Muhammad Ali

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Narrator

On the morning of February 26, 1964 Cassius Clay returned to the Miami Beach Convention Center, where the previous night, he had beaten Sonny Liston to claim the heavyweight title. He was just 22 years old. Clay gave a very gentlemanly interview. "I don't have to be wild and crazy anymore, "I can be a gentleman," and all the older reporters left very satisfied. The younger reporters, we stayed talking to him. "What's this about you and Black Muslims," and suddenly, he said, "Red birds stay with red birds "and bluebirds with bluebirds. "You stay with people of your own kind. "That's nature." I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want to be and think what I want to think. And that really sounded like an athletic Declaration of Independence, something that we had never heard before in any sport, and it was really a very powerful moment, and then he went on. I wasn't forcing myself into neighborhoods where I'm not wanted, I wasn't busting down those schools and all the shame in America. I wasn't doing all that, I was just around colored people, and now I'm catching more hell than all of the people who's raising hell. I like everybody. One Negro come in the school and the police force is out there, and the men and the governor and the problems with the hoses and race riots and whoopin' them. -

Reporter

So do you think it's awful? Yeah, it's awful, that's why I'm not around it. I might get killed. (jazz music) -

Narrator

The next day, he told a reporter, "My religion is Islam. "I believe Allah is God. "I think this is the true way to save the world, "which is on fire with hate." He is 22 years old, and he's standing up to the whole establishment. "I am the world champion. "I have changed my religion, and you're simply "going to have to accept it." His joining a faith community, which is in essence what he did, it wasn't accepted, it was seen more as something political because of the racial aspect of it. It was unacceptable to many, many white people of the time. He was vilified and it was thought that it was, he was un-American, that was the big thing, he was un-American. (police dogs bark) -

Man

Demonstrations of all types are prohibited.

Curfew at 9

00 p.m. -

Reporter

Curfew at 9

Guardsman used tear gas to break up another Negro protest. (crowd yells) -

Narrator

Curfew at 9

In the four years it had taken Cassius Clay to rise from little-known Olympic hopeful to heavyweight champion of the world, African Americans had waged a nonviolent campaign for integration, organizing freedom rides, challenging the unlawful segregation of schools, and staging a massive demonstration on the Mall in Washington, D.C. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. (crowd yells) (jazz music) -

Narrator

Curfew at 9

They were met by a white America violently determined to maintain the racial status quo. -

Crowd

Curfew at 9

We don't want to integrate. -

Announcer

Curfew at 9

Winner by a detail in the seventh round, Cassius Clay. -

Narrator

Curfew at 9

Clay thrilled those who identified with his strong sense of racial pride, but many others were angered by what they regarded as his lack of humility, his refusal to abide by the old social order, and his association with the Nation of Islam, which preached the separation of the races. To them, Cassius Clay was ungrateful and offensive, and a threat that needed to be stopped. I was, as a child, afraid of Cassius Clay because he called up violent emotions in Black men specifically in the community, I lived in Watts, at the time. And what I saw in him was something that could cause anything to happen. And it was true of a lot of people, certainly everybody was afraid of Malcolm X because he said, "They're stealing from us. "They're robbing from us, they hate us, they kill us." We all knew it, but you're not supposed to be saying that. And you could see it resonating in people, those people who were living in that 500 years of oppression. Muhammad Ali was a spark, and I was standing in a field of gasoline and thinking, "Oh no, I'm gonna be in trouble."