Cassius X Becoming Ali

Name: Cassius X Becoming Ali
Uploaded: 2025-04-22T22:12:07+00:00
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00:00:00It is always asked, what do the Muslim want?

00:00:13What is the after?

00:00:16We believe the black man should be free from the names imposed upon him by his former slave

00:00:24master.

00:00:27Cassius Quay.

00:00:30He was a box office.

00:00:33Anywhere he went, he could create a crowd.

00:00:36That was truly infestuated with this man.

00:00:39You're standing in front of my candlelight.

00:00:41From the first moment, I was in love.

00:00:43Whatever you do, pay to get in.

00:00:46The civil rights movement is just about to explode.

00:00:50Young black folks are hungry for something different.

00:00:54White America wants Cassius Quay to be the good guy.

00:00:58He didn't know what Islam was.

00:01:04The period Elijah Muhammad really gave everything that was going on in his life at the time a

00:01:09purpose.

00:01:09The nation of Islam were thought of as an ominous, shadowy group.

00:01:15White people who were guilty of white supremacy try and hide their own guilt by accusing the

00:01:20honorable Elijah Muhammad of teaching black supremacy.

00:01:23white people of Islam.

00:01:25While he was like a younger brother for my father, he was a bigger brother for me.

00:01:29And it was stopped right in the middle.

00:01:31When the honor of Elijah Muhammad cuts the man off, well then he's automatically cut off with

00:01:35all of his followers.

00:01:36He would not follow a student of the teacher.

00:01:39He'd follow the teacher himself.

00:01:42He is someone who says, I want freedom, and I have to do that by tying myself back to my

00:01:49identity.

00:01:50When you call me, you're not going to call me out of my name.

00:01:54And from now on, my name is Cassius X.

00:02:01I'm free to be what I want to be and think what I want to think.

00:03:01Now, a lot of these things get lost in history, but the Golden Gloves, certainly then, was the stepping stone, usually to the Olympics. The Olympics, if you succeeded, to a pro career.

00:03:17And Clay was kind of on the cusp of whether he was really going to be able to do this thing.

00:03:27So the Golden Gloves were kind of his graduation, in a sense, from being a, you know, a kid boxer. Suddenly, he was on a national stage.

00:03:44I think Chicago and the Golden Gloves was also one of the first times that he was really out in the world.

00:04:00He meets somebody who's selling copies of the Nation of Islam newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, on the street. And that's the beginning of his introduction to the Nation of Islam.

00:04:14The world is beginning to hear about this group of black men who don't drink alcohol, don't use drugs, open businesses, take care of their family.

00:04:25That was not the narrative that white media was giving to the world and to African-Americans.

00:04:31For him to hear these messages, how white supremacy functions, right, and to double back on this idea that you black men don't really know who you are, it's an incredibly powerful message.

00:04:49Well, Keith, everything looks set. First right for a wonderful Olympic Games here in Rand.

00:04:54It certainly does, Sid.

00:04:55The next big thing is the Olympic Games.

00:04:58Sitting there, summer, no school, sampling the Olympics on television, and along came Cassius Marcellus Clay.

00:05:14I had no preparation for watching what I saw.

00:05:18Shuffled his feet, emoted demonstrably from the first moment I was in love.

00:05:23He got a lot of attention because he was kind of the mayor of Olympic Village.

00:05:32He got the medal, and he's sitting on the steps in the Olympic Village, and he's holding the medal up, and the athletes are walking by.

00:05:41Now, I'm convinced half of them can't understand one word of English.

00:05:48I'm Cassius Clay.

00:05:50I'm pretty.

00:05:51I'm going to be the heavyweight champion of the world, and you're going to come pay to see me fight, and you're going to blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:05:57And they don't know what the hell he's saying, but I noticed one thing which made me pay attention to him.

00:06:02All the female athletes walked 10 feet past him, turned around, and took a second look, and I said, there's some reason to watch out for this guy.

00:06:13His exuberance caught international press attention.

00:06:18Tell me how you came to get such a Roman name as that.

00:06:20Well, as I understand, I'm Cassius Marcellus Clay to six, and my great-great-grandfather was a Kentucky slave, and he was named after some great Kentuckian.

00:06:29I think the young Cassius Clay would have never thought twice about whether or not his name was a family name, right, was a slave name.

00:06:36Clay was the name of his father, of his parents, of his grandparents.

00:06:40Since I've reached a little fame in boxing, most people want to know where I'm from and where did I get that name, but really I haven't really checked on it, so I see that I'm going to have to go look.

00:06:50You'll have to look it up.

00:06:51See what it's all about now that I'm getting a little interview.

00:06:53That naming was the thing that connected them to family, to community, right, to a larger history.

00:06:59Cassius Clay comes out of the Olympics with a gold medal, and white residents of Louisville get together to back him financially.

00:07:14Here you have 11 white guys that represented the establishment of the city that felt like they wanted to protect Cassius from the underworld of the boxing industry and make sure, in their words, that he would emerge rich from this once all this was done.

00:07:35I'm Bill Favisham, Vice President Brown Foreman, and one of the founders of the group, Cassius Clay, and also his manager.

00:07:44Now you can look at this and you can say, okay, these people took an interest in this young man and wanted to make sure that he wasn't exploited financially.

00:07:55We want to see that people do right by him.

00:07:58Or you can say that this is just a variation of, well, we like horses and we buy them and run them in Kentucky Derby, and now we've got a fighter and we're grooming him to see what he can win.

00:08:18Of course, they wanted to make some money as well.

00:08:21It was a 50-50 deal.

00:08:22It was unheard of at the time where Cassius would be receiving a salary, all his expenses paid, so he didn't have to worry about that, nor did he have to worry about getting pulled into what was then a largely mob-controlled boxing industry.

00:08:35When he came back to Louisville, he kind of briefly forgot where he was.

00:08:43I mean, maybe he thought he was still, you know, a gold medal champion in Rome.

00:08:48He couldn't go out to dinner with these members of the Louisville sponsoring group, these white guys, because they were segregated restaurants.

00:08:57They wouldn't even serve him as an Olympic champion.

00:09:02He was an international hero.

00:09:04And that still wasn't good enough for this place.

00:09:09My mother's family, they were clays, the same name as Cassius.

00:09:14When the American Negro came here as slaves, they went into, they took the names of the families.

00:09:23Our families freed, way back there, we freed the slaves in our families.

00:09:28But I'm sure that Cassius's probably great-grandparents, and some of my relatives, they were probably the owners of Cassius's great-grandparents.

00:09:39He would have been raised in an atmosphere fraught with, underneath the surface and not-so-underneath-the-surface terror.

00:09:53He would have grown up being told what he could and could not aspire to be.

00:09:58And there wouldn't have been a long list of things that would have been expected of him as far as the possibilities of life.

00:10:06He would have been contemporaries of people like Emmett Teal, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

00:10:14He would have been contemporaries of young black people who were the first to integrate the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

00:10:23He would have been warned, I imagine, by parents, people in church congregation, neighbors, about the do's and don'ts of southern race relations,

00:10:33the sort of racial etiquette that people had to live by in order to survive.

00:10:37Cassius Clay needed a trainer, and the sponsoring group asked around, and they were told,

00:10:48well, there's a pretty good trainer in Miami named Angelo Dundee.

00:10:54They made a deal.

00:10:56Angelo opted for a weekly salary instead of a percentage of Cassius's purses.

00:11:02That was a decision he regretted later on.

00:11:04Clay trained at the Fifth Street gym in Miami, which was where Angelo Dundee worked with all his fighters.

00:11:12That was Angelo's home.

00:11:16Fifth Street gym, it looks like a gym.

00:11:19The windows are so dirty you can't see the street.

00:11:22The stairs to the second floor creek.

00:11:24You get up there, there's a million fighters, because they had all the fighters in South Florida.

00:11:29He gets in there, and every day he is learning a little bit about boxing.

00:11:34Angelo Dundee was the perfect trainer for Cassius Clay.

00:11:39He let Cassius be Cassius.

00:11:43The great trainers understand that each fighter has different gifts.

00:11:49And with Cassius, it was to emphasize extraordinary speed and reflexes.

00:11:56Angelo would say, you know, that was really great when you threw your hook this way, and you did it just like this.

00:12:04That registers with Cassius.

00:12:06He says, okay, that's how I'm going to keep throwing my left hook.

00:12:10He had a wonderful block of marble to sculpt, but he knew how to sculpt it.

00:12:18One of the great advantages of having a great trainer like Angelo Dundee was that opponents would be selected very, very carefully.

00:12:32He was groomed through his early fight.

00:12:37He fought a lot of, you know, big, tough-looking guys, but they were, what were they?

00:12:43They were lumberjacks and truck drivers and deputy sheriffs.

00:12:48Tomato cans, as they're often called.

00:12:51And he, you know, broke every one of those tomato cans on the way up.

00:12:56And they were also picked for particularly things they could or couldn't do that would teach him another lesson.

00:13:05Cassius Clay was never just kind of thrown into a fight with somebody who could hurt him.

00:13:11So it was brilliant strategy.

00:13:14They say that I am the greatest that they've ever seen.

00:13:16Most people predict me as the type of fighter as Joe Louis was, and a lot of them, and the Ring magazine, Sports Illustrated, and a lot of the other nationwide magazines, classed me over Floyd Patterson.

00:13:30The site of the most lucrative fight in the history of boxing, 27-year-old Floyd Patterson defends the heavyweight championship of the world against Sonny Liston.

00:13:40Sonny Liston was considered to be the closest thing to Godzilla you had in fighting.

00:13:51This was a devastating puncher with a hostile aura about him.

00:13:57He was scary.

00:13:59People went into the ring to fight Sonny Liston, and they were scared.

00:14:04This man is a bad man.

00:14:07He is really trying to hurt me, and he has the tools to do it.

00:14:12Sonny Liston moves out to face the big chance of a turbulent life.

00:14:16People respected Floyd Patterson.

00:14:18People kind of liked Floyd Patterson.

00:14:21Floyd Patterson was clearly a literate man who had won an Olympic gold medal.

00:14:28Liston's heavy jabs bother Patterson.

00:14:30A left to a breezy right, and a solid left to the cheekbone, the champion.

00:14:40Sonny Liston demolished him, knocked him out in the first round.

00:14:45That was the first time that a heavyweight champion had ever been knocked out in the first round.

00:14:53This made Sonny Liston the most feared man in boxing.

00:14:58Miami was an incredibly segregated city, and there was a black part of Miami, right?

00:15:07And this is important to remember.

00:15:09And this is where, you know, Cassius Clay, obviously one of the few places he can live in hotels, right?

00:15:15Because of segregation.

00:15:17Early 1960s black radio, you would have been listening to rhythm and blues music.

00:15:22Some of the early sounds of Motown, you would have been listening to some blues artists.

00:15:28You know, a kind of heavy beat music, not quite soul music yet.

00:15:32And then suddenly you're listening to Elijah Muhammad.

00:15:37Now we have the honor and privilege of presenting to you the messenger of our truth.

00:15:42The horrible Elijah Muhammad broadcasting to us from Chicago, Illinois.

00:15:47Which almost sounds like the voice of God in that moment.

00:15:52And the young black folks are hungry for something different.

00:15:56Read the history of the white man from the very beginning of his exploration of the earth.

00:16:04Was there anything that you found in his history of travel through the nation of the black man that you can call good?

00:16:14Can you find anything of the kind in that history?

00:16:18No.

00:16:19If you are a young Cassius Clay, who has an incredible amount of self-confidence, who's ambitious, who sees himself as someone who's going to make a difference in the future,

00:16:32hearing Elijah Muhammad really gave everything that was going on in his life at the time a purpose.

00:16:37Cassius Clay, a young African-American, growing up at the time that the civil rights movement is just about to explode in America.

00:17:03The white community set up laws that restricted the African-American community from exercising their constitutional rights.

00:17:14He's growing up in segregation in America at its worst time.

00:17:19There were a number of organizations that were struggling, really, to address the crisis over civil rights.

00:17:27Much of the leadership would have been coming out of the churches.

00:17:30There was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

00:17:35There was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Dr. King, Martin Luther King, civil rights icon and leader, was a part of.

00:17:44There's Urban League, which, as its name suggests, was involved in improving conditions of African-Americans in cities and the nation of Islam.

00:17:52My father was a preacher, and I used to sit and look at him, preach and faint.

00:18:00The early nation of Islam teachings really worked along several lines.

00:18:07First, there were daily living tips, advice, if you will.

00:18:13Don't eat pork.

00:18:14You dress a certain way.

00:18:16You present yourself a certain way.

00:18:18That there was no such thing as heaven and hell, which runs counter to the teachings of orthodox Islam, that white people were devils, and Elijah Muhammad was God's messenger on earth.

00:18:33The nation of Islam is very flesh and blood materialist in their understanding of what evil is, what good is, and so forth, as opposed to other religious belief systems in which there's a spiritual unseen element.

00:18:49It's a thoroughly American phenomenon.

00:18:52The nation of Islam preached separatism.

00:18:57Elijah Muhammad made it very clear.

00:18:59We've tried to live with you.

00:19:00You don't want to live with us.

00:19:01It was totally at odds with the prevailing integrationist sentiment of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the civil rights movement.

00:19:14Seek separation from this people and not try seeking integration.

00:19:20You can't integrate with them.

00:19:22If you integrate with them, you cannot be happy.

00:19:26You say, yes, there will.

00:19:28So if you don't want to live with us in peace, here's the option.

00:19:31Give us all that we need.

00:19:33Give us a certain amount of land in America and let us build a nation of our own so we don't have to depend on you and you don't have to have a contradiction with us.

00:19:42White America weren't about to do either of those things, so the nation had to go about building a nation through buying land, building farms, opening businesses, opening restaurants, different kinds of local mom-and-pop businesses in the black community, so that the black community was indeed controlled by black people.

00:20:03It is the purpose of God to make you a nation of love and peace for the brotherhood of the black man.

00:20:13You know, if you're Elijah Muhammad and your argument is that the whole thing is rigged, right?

00:20:22The whole thing is rigged in favor of white people.

00:20:24You're not going to get rights.

00:20:26Stop asking for the right to vote.

00:20:27Stop asking for civil rights and so forth because it's not in the cards for you.

00:20:31The system is not capable of producing it for you and it's not designed to do that.

00:20:34If that's your argument and you're standing in 1959 or 1960, it's hard to argue against that position.

00:20:51Their critique was a powerful critique for a lot of folks, but I think if you're 18, 19, 20-year-old Cassius Marcellus Clay

00:21:00and you're hearing the Nation of Islam's critique, their critique itself was the sharpest part of the sword.

00:21:14Cassius Clay's true indoctrination into the Nation of Islam began when he met a man named Abdul Rahman,

00:21:23formerly known as Captain Sam, who was in the Miami Temple of the Nation of Islam.

00:21:29He was selling papers on the street.

00:21:34They started talking.

00:21:36Cassius invited Abdul back to his hotel room to show him his scrapbooks and the relationship went from there.

00:21:44He didn't know what the hell Islam was, but now he's being introduced to it in Florida.

00:21:50It makes him feel good about himself and he's learning history.

00:21:54Thirty percent of the Africans that were enslaved in the United States were Muslims before coming here.

00:22:00And these people had family names.

00:22:02They had surnames.

00:22:03They had a history.

00:22:04They had a culture.

00:22:05The first thing that was taken away was identity.

00:22:08And the first thing to take away identity is to take away your name.

00:22:11They were not allowed by threat on life to continue using African names.

00:22:21And to make you submit, you became the property of the individual who owns you.

00:22:27And that meant you took on their names.

00:22:33In the Nation of Islam, there's already hundreds of thousands of other black men and women who have gone through the process of getting a new name that will tie them back to their ancient African roots.

00:22:47Give the slave master back his name, okay?

00:22:50An X is better than whatever the slave master had given you before.

00:22:53Just take the X.

00:22:55And ideally, eventually, you would have an original name.

00:22:58That would have to come from Elijah Muhammad.

00:23:01He bestowed original names.

00:23:02So there are people who could go an entire lifetime with X.

00:23:06Captain Sam invites Cassius Clay and his brother to Detroit, where the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was making a major speech.

00:23:18And he's going to be introduced, of course, by his national spokesperson, Malcolm X.

00:23:24You are gathered here this afternoon to hear the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's message, which you knew in advance was titled Separation or Death?

00:23:36Captain Sam took him to a restaurant, but Malcolm X indeed was, preparing his speech for that evening rally.

00:23:42And there the two met for the first time.

00:23:48Malcolm had no idea who the young man was.

00:23:51But that's where the two met, and they seemed to have had an impression on one another in that short, very brief meeting.

00:24:00I think quickly they recognized something in one another.

00:24:03And as time moved on, they stayed in touch.

00:24:07My father had many people in his life that would come by and who would be nurtured or guided or where the camaraderie existed.

00:24:18We're not asking you to give us some money to make us rich.

00:24:21We put up businesses.

00:24:22The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has set up more businesses than any black man in America.

00:24:26For Cassius Clay to be the student of the national spokesperson had to have had enormous impact on him.

00:24:36He's not trying to build churches.

00:24:38He's trying to build businesses.

00:24:40Because businesses make jobs for you, and churches don't make jobs for anybody but preachers.

00:24:46Cassius Clay, I mean, he had a million and one questions all the time.

00:24:50And my father didn't know how to have all those answers, but he was along the way for that journey.

00:25:03The nation, what it represented, I believe, the white America, was a group of black dudes, you know, plotting against white America.

00:25:12And obviously white America, white men in particular, had been calling the shots for a long time, and they wanted to hold on to that.

00:25:18So they would look at any kind of threat against that as something to be concerned about, and certainly a nation they perceived as a threat.

00:25:25You know, being aligned with these scary people drove a lot of, basically magazine and newspaper writers to try to pry out of Cassius his affiliation with Malcolm and the Nation of Islam.

00:25:46And he just didn't talk about it.

00:25:48He wouldn't talk about it.

00:25:49He didn't hide it in terms of his activity.

00:25:51He moved around, he went to meetings, he read, he discovered, and there were people who just said, lay low.

00:26:12Cassius Clay fights Doug Jones in New York at Madison Square Garden.

00:26:16In those days, the way you sold a fight to the public, the way you sold tickets, was through the newspapers.

00:26:26And what happens?

00:26:27There's a newspaper strike.

00:26:30Cassius Clay was extraordinary during that time.

00:26:34He went down to coffee houses in Greenwich Village and recited poetry.

00:26:40He got on radio.

00:26:42He got on television.

00:26:43And the bottom line was that fight in the middle of a newspaper strike sold out.

00:26:51He was the coming fighter.

00:26:53He was box office.

00:26:56Well, Cassius, they say that the garden is going to be filled for this event.

00:27:00Why do you think that you were able to do that?

00:27:03Because the main attraction will be Cassius Clay, the Louisville lip.

00:27:07And he has predicted that Doug Jones must fall in six.

00:27:11It was an extraordinary marketing performance by Cassius Clay.

00:27:17This will be the 12th straight prediction.

00:27:20And people would like to just to come to see if this guy is really human.

00:27:24Cassius Clay was always fun to watch.

00:27:28He was fun to watch just sitting there.

00:27:31I mean, he was certainly fun to watch in the ring.

00:27:37There's a kind of part of that following that watched because they were waiting for something bad to happen to him.

00:27:47Introducing from Louisville, Kentucky, he's wearing white trunks, he weighs two, four, two and a half pounds, Cassius Clay, Clay.

00:28:02Doug Jones was a good, tough fighter.

00:28:07The things that Clay had done that bothered other guys didn't seem to bother Doug Jones.

00:28:13Cassius Clay is three inches taller.

00:28:15He's in the white trunks, six feet three.

00:28:18Watch his speedy left hand.

00:28:19He's got a beauty.

00:28:20And here you have a standing room crowd only at Madison Square Garden, which is credit to this 21 year older.

00:28:27As I'm watching, I'm scoring the fight, and I'm thinking, oh my God, this is an even fight.

