An excerpt from Rolling Stone - (bold is mine)
Muhammad Ali Was a Hero, But His Enemies Have a Legacy Too
Pentagon learned from the epic mistake of making a martyr of the world's most gifted and famous athlete
By Matt Taibbi
Ali was famously a person who could make a stage out of anything. Even his weigh-ins turned into acts worthy of Carnegie Hall. But on April 28, 1967, the U.S. government handed him the biggest stage of his life.
At an armed forces examining station in Houston, he refused to step forward to a white line when his name was called. That one step would have signified his willingness to be drafted.
The awesome drama of that moment made Ali hated at the time, but also turned him into a martyr to history. The symbolism of a man who made his living fighting refusing to fight was extraordinarily powerful.
Ali furthermore brilliantly used the moment to link America's bloody quagmire overseas to the domestic warfare that had broken out in places like Watts, Rochester, Newark, Cleveland, Detroit, and Division Street, Chicago.
"My conscience won't let me shoot my brother or some darker people," Ali said. "And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger."
Asking Ali to step forward that day in Houston was an epic strategic blunder. The last thing Lyndon Johnson or his successor Richard Nixon needed was to have Americans of any age, but particularly young people, making a connection between racism at home and wars of colonial domination abroad.
But by demanding that a man as prideful and magnetic as Ali submit to becoming a cheerleader for the bloodshed in Vietnam, that's exactly what they did.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/muhammad-ali-was-a-hero-but-his-enemies-have-a-legacy-too-20160605#ixzz4AunxnDuH
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment