Decades before NFL player Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police treatment of African-Americans, boxer Muhammad Ali roiled white America with his 1967 resistance to the Vietnam War draft.
The boxer had converted to the Nation of Islam a few years earlier, and he explained his resistance to the war by saying, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."
Ali's resistance to the draft resulted in his being stripped of his heavyweight title, banned from boxing and charged with evasion. (Though he avoided jail time, it would be more than three years before he returned to the ring.) Biographer Jonathan Eig says Ali's protest was unprecedented in those days.
"It was unimaginable for most black athletes to stand up that way and say, ... 'I'm going to play by my rules and to criticize presidents and to criticize the war and to call all of white America a fraud,'" Eig says. "That was radical."
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10 comments:
So now Kaprnk was protesting Police??? At the time he took a knee I understood it was for "social justice" , whatever that means..
Just another Muslim spreading dissention wherever he can and denigrating the country that gave him the freedom to succeed.
Mohammed Ali AKA Cassius Clay by ALL standards was a loud mouthed COWARD. As long as he was flushed with a cadre of white bottom feeders he was a big man. Loved a TV camera and CBS News. I saw a different persona. I saw a man who was a world class coward who wouldn't get near the fighting because he DIDN'T have the stomach for it. He might have gotten a boo-boo on his person and it might have pinched his wallet kept full by a gaggle of white liberals who waded it full. The week before Christmas 1969 I got drafted and I did my time as a soldier begrudgingly yet faithfully. I resented being up-rooted from Crisfield, Md. and sent to other venues. I although kept the honor of the Army in a soldiers way answering duty and performing without regard for myself. NO,I'm NOT any type of hero yet I didn't run like the man so revered or refuse to. I don't see the intestinal fortitude in him others so gallantly displayed everyday in the theater of honor. So,in closing, don't tell me what a hero he was because I see a spineless rat who couldn't face duty or realize honor.
Not fooled.... John R. Aswell,Corporal,101st Airborne Division, US Army, 1969-1972
He was and is a TRAITOR tell him to hang out with Hanoi Jane.
1024 bwahaha, Yeah that whole civil rights movement was just a bunch of whiners. And sure, the US people had nothing to complain about Vietnam; just 50k+ dead over a war that made little sense to many.
Definition of White Privledge: Dodge the draft multiple times with a physical waiver, but go out and still compete in sports, and disparage a POW as not being a real war here, and you become POTUS.
The black guy: stand up against a war that half the country was against at a time when blacks were still facing assault on civil rights and be labeled a traitor. LOL
You guys have really jumped the shark.
Islam and freedom are enemies.
WRONG
Mohamed Ali changed his name because he was a COWARD he didn't change it prior to war?.
Clay fought for a living, was part of the most violent religion in history, and said the war was against his religion. I've always had no respect for him. Someone was drafted in his place.
True 12:15 true
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