00:28:32Jones in black, 188.

00:28:34Clay, two, it's going to happen.

00:28:36There it is!

00:28:37A good, solid punch.

00:28:48This is scary.

00:28:49Come on.

00:28:50Come on, Cassius.

00:28:51Get your act together.

00:28:54Red one, two, by Clay.

00:28:5745 seconds left in the round.

00:29:00Clay and White originally predicted a knockout in six, but then he decided to cut it down to four.

00:29:06This is the fourth round.

00:29:08My sense is that Cassius liked to make good on his predictions, but he also understood that boxing is a serious game, and saying something doesn't mean that you can do it.

00:29:2015 seconds to go.

00:29:2115 seconds to go.

00:29:26Fans are probably booing about the predictions.

00:29:2815 seconds to go.

00:29:28Fans are probably booing about the predictions.

00:29:28You know, there's always a possibility of a draw at Madison Square Garden.

00:29:43He won a close decision.

00:29:46Five, four, one even, favor of playing.

00:29:51A lot of people at Ringstein thought he lost.

00:29:56He never showed a command in a fight.

00:29:59It was a close fight.

00:30:00So if you want to flip one or two rounds, he's got to fight.

00:30:03Well, he certainly didn't look like a contender for the heavyweight championship.

00:30:13Malcolm X is at the fight.

00:30:16He has become a mentor to young Clay.

00:30:19Malcolm X is born Malcolm Little.

00:30:21He's from Omaha, Nebraska.

00:30:24Born there in 1925.

00:30:25His father dies at a very early age.

00:30:29Malcolm believes he was killed by Klansmen.

00:30:31His mother is institutionalized for mental health issues.

00:30:35While he was a youth, his family is scattered into foster homes, he and his brothers.

00:30:39Gets in trouble with the law.

00:30:41He serves about a seven-year term in prison.

00:30:44And it's there that one of his brothers introduces him to the Nation of Islam and its theology.

00:30:49When he comes out in the early 1950s, he's a dedicated true believer in Elijah Muhammad's message.

00:30:58Islam is the true religion of God.

00:31:02The Negro preacher is one of the worst enemies of his people.

00:31:07He is blind to the knowledge of self and hopes to keep his followers blind.

00:31:12People who have been made blind, deaf and deaf, wake up before it is too late.

00:31:22So much of the focus was on this charismatic, you know, six-foot-six, red-haired spokesperson, you know, Malcolm X.

00:31:30The black people in this country have been the victims of violence at the hands of the white man for 400 years.

00:31:35And following the ignorant Negro preachers, we have thought that it was God-like to turn the other cheek to the brute that was brutalizing us.

00:31:43And in a time when folks thought that Martin Luther King was too radical, in many of their minds, right, you know, Malcolm X was even worse.

00:31:51Today, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is showing black people in this country that just as the white man and every other person on this earth has God-given rights, natural rights, civil rights,

00:32:00any kind of rights that you can think of, when it comes to defending himself, black people should have, we should have the right to defend ourselves also.

00:32:07My father was not one to directly recruit anyone.

00:32:10He would speak to those who were already interested.

00:32:13He adored Cassius Clay at the time.

00:32:16They were in touch all the time.

00:32:17The conversations, you know, to the House and Queens and me being able to speak to him on the phone.

00:32:23And my father, being 17 years older than him, was ahead of the curve in terms of seeing what was around the bend.

00:32:33By that time, my father was already a global citizen.

00:32:38My father's interest in the African-American well-being did not start with the Nation of Islam.

00:32:43He was born into it.

00:32:45It's already in motion.

00:32:46It's not hatched because you enter one entity or another.

00:32:53Several police agencies were watching the Muslims closely.

00:33:02The U.S. Justice Department also had them under surveillance.

00:33:10So everyone's investigating the Nation of Islam.

00:33:12The FBI has the biggest file.

00:33:14One part of this censure of the Nation of Islam is that occasionally they raid a mosque just to, you know, show who's boss.

00:33:22So this happened in the L.A. Mosque.

00:33:25And one person, Ronald Stokes, was killed.

00:33:29In Los Angeles, California, last year, the police shot Ronald Stokes through the heart.

00:33:35There were those Muslims who demanded, as they would, you know, they'd point to Old Testament biblical justice.

00:33:43Eye for an eye.

00:33:44They killed one of us, we killed one of them.

00:33:47Malcolm wanted to take it to the streets.

00:33:50The messenger told them, no, that's not the way we do this.

00:33:54We are a spiritual people.

00:33:56This is a spiritual community.

00:33:58We will take it to Allah.

00:34:00And the powers of Allah will deal with these devils for what they have done to Brother Stokes.

00:34:07It's a fissure within the Nation of Islam.

00:34:11Elijah Muhammad says, wait, the devil's going to get his comeuppance.

00:34:15We have to wait for Allah to work this out in his own good time.

00:34:19We can't be premature.

00:34:20And then there are others, and Malcolm X, I think, leaned in this direction, that said,

00:34:25now all this talk about black manhood and take care of yourself and taking care of the community and protecting yourself,

00:34:31they came into our sanctuary and killed one of our brothers.

00:34:36And we don't really want to hear anything about patience.

00:34:40Elijah Muhammad never talked about revolution or decolonization or armed struggle.

00:34:45That was not his Nation of Islam.

00:34:47That was Malcolm X.

00:34:50And the press is going after him.

00:35:20For those statements.

00:35:22And so now he's having to defend himself as a black man.

00:35:26It's still rare to see African Americans on television.

00:35:30Sports, particularly boxing, had an outsized influence on the way that people saw black folks.

00:35:38There's no question that Cassius Clay is a star in 1963.

00:35:48He was a prototypical 21, 22-year-old who had just come into celebrity and just come into money.

00:35:54And he carried himself that way.

00:35:56Incredibly handsome.

00:35:57He had his pick and choice of women at a point in time.

00:36:01Miss D.D. Shop, we understand you've become an admirer of Cassius Clay, the heavyweight challenger.

00:36:05I met him.

00:36:07I said, hi, how are you?

00:36:10Nice to meet you.

00:36:11And he said, you don't know who I am?

00:36:13I said, no, I don't.

00:36:16Well, I am the greatest.

00:36:19I'm like, okay.

00:36:21That's, you know, that's nice.

00:36:24Who are you going to be pulling for?

00:36:27Well, Cassius.

00:36:29Well, it's kind of hard to say that with him sitting right here, but really, is that the way you feel?

00:36:33She knows I'm the greatest.

00:36:34Like, she's the greatest.

00:36:35You can't name a woman in rock and roll I'll sing up.

00:36:38And he said, well, now, give me your address.

00:36:42Because he was, he talked crazy, but he was an intelligent person.

00:36:49I said, okay, fine.

00:36:51All right.

00:36:51And that's when we went out on our first date.

00:36:57My grandfather.

00:36:58He was a minister.

00:37:00He was a pastor.

00:37:01My favorite gospel song.

00:37:03Yes, Jesus loves me for the Bible tells me so.

00:37:17We were taught strict rules and regulations.

00:37:24He did not play.

00:37:26My mom didn't play.

00:37:28You stepped out of line, you got knocked out.

00:37:32My mother was so strict.

00:37:34She wouldn't even let me and Marcellus go on a date until my brother came with us.

00:37:45He came in there in this limousine with a chauffeur and he rang the doorbell.

00:37:53And everybody was crowding around the car because they knew who he was.

00:38:00They knew him as Cassius Clay.

00:38:03But I still didn't.

00:38:06I was infatuated, I think.

00:38:09I don't know whether it was love at first sight for him.

00:38:11But I was truly infatuated with this man.

00:38:27Cassius was offered a lot of money to fight in England against Henry Cooper.

00:38:32Let's go take it.

00:38:33It should be an easy fight.

00:38:36Cooper really was not expected to be competitive with Cassius Clay.

00:38:40Cassius predicted a fifth round knockout.

00:38:44Oh, Henry Cooper's nothing but a tramp.

00:38:46He's a bum.

00:38:46I'm the world's greatest.

00:38:47He must fall in five rounds.

00:38:49But if you talk about me, I'll cut it three.

00:38:54Oh, I saw the Henry Cooper fight.

00:38:57And I learned a little bit from that about what a trainer does.

00:39:03So here we go.

00:39:04The fight of the year.

00:39:05Clay from the right-hand corner against Cooper of Britain.

00:39:08And Clay has said, I'll beat him in five.

00:39:12We'll see.

00:39:13Everything went as he had planned it.

00:39:16He was beating Cooper with ease.

00:39:20Cooper was cut.

00:39:21And as the ball ends, the second throw, Cooper's top underneath his left thigh has worsened slightly

00:39:27after a couple of left jabs on it from Clay.

00:39:30Henry Cooper was a valiant fighter.

00:39:33He had a good left hook.

00:39:35But he cut so easily.

00:39:38You know, if you rubbed a terrycloth towel across his face, he might cut.

00:39:43This is a good guy.

00:39:44Patched up now.

00:39:45Fully hooked with that left hand.

00:39:47And now he's cut over the left eye.

00:39:48Henry Cooper is cut over the left eye.

00:39:50And it looks to me like a very bad cut indeed.

00:39:54Cassius was really fooling around, extending the fight so he could make good on his fifth round.

00:40:01Knockout prediction.

00:40:04Sitting down at the ringside is one of Clay's 11 managers, Bill Fabersom.

00:40:09And he pulled out to Clay in the interval, cut out the funny business and get down to work.

00:40:15And Cooper's eye already bleeding again in the fourth round.

00:40:18Then, of course, at the end of the fourth round.

00:40:28The bell has sounded.

00:40:31And he's up at about three, Clay.

00:40:35That's at the end of the fourth round.

00:40:36Cooper hit him about two seconds before the end of the round.

00:40:40With the left hook.

00:40:42I ain't took one shot too many.

00:40:44And he still doesn't know where he is.

00:40:46He's still half outside.

00:40:48They're working furiously on him in the corner.

00:40:51Angelo Dundee is trying to...

00:40:52He really is giving him a talking kill.

