his diary, that “even the children know of him.” When Ali defeated Liston and publicly embraced Islam, the young champion “captured the imagination and the support of the entire dark world.”
¹⁵