Muhammad Ali: The Brand and the Man

Dave Zirin in The Nation:

Muhammad Ali's brilliance was not that he was some kind of antiwar prophet. He wasn't Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. in boxing gloves, debating foreign policy between rounds. But unlike the Ivy League advisers who made up the "best and brightest," Ali understood then that there was justice and injustice, right and wrong. He knew that not taking a stand could be as political a statement as taking one. This was Ali's code, and he never wavered.

In early 1966 the US Army came calling for Ali, and he was classified 1-A for the draft. He got the news surrounded by reporters and blurted one of the most famous phrases of the decade, "Man, I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong."

This was an astounding statement. As Mike Marqusee outlines in his Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirirt of the 60s, there was little opposition to the war at the time. The antiwar movement was in its infancy, and most of the country still stood behind the President. Life magazine's cover read, "Vietnam: The War Is Worth Winning." The song "Ballad of the Green Berets" was climbing the charts. And then there was Ali. As longtime peace activist Daniel Berrigan said, "It was a major boost to an antiwar movement that was very white. He was not an academic or a bohemian or a clergyman. He couldn't be dismissed as cowardly."

More here.