00:40:55Cooper hit him with this hellacious left hook.

00:40:59Knocked him down.

00:41:00Heard him.

00:41:01He was stunned.

00:41:02If there had been another minute left in the round,

00:41:06Cooper might have been able to finish him off.

00:41:09The play was done.

00:41:11Two seconds from the end of the fourth round.

00:41:14And got up just after the bell.

00:41:16And he doesn't know where he is.

00:41:17He's looking at his corner.

00:41:18When a fighter has been caught with a huge punch,

00:41:25one minute is not sufficient time to shake off the cobwebs.

00:41:30Old school trainers like Angelo Dundee,

00:41:32they know that.

00:41:33And now, oh, ref, torn glove.

00:41:36And something extraordinary has happened

00:41:39because referee Tommy Little has gone over

00:41:42to the timekeeper to ask something.

00:41:45If you look at the full video of that fight

00:41:48and the period between rounds,

00:41:50which has been done many times by many people,

00:41:53the delay was only a matter of six seconds

00:41:56and that really didn't give extra time to recover.

00:42:00Now he comes to round five.

00:42:02And now round five is the round in which

00:42:04today said he would beat Cooper.

00:42:06But now they're proud of Wendland.

00:42:08And beginning to play for a Cooper win.

00:42:11Right on the flare.

00:42:12At the end of the fourth.

00:42:14And now fighting to preserve

00:42:15the professional right here against Tony Cooper.

00:42:18And now Cooper just stands really in a spotty.

00:42:22And I think finally he will have to stop this

00:42:24because of course, Cooper's eye is really

00:42:26in an absolute, it's really stuff.

00:42:29And Tony Cooper's looking at it.

00:42:34He just beat Henry Cooper the way he was supposed to.

00:42:37Opened up the cut, the fight was stopped.

00:42:54Cassius Clay's goal is to become

00:42:57the heavyweight champion of the world.

00:43:02But nobody thought he'd be able to do it

00:43:05if he got in the ring with somebody like Sonny Liston.

00:43:16We've come to Las Vegas to see if Patterson

00:43:18can do any better than he did last time against Liston.

00:43:20With Patterson, you get the impression

00:43:22he's carrying the whole of the United States

00:43:25on his shoulders.

00:43:26Patterson exercised the rematch clause.

00:43:28I had met the president of the United States

00:43:30and he had said to me,

00:43:32you want to try to keep the title

00:43:33because she represents something good.

00:43:36In Las Vegas, an eclipse of the sun is due.

00:43:39But almost no one anticipates an eclipse of sunny.

00:43:42Floyd Patterson got knocked out

00:43:55in the first round again.

00:43:58Clay was at the fight

00:43:59and he jumped into the ring

00:44:01and took the spotlight from Liston.

00:44:05He violated all of the protocols of decorum

00:44:10and he made Liston mad.

00:44:28November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy,

00:44:33the first and only Catholic president

00:44:36until Joe Biden is assassinated in Dallas.

00:44:40For many black folks,

00:44:42you know, it's seen as the death of promise, right?

00:44:46He was the first white politician,

00:44:49really since Abraham Lincoln,

00:44:52to really publicly embrace the cause of black folks.

00:44:56And now the casket.

00:45:00John Fitzgerald Kennedy,

00:45:0235th president of the United States,

00:45:04leaving the White House for the last time.

00:45:06The split between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad was a,

00:45:10you could say it was a long time coming,

00:45:12but it needed a spark.

00:45:13That spark was the JFK assassination.

00:45:17Elijah Muhammad says to his ministers,

00:45:20don't say anything about President Kennedy's assassination.

00:45:24We don't need the heat.

00:45:25You know, if you just go and say something off color,

00:45:28you know, to the press,

00:45:29even though right before his death,

00:45:30we said all the awful things,

00:45:32the worst things we could think about, about him.

00:45:34He's the white devil number one,

00:45:35and he was responsible for the civil rights movement

00:45:39not making progress.

00:45:41Despite all of what we said,

00:45:42in this moment of national mourning,

00:45:44don't say anything.

00:45:47Malcolm had a meeting.

00:45:50People kept badgering him about death,

00:45:53what he thought of the death of the president,

00:45:55and I thought he was giving,

00:45:56probably thought he gave an offer-the-cups statement

00:45:58that would have been meaningless.

00:46:00Had it been anything else

00:46:01except the president of the United States,

00:46:03it might have been meaningless.

00:46:04Malcolm said he thought it was a case

00:46:06of the chickens coming home to roost.

00:46:08That is, just as Kennedy, according to Malcolm,

00:46:12had done nothing while Negroes

00:46:14were being killed in the South,

00:46:16just as he's exporting violence to Southeast Asia,

00:46:20that same violence and tolerance of violence

00:46:22just came back and killed, took the president's life.

00:46:25Malcolm was disobedient.

00:46:28That was a very...

00:46:30That was a statement that was like

00:46:33throwing gasoline on fire.

00:46:35From message to Elijah Muhammad,

00:46:36Minister Malcolm did not speak for the Muslims

00:46:38when he made comments on the death of the president,

00:46:40John F. Kennedy.

00:46:42He was speaking for himself

00:46:43and not the Muslims in general.

00:46:46And Minister Malcolm has been suspended

00:46:48from public speaking for the time being.

00:46:50Malcolm X was silenced.

00:46:52And he suspected that he would not

00:46:57be brought back into the nation of Islam

00:47:00and given his prime position

00:47:02because he was seen as a threat

00:47:05to Elijah Muhammad.

00:47:06In the normal progression of events,

00:47:19there would be no way that Cassius Clay

00:47:22would fight for the heavyweight championship

00:47:25in the world.

00:47:25He had not paid his dues.

00:47:28Nobody wants to fight, Lister.

00:47:29He can beat anybody.

00:47:31But Buxley needed the box office.

00:47:35Stop now!

00:47:36Stop the hunting!

00:47:37Stop the hunting!

00:47:38Come on!

00:47:39Cassius Clay,

00:47:40he did a lot of things, you know,

00:47:42stomping around Miami.

00:47:45He would go up to Liston's camp.

00:47:48Oh, the big ugly bear.

00:47:51I want the big ugly bear.

00:47:52Anywhere he went, he could create a crowd.

00:47:56Liston got really upset

00:47:58when Clay showed up at his house

00:48:01late into the evening

00:48:03and sat on his front lawn

00:48:06and berated him,

00:48:08called him names,

00:48:10and challenged him to a fight.

00:48:13Liston decided that he was going to make his title defense

00:48:16against Cassius Clay,

00:48:18and they was going to teach him a lesson.

00:48:20Don't you have any respect for him at all?

00:48:22As a fighter?

00:48:23As a fighter?

00:48:24I think he should be locked up

00:48:26for impersonating a fighter.

00:48:28He wants me,

00:48:29you tell him to your camera,

00:48:31your TV man,

00:48:32your radio man,

00:48:33and you right there in the whole world.

00:48:36If son of a little whips me,

00:48:37I'll kick his feet in the rain.

00:48:40I'm all out of the rain on my knees,

00:48:42tell him he's the greatest,

00:48:43and get the next jet out of the country.

00:48:45That's what I think about the fight.

00:48:47Here's the plan!

00:48:48The drama

00:48:49was about just how badly

00:48:53this monster

00:48:56was going to destroy

00:48:59this bubbling, beautiful, innocent kid.

00:49:06My father died when I was five years old.

00:49:09My Nashville-born, Memphis-raised mother

00:49:13had an anti-racist consciousness.

00:49:16That was certainly the position

00:49:19from which she was raising me

00:49:20and my older brother.

00:49:23When I read in the newspaper

00:49:25that Clay would challenge Liston

00:49:27for the heavyweight championship

00:49:29on Miami Beach,

00:49:30my mother told me that,

00:49:32she said,

00:49:32that's going to be an extremely expensive ticket.

00:49:36That's going to be something

00:49:37that you and I can't afford.

00:49:40I began saving car washing

00:49:43and lawn mowing money.

00:49:45Here's a very young, black, southern man

00:49:50who is using a slave name

00:49:54to taunt the white establishment.

00:49:57You couldn't have fabricated

00:50:00a more perfect hero

00:50:02for the 11-year-old Jim Lampley.

00:50:11White America wants Cassius Clay

00:50:14to be the good guy.

00:50:17He's this charming, entertaining,

00:50:19brash young man.

00:50:20Move that way a little bit.

00:50:24You're standing in front of my camp a lot.

00:50:32He's loads of fun.

00:50:34He's going to come in

00:50:35and once again,

00:50:36we'll have a guy,

00:50:38if he were to become heavyweight champion,

00:50:41but he's not going to become heavyweight champion

00:50:43because there's no way he can beat Liston.

00:50:45But if he were able to,

00:50:47once again,

00:50:47we'd have a heavyweight champion

00:50:49who's fun, we can enjoy and get along with.

00:50:52Ladies and gentlemen,

00:50:53for those of you out there

00:50:54who won't be able to see

00:50:55the Clay-Liston fight,

00:50:57here is the eighth round,

00:50:58exactly as it will happen.

00:51:00Ah, he did it.

00:51:02Clay comes out to meet Liston

00:51:04and Liston starts to retreat.

00:51:07If Liston goes back an inch farther,

00:51:09he'll end up in a rain side seat.

00:51:12Clay swings to the left,

00:51:13Clay swings to the right.

00:51:14Look at young Cassius carry the fight.

00:51:17I think his appearances

00:51:18on a number of these shows.

00:51:20In some ways,

00:51:21it kind of took some of the spotlight

00:51:24off of his unique boxing skills.

00:51:33I was in San Francisco performing.

00:51:35I was doing a show

00:51:36with Stevie Wonder,

00:51:40the Ronettes.

00:51:42I was in my dressing room.

00:51:44He said,

00:51:46well, y'all wait a minute,

00:51:47wait a minute.

00:51:48And just had this box

00:51:50and he just popped out the ring.

00:51:54I'm like, what are you saying?

00:51:56And he said, will you marry me?

00:51:59I'm like, I said yes.

00:52:01I said yes.

