"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam after so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"
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Muhammad Ali, center, leaving the Armed Forces Induction Center in Houston, with his entourage, after refusing to be drafted.Credit...Associated Press
On June 22, 1967, I picked up a copy of the Pacific Stars and Stripes — the official military newspaper — in Saigon to find, there on Page 1, a story about Muhammad Ali, whom a judge had just sentenced to up to five years in prison. He was, at the time, the greatest boxer in the world, even if he’d been stripped of his world heavyweight title months before. His crime? Refusing the draft.
The conviction and sentencing — he got a $10,000 fine as well — had happened two days earlier, but it took that long for the news to travel to us in Vietnam. It wasn’t exactly a shocker: He had first refused induction at the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station in Houston that spring, and refused to be inducted into the Army, saying he was a conscientious objector — “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” he had told reporters.
Still, everyone in Vietnam was talking about the verdict. Ali, who had recently converted to Islam but whom many papers still referred to by his birth name, Cassius Clay, was big news, whatever he did, and he was easily the most famous person to refuse to serve in Vietnam thus far. And he did so for reasons that spoke directly to the complex social upheavals of the time. Because America treated its black people as second-class citizens, the champ said he’d stand his ground by refusing to serve in its Army. As for the war in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali, condemned racial discrimination in America, declaring that “no Vietcong ever called me nigger.”
Ali’s actions were in stark contrast to that of one of his predecessors, during a preceding war. In January 1942, just a month after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Joe Louis, the world’s heavyweight boxing champion, went to Camp Upton on Long Island, N.Y., to enlist as a private in the United States Army. Like Ali, Louis was a black man from the South — Chambers County, Ala., to be precise — and he also used his sports celebrity to talk about race. Asked about his decision to volunteer for our nation’s racially segregated Army, Joe Louis — cherished by Americans of all colors and persuasions as “The Brown Bomber” — replied, “Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain’t going to fix them.”
Ali’s story was a little different. Originally, he had complied with the federal requirement to register for the draft at age 18, doing so in April 1960 in his hometown, Louisville. But he’d flunked the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which measured arithmetic reasoning, word knowledge and paragraph comprehension, along with assorted aptitude tests.
Assigned a Selective Service classification of 1-Y (“Registrant qualified for service only in time of war or national emergency”) because of his low test scores, Clay seemed secure in the belief that he’d never be drafted.
“I said I was the greatest, not the smartest,” he joked after learning of his test scores. But then a not-so-funny thing happened. As President Lyndon Johnson expanded the military effort in South Vietnam, a need for more service personnel became apparent, and standards for draftees were lowered. All of a sudden, Ali’s status was upgraded by his Louisville draft board from 1-Y to 1-A, and he became instantly available for call-up.
In mid-April 1967, Ali told reporters in Louisville that he’d refuse to be inducted, saying, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam after so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights." And so on April 28, 1967, Ali, at the time in Houston, refused induction when his name was called. (He was staying in Houston after successful defenses of his title at the Astrodome in November 1966 and February 1967.)
In an orchestrated event before multiple news outlets, he was asked three times by the station commander, Lt. Col. J. Edwin McKee, to step forward for induction. He refused each time. Colonel McKee then led him away to be arrested. On June 20, an all-white jury in Houston voted 11-0 for conviction. Within a few days, the news was all over Vietnam. Most of the soldiers I knew understood that despite the social and political progress in the 1960s, civil rights in America still had a ways to go. Still, it was hard to separate that awareness from the feeling that the guy was grandstanding, and that every man who refused service was making life harder for those of us who didn’t. After all, we all knew he would never have been asked to “drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam.” Instead he’d most likely have been assigned to the Army’s Special Services division, which brought us entertainers like Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann-Margret. Ali, much like Joe Louis did in World War II, would have donned boxing gloves, maybe traded punches with another celebrity and perhaps exchanged jabs with a G.I. or two while everyone cheered. The Army treated everyone equally, but it treated some more equally than others. Instead, Ali became a popular speaker at colleges and universities. His antiwar statements struck home with students loath to be sent to Vietnam (although others were turned off by his staunch support for some of the Nation of Islam’s more radical proposals). I suppose you could say we had mixed feelings, in the end — we didn’t like that he refused to join us, but unlike other celebrity opponents of the war, like Jane Fonda, he didn’t lend support to the enemy. We didn’t like his antiwar speeches, but we weren’t sure he was wrong, either.
In 1971, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction and he resumed his boxing career, handicapped by more than three years in exile from his profession. In the final 32 years of his life he suffered from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease and died last June in Scottsdale, Ariz., at age 74, revered as a martyr for the causes he believed in and for which he fought.
Louis, the world heavyweight champion for almost 12 years, died of cardiac arrest in Las Vegas, in April 1981, at age 66. President Ronald Reagan arranged for Louis to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. His grave is marked by a bronze headstone that says simply “Louis, The Brown Bomber, World Heavyweight Champion, 1937-1949,” above and below an oval image of the fighter in his famous boxing stance.
Different times, different wars, different reactions by two magnificent athletes, both champions of principle to the challenges that life threw at them. Bob Orkand was drafted into the Army during his senior year at Columbia and retired as a lieutenant colonel of infantry. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. READ 164 COMMENTS ---------- Forwarded message ---------
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