00:52:03The fact that he wanted to marry me,

00:52:05it was shocking.

00:52:06In the last couple of months

00:52:15prior to the fight,

00:52:16I loudly trumpeted

00:52:19to everyone in my neighborhood

00:52:21that I was going to the fight

00:52:24and that I was going to be there

00:52:25when Cassius Clay

00:52:27was going to upset the world

00:52:29and prove that he was the greatest

00:52:32and become the youngest

00:52:33heavyweight champion of all time.

00:52:41My neighbors took great pride

00:52:43and delight in ridiculing me

00:52:47and abusing me.

00:52:50Liston was the real thing.

00:52:52Liston was a legitimate destroyer.

00:52:55Liston was not a talking pretty boy

00:52:58like this show-off from Louisville.

00:53:03I had a conversation with Cassius

00:53:06and he asked me if had I ever been to Miami.

00:53:09And I said, nope.

00:53:11So it was my parents' anniversary.

00:53:14So we thought as a family

00:53:15that this would be a cool time.

00:53:17And so since my parents,

00:53:19while we traveled quite a bit,

00:53:21they had never had a honeymoon per se,

00:53:23so we called it a family moon.

00:53:24He came to Miami

00:53:28as a guest of Cassius Clay,

00:53:31who was his friend

00:53:33and his student

00:53:34and his brother.

00:53:35And Malcolm was suspended

00:53:37from the nation

00:53:38and he was silent

00:53:39and he was going through

00:53:40a lot of crises.

00:53:41And so Clay invited him

00:53:43to bring Betty and the kids

00:53:44and come down there

00:53:44and have a little vacation,

00:53:46relax, get this off your mind.

00:53:47Malcolm was very much

00:53:50a part of Cassius Clay's life.

00:53:54And so there were probably

00:53:55a couple of opportunities

00:53:58where they were seen together.

00:53:59Somebody sees Malcolm X

00:54:01and writes a story.

00:54:03Is Clay a black Muslim?

00:54:06Ticket sales

00:54:07right into the toilet.

00:54:09For the first time,

00:54:11the idea that Cassius Clay

00:54:13might be a member

00:54:15of the nation of Islam

00:54:17pervades the mainstream press

00:54:19in a significant way.

00:54:22And the promotion is starting

00:54:24to get worried about this.

00:54:26Everywhere you go,

00:54:27the rumors are persisting

00:54:29more and more

00:54:29that this fight's going to be

00:54:31a financial flop.

00:54:32Now, we're only a few hours away.

00:54:34You go along with this?

00:54:36Well, I don't know what you mean

00:54:37by a financial flop, Bob.

00:54:39We may not make our nut,

00:54:40but it'd probably be

00:54:41the biggest indoor gate

00:54:44in the history of boxing.

00:54:45You want to have

00:54:47a good guy and a bad guy.

00:54:49You know, Liston is the bad guy.

00:54:51Cassius is supposed

00:54:52to be the good guy.

00:54:53And all of a sudden now,

00:54:55maybe, just maybe,

00:54:57he's a member

00:54:57of the nation of Islam

00:54:59where he's certainly

00:54:59hanging out with these guys.

00:55:01Is there any one thing

00:55:02that you can point to

00:55:03that you've come to realize

00:55:05in the last five or six days

00:55:07that might have caused this?

00:55:08Muslim thing

00:55:09might have slowed it down.

00:55:10My grandfather,

00:55:14who had never been

00:55:15on a plane in his life,

00:55:17flew down to Florida.

00:55:20He said,

00:55:21but I want to stop you

00:55:23from marrying him.

00:55:25He is going to become

00:55:27a Muslim.

00:55:28It just didn't register.

00:55:33One of the promoters

00:55:34in a fight,

00:55:35he sees Malcolm

00:55:37at training,

00:55:39calls him aside.

00:55:41He says,

00:55:41Mr. X,

00:55:44I'll help you

00:55:45if you help me.

00:55:46This fight

00:55:47is going in the toilet

00:55:48and the longer

00:55:49you're there

00:55:49in training,

00:55:51the deeper

00:55:51it's going to be flushed.

00:55:54Do me a favor,

00:55:55I'm begging you.

00:55:56Go home,

00:55:57now,

00:55:58and I'll put you

00:55:59in any seat

00:56:00in the arena

00:56:00you want to be

00:56:01in the line of fight.

00:56:02Malcolm was savvy enough.

00:56:04He knew enough

00:56:04to do it.

00:56:06And Malcolm went home.

00:56:07I do recall

00:56:08my father coming home

00:56:09a little sooner

00:56:10than planned

00:56:11because, of course,

00:56:12him going to Miami,

00:56:14we knew he was going

00:56:14to see my big brother.

00:56:16And the reason,

00:56:19you know,

00:56:20people think

00:56:20that my father

00:56:21was disappointed,

00:56:22he understood

00:56:23exactly why

00:56:25his presence

00:56:27was a bit tender.

00:56:30my father was dedicated

00:56:32to Cassius Clay

00:56:33winning the fight

00:56:34with Sonny Liston.

00:56:39Well,

00:56:40I'd read all the stuff

00:56:41about what had happened

00:56:42at the weigh-in.

00:56:44When the doors

00:56:45bang open

00:56:46at the weigh-in,

00:56:47and here he comes

00:56:49with an African

00:56:50walking stick.

00:56:51Bang, bang, bang.

00:56:52Where's the ugly bear?

00:56:54Listen,

00:56:54I don't know

00:56:55what to say.

00:56:57He went mad.

00:56:58No more

00:56:59spat-footed

00:57:00and better listen

00:57:01to spat-footed.

00:57:02Sugar in our

00:57:03crew printed down.

00:57:04We can't...

00:57:05Very hard

00:57:06to take it seriously,

00:57:08but the older reporters

00:57:10who wanted

00:57:10to believe this,

00:57:12he was so scared.

00:57:14He was freaking out.

00:57:17The doctor somehow

00:57:18cooperated

00:57:19and his blood pressure

00:57:21went through the roof.

00:57:22And the general question was,

00:57:24was he even fit,

00:57:26I don't know,

00:57:27to fight that night?

00:57:29The fire is $2,500

00:57:30for his conduct

00:57:32on the platform.

00:57:36I got a pretty good ticket.

00:57:39The vast majority

00:57:40of white Miami,

00:57:41all of Miami,

00:57:43wanted Clay to lose.

00:57:45In my opinion,

00:57:46the fights are always

00:57:47won with fists

00:57:48and not with mouth talk.

00:57:49I picked listening to win

00:57:50by the fifth round.

00:57:51A lot of white people

00:57:53thought this kid

00:57:56was looking down at them.

00:57:58They hated the idea

00:58:00of a black man

00:58:02saying,

00:58:05I'm the king of the world,

00:58:06I'm going to upset the world,

00:58:08I'm going to do whatever

00:58:09I want to do,

00:58:09I'm the greatest of all time,

00:58:11et cetera.

00:58:12Athletes didn't brag

00:58:12like that back then.

00:58:19Malcolm, after leaving,

00:58:20came back.

00:58:21to be there for the fight

00:58:22because he felt

00:58:24that the spiritual power

00:58:26was on his brother's side.

00:58:29My father would make sure

00:58:32that he trained him

00:58:33differently than Angelo Dundee

00:58:35or Coach would,

00:58:37how to focus on prayer

00:58:38and intent.

00:58:40The prayer rug

00:58:41is simply a clean place

00:58:43to make prayer.

00:58:44You take voodoo.

00:58:46Before prayer,

00:58:47you wash your hands

00:58:48up to your wrist,

00:58:49you wash your face,

00:58:51you wash your ears,

00:58:52you wash your hair,

00:58:53that I'm coming before God

00:58:54and I would like to come

00:58:55before God in my purity,

00:58:57at least my physical purity.

00:58:59It is really just focusing

00:59:00in like today's mindfulness

00:59:02and owning the moment,

00:59:04not just proclaiming the moment,

00:59:06but owning the moment.

00:59:07And so there is a breathing,

00:59:09there is a centering,

00:59:10there is a focus,

00:59:11there is a direction

00:59:13towards the intention,

00:59:14and you're not winning

00:59:15just to win.

00:59:16You have to remove the ego

00:59:17in the process.

00:59:19When he first entered the arena,

00:59:34he was booed.

00:59:40And there was no massive booing

00:59:43for the former mob enforcer.

00:59:47Somehow he was okay.

00:59:51There we see the spotlight

00:59:53on the world champion,

00:59:55Sonny Liston,

00:59:56in his entourage,

00:59:57leading him down

00:59:58from dressing room Bill Ring.

01:00:00The instructions I got

01:00:01before I left New York,

01:00:04rent a car at the airport,

01:00:07drive back and forth

01:00:08between the arena

01:00:10where the event is being held

01:00:12and the nearest hospital

01:00:14so that you will

01:00:15waste no deadline time

01:00:19following Cassius Clay

01:00:21into intensive care.

01:00:23And there he comes,

01:00:24up the rink,

01:00:26bounces in,

01:00:27calm, cool, collected.

01:00:31The Challenger,

01:00:32the Challenger catches

01:00:33Marcellus Clay,

01:00:3522 years of age,

01:00:36unbeat,

01:00:3719th Street,

01:00:38going for all the marbles

01:00:39boxing bench.

01:00:41There really is nothing

01:00:42in sports

01:00:43like a heavyweight

01:00:46championship fight

01:00:47just kind of full

01:00:49of electricity

01:00:50and blood loss.

01:00:53There's two men

01:00:54half naked

01:00:55coming out

01:00:56in front of you

01:00:57trying to hurt each other.

01:01:00I want a clean bow,

01:01:02Glenn.

01:01:02In the event

01:01:03of a knockdown,

01:01:04a man at his down

01:01:04must take an eight pound.

01:01:06Man standing up...

01:01:06You know,

01:01:06I did not understand boxing.

01:01:08I understood him,

01:01:09right?

01:01:09So you're rooting

01:01:10for someone

01:01:11that you love

01:01:12to win,

01:01:14whatever win meant.

01:01:15I mean,

01:01:15I didn't know competition

01:01:16at that point in my life,

01:01:18but I knew that

01:01:18this was his aim,

01:01:19and he certainly

01:01:20did not have

01:01:21a problem orating

01:01:22his aim.

01:01:23Good luck.

01:01:24Shake hands.

01:01:31And in the first round,

01:01:33he made Sonny

01:01:36look clumsy.

01:01:40Your first round

01:01:42in the ring

01:01:43with Cassius Clay

01:01:43was an introduction

01:01:45to something new.

01:01:46And he's looking pretty good.

01:01:48He's got the left hand

01:01:49working.

01:01:49Pop, pop.

01:01:50Affordly fast.

01:01:52Good, long left lead

01:01:53that might keep

01:01:54the champion

01:01:55a bit off balance.

01:01:56There's never been

01:01:57a heavyweight

01:01:57who combined

01:01:58that height,

01:01:59that range,

01:02:01those long arms,

01:02:02the hand speed,

01:02:03the foot speed

01:02:04with that level

01:02:05of confidence.

01:02:07There's no precedent

01:02:07for this.

01:02:08He's the first

01:02:10of his kind.

01:02:12The challenger

01:02:12is jabbing

01:02:13all over body.

01:02:14And at right hand,

01:02:15the best pass

01:02:16of the fight

01:02:16so far.

01:02:23And it hit the

01:02:24way

01:02:26was bigger

01:02:28than worse.

01:02:29We're down

01:02:32to the closing

01:02:32second

01:02:33of this first round.

01:02:34And the long left lead

01:02:36is making the difference

01:02:37so far

01:02:37by Mr. Clay.

01:02:49Things that shocked

01:02:50everybody around me

01:02:52didn't shock me.

01:02:54Ladies and gentlemen,

01:02:55we're looking in

01:02:56with our overhead camera

01:02:58into the corner

01:02:59of Cassius Clay

01:03:00who is still

01:03:01doing the talking.

01:03:02I'm saying to myself,

01:03:03well,

01:03:04Sonny's trying

01:03:04to figure him out.

01:03:05That's why

01:03:06Sonny's not doing anything.

01:03:07From the radio cast,

01:03:09it was just a matter

01:03:10of time

01:03:10until Sonny Liston

01:03:12knocked him out.

01:03:12Yeah,

01:03:13he might be having

01:03:13a little trouble

01:03:14figuring out his style,

01:03:15but we all know

01:03:16Cassius is going

01:03:17to get tired,

01:03:19the body blows

01:03:20will hurt him,

01:03:20and then he's going

01:03:21to get knocked out.

01:03:22I hope that trade

01:03:23won't get too much

01:03:24confidence to do,

01:03:25then he'll get

01:03:26knocked out.

01:03:27But that's youngster.

01:03:29And then in the second round,

01:03:42he wasn't quite

01:03:43as commanding,

01:03:43but in the third round,

01:03:45the way I remember it,

01:03:47in the third round,

01:03:47he landed that right hand

01:03:49and cut Liston

01:03:50on his cheek.

01:03:54Another jarring

01:03:55right hand

01:03:55that time,

01:03:56folks,

01:03:56another one,

01:03:57Sonny,

01:03:58wobble,

01:03:58Sonny wobble,

01:04:00passes heaven,

01:04:00heart.

01:04:03I had never really

01:04:04seen him

01:04:06go at it

01:04:08the way he did.

01:04:10It was,

01:04:11my mouth

01:04:12was like,

01:04:15he beat the hell

01:04:16of that man.

01:04:19He beat that man

01:04:21like he stole something.

01:04:23Sonny has a big mouth

01:04:25below his left eye.

01:04:27He has a cut

01:04:28below the eye,

01:04:29and he's getting hit

01:04:30with all the punches

01:04:31in the butt.

01:04:34So now he has

01:04:36a tactical advantage

01:04:36in the fight.

01:04:41Liston thought

01:04:42he was going

01:04:43to knock him out

01:04:44early.

01:04:45Once he saw

01:04:46that his power

01:04:47didn't intimidate Clay,

01:04:50he got a bit scared.

01:04:52Yeah,

01:04:52I still have

01:04:53notebooks with blood

01:04:54on it.

01:04:56Liston's blood.

01:04:58We're going into

01:04:59Sonny's corner.

01:05:02Joe,

01:05:02I don't know

01:05:02whether you can say it.

01:05:03Look closely,

01:05:04look hard.

01:05:05They're working

01:05:05on the cut

01:05:06below the left eye.

01:05:07It's very difficult

01:05:08to get a shot.

01:05:09I'm saying,

01:05:09well,

01:05:10it's not a serious cut,

01:05:11but he is cut.

01:05:12I wonder what he's

01:05:13thinking about being cut.

01:05:14Now,

01:05:15we'll see if they...

01:05:16The first thing

01:05:17I notice is

01:05:18the cut has turned black.

01:05:20To stop the cut,

01:05:21they use it,

01:05:22they use a drug

01:05:23called Monsell.

01:05:24It's a liquid.

01:05:25You put it on a cut,

01:05:26the cut will turn black.

01:05:28Well, Monsell is banned

01:05:29for one reason.

01:05:31It's dangerous

01:05:31in the eyes.

01:05:34What happens

01:05:35is if it gets

01:05:36on Sonny's gloves.

01:05:40In the middle

01:05:41of the round,

01:05:42all of a sudden,

01:05:42I can't see,

01:05:43I can't see,

01:05:44I can't see.

01:05:45Clay can't see.

01:05:48I think he freaked

01:05:49a little bit.

01:05:51He thought

01:05:52he was going blind.

01:05:53He's talking a lot now,

01:06:16I don't know who...

01:06:17and if you argue

01:06:18with his trainer,

01:06:20you know...

01:06:20He found me

01:06:21that he was arguing

01:06:22with you.

01:06:22Oh, Angelo now

01:06:23is cutting him off

01:06:24a little bit

01:06:24while he gets him ready.

01:06:26There is no falling

01:06:28with the fact

01:06:28he could not see.

01:06:30I think that...

01:06:31Something's wrong

01:06:32with Clay now.

01:06:33Something's wrong

01:06:34with Clay.

01:06:36His eyes,

01:06:36his eyes are bothering him.

01:06:38Ladies and gentlemen,

01:06:39we don't know

01:06:39exactly what happened.

01:06:41They're yelling

01:06:42from Cassius Clay's corner.

01:06:43Something got

01:06:44in his right eye.

01:06:45However,

01:06:46he's blinking badly.

01:06:49Sonny's not

01:06:50trying to part off.

01:06:55I didn't take

01:06:56a transistor radio.

01:06:57I wasn't listening

01:06:58to any commentary

01:06:59of any kind.

01:07:00So I was

01:07:01totally lost at sea

01:07:03trying to figure out

01:07:04what was going on.

01:07:05You had the sense

01:07:15that, well,

01:07:16yeah,

01:07:16this fight is even.

01:07:20I suppose

01:07:21it could go

01:07:22either way.

01:07:26As Sonny's

01:07:27still moving in,

01:07:29Cassius still

01:07:30bouncing

01:07:30clutches away,

01:07:31blocking them.

01:07:34Then it became

01:07:35clear

01:07:35he had

01:07:36recovered from that.

01:07:38We know that

01:07:38Sonny

01:07:39that's what it stands

01:07:41most of the time.

01:07:43Easy target.

01:07:45Of course,

01:07:45his eyes clear.

01:07:47Easy.

01:08:01Second remaining

01:08:03in the sixth.

01:08:05The crowd

01:08:16now cheering

01:08:17the challenger.

01:08:18Let's get over

01:08:18to our champion.

01:08:19Joe, look, Joe.

01:08:20I think that the corner

01:08:21now is getting to worry

01:08:22a little bit now.

01:08:23Now they're working

01:08:24as we know

01:08:25with our camera shots

01:08:26in there

01:08:26below the left eye.

01:08:28They've already worked

01:08:29below the right eye.

01:08:30There you see them.

01:08:30Joe Polino

01:08:31trying to keep

01:08:32that cup closed.

01:08:33Do you feel

01:08:34as though

01:08:34Sonny being

01:08:36bustled up a little bit,

01:08:37tucked up a little bit

01:08:37around the face,

01:08:38will this make a difference

01:08:39in Liston's thinking?

01:08:41Well, they have to

01:08:42make a difference

01:08:42because Liston,

01:08:44I think he

01:08:44don't see too well

01:08:45out of his eye.

01:08:49They might be stopping it.

01:08:50That might be all,

01:08:51ladies and gentlemen.

01:08:52Get up there, Joe.

01:08:53Get up there.

01:08:54Get up in the ring.

01:08:55He's out.

01:08:57He's out.

01:08:57He's not coming

01:08:58out of his corner.

01:08:59He said,

01:09:01that's it.

01:09:01That's enough.

01:09:03What he really meant

01:09:04was, I'm not going

01:09:04out there.

01:09:06And he spit out

01:09:07the mouthpiece.

01:09:13It was, you know,

01:09:16almost otherworldly.

01:09:20Sonny Liston has quit.

01:09:22Cassius Clay

01:09:23is the new heavyweight

01:09:24champion of the world.

01:09:26So I'm tapering,

01:09:27running around the ring,

01:09:29you know.

01:09:30Eat your words.

01:09:31You know,

01:09:32I told you,

01:09:33I'm king of the world.

01:09:34It was just

01:09:35a magical moment.

01:09:39He points in,

01:09:40he says,

01:09:41I fooled you.

01:09:42I fooled you.

01:09:43I fooled you.

01:09:44And it's just bedroom.

01:09:47It was electric.

01:09:48It was exhilarating.

01:09:49I was shouting in the car

01:09:51all the way back

01:09:51to Southwest Miami.

01:09:53Hold it.

01:09:53He's yelling behind us.

01:09:55Cassius is already.

01:09:56Come here.

01:09:57Come here.

01:09:58Come here.

01:09:59I'm the greatest

01:09:59baby I've ever lived.

01:10:00I don't have.

01:10:02I got up on the roof

01:10:03of the house

01:10:04and began shouting,

01:10:06I've upset the world.

01:10:07I'm the greatest

01:10:07of all time.

01:10:08And I just find

01:10:0922 years old.

01:10:10I must be the greatest.

01:10:11And my mother

01:10:12eventually came outdoors

01:10:13and started yelling up

01:10:15at me,

01:10:15get down here.

01:10:16Get, you know,

01:10:17get off of the roof.

01:10:18You're going to get us

01:10:19both arrested.

01:10:21And, you know,

01:10:22you know how your neighbors

01:10:23feel about this.

01:10:24I know the world.

01:10:26I talk to God every day.

01:10:27The God's weapon

01:10:28that came over here.

01:10:29I love the real God.

01:10:33Wait a minute.

01:10:33Wait a minute, Cassius.

01:10:34That was as thrilling

01:10:35as any moment

01:10:36in my life

01:10:37because Cassius Clay

01:10:38was Cassius Clay.

01:10:39He was my hero.

01:10:40But I don't think so.

01:10:41All right, tell us this.

01:10:43All right, Cass.

01:10:44Thank you, Cassius Clay,

01:10:46the heavyweight champion.

01:10:48The scene turns blank

01:10:50for me

01:10:51because I have

01:10:53I don't know

01:10:54how many minutes

01:10:55to write my story.

01:10:57So, you know,

01:10:59I have my little

01:11:00Olivetti typewriter

01:11:02in front of me

01:11:02on a bench

01:11:04and I start typing.

01:11:10I just remember

01:11:12the first word

01:11:13incredibly.

01:11:16Incredibly,

01:11:18the, you know,

01:11:19the posturing,

01:11:20braggart kid

01:11:21was telling the truth

01:11:22all along.

01:11:32After the fight,

01:11:34I told him

01:11:37that I was going

01:11:39back to the hotel.

01:11:41He said,

01:11:42I'll be there

01:11:42in a few.

01:11:44Wait up for me.

01:11:47And he never came.

01:11:52He goes back

01:11:53to the black hotel

01:11:55with Malcolm.

01:11:55They eat vanilla ice cream.

01:11:58They're having a,

01:11:59they're celebrating.

01:12:01Nobody's drinking.

01:12:05My mother told me

01:12:07that I had to give back

01:12:09the ring.

01:12:10And I said,

01:12:11Mom,

01:12:11I can't do that.

01:12:12She said,

01:12:13no,

01:12:13you're going to do it.

01:12:15And you're going to do it

01:12:17now.

01:12:17when I finally saw him

01:12:20early in the morning,

01:12:22it all came

01:12:23to a head.

01:12:27I said,

01:12:28I have to give it back to you.

01:12:31He said,

01:12:32well, what about,

01:12:33I said,

01:12:34no,

01:12:35nothing.

01:12:36I can't.

01:12:39He asked me why

01:12:41and I made up

01:12:42some kind of an excuse.

01:12:44But I didn't want to say

01:12:45that it was because

01:12:48you were becoming

01:12:49a Muslim.

01:12:50I didn't want to say that.

01:12:52I felt it would hurt

01:12:53too bad

01:12:54and that,

01:12:55that wasn't me.

01:12:56I'm not like that.

01:13:03The story really developed

01:13:05the next morning,

01:13:07which was the routine

01:13:08press conferences

01:13:09after a big fight.

01:13:11Who else?

01:13:12I don't like it to me.

01:13:13It's all right.

01:13:14Just keep quiet,

01:13:15relax.

01:13:16That's right.

01:13:16Pull him up?

01:13:17Yeah.

01:13:18One of the young

01:13:19reporters

01:13:20said,

01:13:22so,

01:13:23could you finally

01:13:24tell us,

01:13:26are you

01:13:26a card-carrying

01:13:28Muslim?

01:13:31Cash was kind of

01:13:32jerked up.

01:13:34And then

01:13:35he kind of

01:13:35lashed back.

01:13:37And he said,

01:13:38why are you

01:13:39making such a big deal

01:13:41out of this?

01:13:42I'm a clean-cut boy.

01:13:44I don't fornicate.

01:13:45I don't drink.

01:13:46I don't smoke.

01:13:47I don't run around.

01:13:49I'm with this

01:13:50really nice group

01:13:51of people.

01:13:53I don't have to be

01:13:53what you want me to be.

01:13:56I'm free to be

01:13:57what I want to be

01:13:58and think what I want to think.

01:13:59Redbirds should stay

01:14:01with redbirds

01:14:02and bluebirds

01:14:04should stay

01:14:05with bluebirds

01:14:06and people

01:14:07should not go

01:14:08to places

01:14:09where they're not

01:14:09wanted.

01:14:11Well,

01:14:11all hell breaks loose.

01:14:13It didn't bother me

01:14:15a bit.

01:14:15I knew what my lead

01:14:16was going to be

01:14:17the next morning.

01:14:18The lost,

01:14:19found nation

01:14:21of Islam.

01:14:22They had a guy

01:14:23who was considered

01:14:24the baddest,

01:14:25most celebrated

01:14:26man in the world,

01:14:27the heavyweight champion

01:14:28of the world.

01:14:29Not only that,

01:14:31but he knocked

01:14:32out Goliath

01:14:33and he didn't need

01:14:33five smooth stones

01:14:35to do it.

01:14:36I don't believe

01:14:37in forced integration.

01:14:38Ain't gonna never work.

01:14:39You knew it ain't gonna work.

01:14:41You always knew

01:14:42it wasn't right,

01:14:43but I never did know.

01:14:44Now that I don't

01:14:45found out,

01:14:45you seem to be shook up.

01:14:47And after

01:14:48the Liston fight,

01:14:50Cassius Clay

01:14:51is happy to embrace

01:14:52the nation publicly

01:14:53in ways he could not

01:14:54before the fight.

01:14:55And the nation,

01:14:57this new heavyweight champion

01:14:58claiming to be a Muslim,

01:14:59is happy to embrace him.

01:15:01I'm so glad

01:15:02that Cassius Clay

01:15:04was brave enough

01:15:04to say that he was

01:15:05able to

01:15:09try the message

01:15:12of all his God

01:15:13and Muhammad

01:15:14is his message

01:15:15that he quick

01:15:18a much tougher man

01:15:20than he

01:15:21come to his knees.

01:15:23Malcolm X and Cassius Clay

01:15:39went to New York.

01:15:42He gets up

01:15:43and he says,

01:15:44fellas,

01:15:45I have to tell you something.

01:15:49I am a member

01:15:51of the Lost Foundation

01:15:52of Islam.

01:15:55And from now on,

01:15:57my name

01:15:58is Cassius X.

01:16:01I ain't gonna keep Clay.

01:16:02Clay is a slave name.

01:16:04And so Cassius Clay

01:16:08becomes Cassius X,

01:16:11meaning I don't know

01:16:12my original African last name.

01:16:16And so I take X

01:16:17to represent that anonymity.

01:16:20So he is the symbol

01:16:23of transformation,

01:16:25someone who says,

01:16:26I want freedom.

01:16:27I want to have self-determination.

01:16:29And I have to do that

01:16:31by tying myself

01:16:32back to my identity.

01:16:36They went to the United Nations.

01:16:39And this is an important moment

01:16:40because Clay took the idea

01:16:42that he was champion

01:16:44of the world seriously.

01:16:47Soon after,

01:16:48the new champion

01:16:48came to New York

01:16:49and was shown around

01:16:50the United Nations

01:16:51by his friend Malcolm X.

01:16:53Malcolm X goes to the UN

01:16:55to deliver the case

01:16:56of white supremacies

01:16:59damaging a black America

01:17:01to the UN,

01:17:03to see it as an international

01:17:05human rights crisis,

01:17:07what white America

01:17:08had done to black people.

01:17:10Cassius has been following

01:17:11the religion of Islam,

01:17:13Muslim religion,

01:17:13for the past four or five years.

01:17:15Introducing Clay

01:17:16to African diplomats

01:17:18in the UN

01:17:19serves a few purposes.

01:17:21One is to broaden Clay's horizons.

01:17:23He had not really

01:17:24been involved

01:17:25in international travel

01:17:26and that sort of thing.

01:17:27So it was impressed

01:17:28upon this young black man

01:17:30that Malcolm is tutoring

01:17:31that there's this larger world

01:17:33and larger world

01:17:33of black people

01:17:34and Africa

01:17:35and Africa is becoming

01:17:36independent and so forth.

01:17:37You need to know about this.

01:17:39I can look at people

01:17:40from all over the world,

01:17:41regardless of race,

01:17:42creed, or color,

01:17:43and talk intelligently with them

01:17:44and most of all recognize

01:17:46all of my brothers

01:17:47and sisters in East,

01:17:47people that I haven't recognized

01:17:49over my lifetime.

01:17:51These weren't just

01:17:51dignitaries walking up.

01:17:53These are people

01:17:53that were already a part

01:17:54of our family,

01:17:55our life.

01:17:55This is all separate

01:17:56from the nation.

01:17:57This has nothing to do

01:17:58with the nation of Islam.

01:18:00Being a follower

01:18:01of the Muslim religion

01:18:02had something to do

01:18:03with your winning

01:18:03the championship.

01:18:04Well, I would say so.

01:18:06My religion is the only thing

01:18:08that I can give me credit

01:18:09for pulling me through.

01:18:10Oh, I have heard

01:18:11many people attempt

01:18:12to presume

01:18:13that my father

01:18:14was trying to recruit

01:18:16Cassius Clay

01:18:18in order to repair

01:18:19his relationship,

01:18:20his own relationship,

01:18:21with Elijah Muhammad,

01:18:23which is absolutely incorrect.

01:18:27They were preparing

01:18:28to be in alliance

01:18:30so that they continue

01:18:31studying and working,

01:18:32and it was stopped

01:18:33right in the middle.

01:18:34Cassius Clay

01:18:44was in New York

01:18:46with Malcolm X.

01:18:48Elijah Muhammad

01:18:49announced

01:18:50on the radio

01:18:51that he had given

01:18:53Cassius the name

01:18:55Muhammad Ali.

01:18:56Cassius Clay

01:18:57is a name no more.

01:18:58Is that right?

01:18:59Yes, sir.

01:18:59It's Muhammad Ali.

01:19:00Muhammad means

01:19:01worthy of all phrases,

01:19:02and Ali means most high

01:19:04in the Asian African language.

01:19:06Part of it

01:19:06was a power play

01:19:07that here was Malcolm

01:19:09at the United Nations

01:19:10showing this man around

01:19:13and I'm going to

01:19:14take him back.

01:19:15I'm going to name him

01:19:16Muhammad Ali

01:19:18and he's going

01:19:19to take that name

01:19:21and that's going

01:19:22to reassert

01:19:23my primacy

01:19:24in this battle.

01:19:26Anybody special

01:19:26gave you the name?

01:19:27Yes, sir.

01:19:28My leading teacher,

01:19:28the most honorable

01:19:29Elijah Muhammad.

01:19:30That moment,

01:19:32I think,

01:19:33helped cement

01:19:33the rupture.

01:19:34Malcolm saw

01:19:35the writing on the wall.

01:19:36He didn't tell,

01:19:37he didn't try

01:19:38to get Cassius Clay

01:19:39and Muhammad Ali

01:19:40to become

01:19:41sort of personally

01:19:42loyal to him,

01:19:43Malcolm X,

01:19:44and probably

01:19:46could not have.

01:19:47And Cassius Clay,

01:19:48Muhammad Ali,

01:19:49decided he would not

01:19:51follow a student

01:19:53of the teacher.

01:19:55He followed

01:19:56the teacher himself.

01:19:57There's been great

01:19:57publicity given to the fact

01:19:58that heavyweight champion

01:19:59Cassius Clay

01:20:00is one of your followers.

01:20:01Do you think

01:20:02he's a sincere follower?

01:20:03Well, Cassius

01:20:04is following

01:20:05Elijah Muhammad

01:20:06and I'm no longer

01:20:09a follower

01:20:09of Elijah Muhammad

01:20:10myself.

01:20:12The last time

01:20:13my father spoke

01:20:14with Cassius Clay

01:20:16directly,

01:20:19he was in New York

01:20:20on his way

01:20:21to see us

01:20:23as a family.

01:20:24I knew,

01:20:24I anticipated

01:20:25his visit

01:20:26and it was cut short.

01:20:27He was summonsed

01:20:28to meet

01:20:29with Elijah Muhammad

01:20:30and we were

01:20:33kind of stood up

01:20:34if you use that term.

01:20:36But my father knew

01:20:37what that meant.

01:20:42There was a special

01:20:43bond between them

01:20:45and it speaks

01:20:47to the power

01:20:48of Elijah Muhammad

01:20:51and the hold

01:20:53that he had

01:20:53over Cassius Clay

01:20:55that when Elijah

01:20:59and Malcolm

01:20:59separated,

01:21:02Muhammad Ali

01:21:03went with Elijah

01:21:05and completely

01:21:06rejected Malcolm X.

01:21:08Would you clear

01:21:09this up for me,

01:21:10please?

01:21:10Have you

01:21:11and Malcolm X,

01:21:12the man who helped

01:21:13convert you

01:21:14to the black Muslim movement

01:21:16have the two of you split?

01:21:18When the honor

01:21:18of Elijah Muhammad

01:21:19cuts a man off,

01:21:20well then he's

01:21:21automatically cut off

01:21:22with all of his followers.

01:21:24A lot of people

01:21:25call it a split.

01:21:26It's not a split.

01:21:26He's just one individual

01:21:28who, as we say,

01:21:30went astray.

01:21:31And when, say,

01:21:33like two governments split,

01:21:34one leader takes half,

01:21:36another leader take half.

01:21:37Malcolm X is just there

01:21:38and this is not a split.

01:21:41He's not big enough

01:21:42to be called a split.

01:21:44People would not

01:21:50accept the name

01:21:52Muhammad Ali.

01:21:54Cassius, did the bus trip

01:21:55take anything out of you

01:21:56and was it worth

01:21:56the $1,800 it cost you?

01:21:58I'm Muhammad.

01:21:58My name's Muhammad.

01:21:59Y'all keep calling me Cassius.

01:22:01I'm tired of telling you.

01:22:02You know, you're intelligent.

01:22:03My name is Muhammad Ali.

01:22:04Every time I referred to him

01:22:06in my stories

01:22:07as Muhammad Ali,

01:22:11it would be struck out

01:22:13and it would be changed

01:22:15to Cassius Clay

01:22:16by the Times,

01:22:18you know,

01:22:19and it does.

01:22:20Champ, listen,

01:22:21hopes you don't have

01:22:21another hernia operation.

01:22:23See, now you'd rather say

01:22:24Champ than Muhammad.

01:22:25See?

01:22:26And to his credit,

01:22:30you know,

01:22:30he always doubled down

01:22:31on that fact, right?

01:22:32And it spoke to the fact

01:22:33that ultimately for black people,

01:22:36whatever you call me,

01:22:37you're not going to call me

01:22:38out of my name, right?

01:22:41My name is Muhammad Ali, right?

01:22:43And that, I think,

01:22:44had an incredible impact,

01:22:46particularly on young black folks,

01:22:47right, who,

01:22:48whether it was their own name

01:22:50or names that they come to adopt,

01:22:52you were going to call me my name, right?

01:22:55That's the basic show of respect.

01:22:57Why don't you like

01:22:57to be called Clay anymore?

01:23:00No, Clay was not my name.

01:23:01Once we follow them,

01:23:05believe, hear,

01:23:06understand the teachings

01:23:07of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad

01:23:09and come into knowledge

01:23:10of ourselves,

01:23:11then we want to be called

01:23:14after names of our people,

01:23:15which are names to fit us black people.

01:23:18And Clay was a white man's name.

01:23:20It was a slave name.

01:23:22It hurt me because

01:23:23he was willfully eliminating

01:23:27a part of his identity

01:23:30that that was important to me.

01:23:34And I felt like

01:23:35he was robbing something from me.

01:23:38I wanted to learn

01:23:39so that I could figure out

01:23:41whether it was possible

01:23:42for me to sustain

01:23:43this love affair

01:23:43for Cassius Clay

01:23:45under the banner

01:23:47of a new name.

01:23:48If you were on the right side

01:23:49of race relations,

01:23:51ultimately it became

01:23:52a badge of honor for you

01:23:53that you did say

01:23:54Muhammad Ali

01:23:55and didn't say

01:23:56Cassius Clay

01:23:57because that was

01:23:58the way he wanted it.

01:23:58In the summer of 1964,

01:24:07Muhammad Ali actually

01:24:08went to Africa.

01:24:14They went to Ghana,

01:24:17Nigeria, Egypt,

01:24:19and there was a point

01:24:21on that trip

01:24:22where something remarkable happened.

01:24:25They were in Ghana.

01:24:29One day,

01:24:30Muhammad and his traveling party

01:24:32got in a car

01:24:33and they decided

01:24:34to just drive

01:24:35through the countryside.

01:24:37And as they drove

01:24:39through the countryside,

01:24:40there would be drums beating

01:24:42and messages

01:24:43were transmitted.

01:24:45And people would come out

01:24:47of the countryside

01:24:49and stand on the road

01:24:52and line the road

01:24:54just to be there

01:24:56to see Muhammad Ali.

01:25:00And that had

01:25:02a mesmerizing effect on him.

01:25:06In that moment,

01:25:08it registered in his brain

01:25:10that this is something

01:25:12bigger and more powerful

01:25:15than I conceived of.

01:25:16This isn't just being

01:25:17heavyweight champion

01:25:19of the world.

01:25:20You know,

01:25:21I'm back

01:25:21in my spiritual homeland.

01:25:25That's really the moment

01:25:26that Cassius Clay

01:25:28became Muhammad Ali.

01:25:30When I was in New York,

01:25:59living in New York,

01:26:01and I saw on the news

01:26:02that Muhammad Ali

01:26:03was coming to town

01:26:04to unveil his artwork

01:26:06at the Waldorf Astoria,

01:26:09I said to my housemate,

01:26:12I know him.

01:26:16She said,

01:26:16you know Muhammad Ali.

01:26:18I said,

01:26:19yes,

01:26:19he's my big brother.

01:26:22And I thought to myself,

01:26:24is it dangerous?

01:26:25Not would he not accept me,

01:26:27but is it dangerous

01:26:29because of the forced division

01:26:31to go see him?

01:26:34So I did.

01:26:35I went downtown

01:26:37and I stood across the street

01:26:39and watched the crowd

01:26:39come his way.

01:26:41And somehow or another,

01:26:43he felt me and turned around

01:26:44and beckoned to me.

01:26:47And we were together

01:26:48from that point

01:26:49until he was unable

01:26:51to engage.

01:26:52And that first 24 hours,

01:26:56after all of the public things

01:26:58that he was there

01:26:59at the Waldorf Astoria

01:27:00to address,

01:27:02we talked about everything.

01:27:04And we continued talking.

01:27:06He entrusted me

01:27:07the way I know

01:27:08he trusted my dad.

01:27:10And his big question,

01:27:13one of his first questions

01:27:14when we were away from people,

01:27:16was did my father know

01:27:17he loved him?

01:27:17And it was a painful,

01:27:20it was a painful couple of hours.

01:27:22And it was a painful couple of hours.

01:27:52Literacy

01:27:55Um,

01:27:55better little

01:27:56.

01:27:57And it was a stupid thing,

01:27:59but he knew

01:27:59the question

01:28:00is cause he didn't,

01:28:00but he was trying to do it.

01:28:01And he won't do it either.

01:28:03And the first question

01:28:04was him,

01:28:04and he has a new friend

01:28:05of the same position

01:28:06was a grievance

01:28:06and a piece.

01:28:07And hekumen

01:28:08of the same time

01:28:09that he threw

01:28:10at the Left

01:28:11around the edge

01:28:12and the brave

01:28:13of the although

01:28:14he jumped

01:28:15more than

01:28:15there

01:28:15about

01:28:16so

01:28:18he

01:28:19Jonathan

01:28:19could

01:28:20have

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