In April of 1967, Muhammad Ali arrived at the U.S. Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station in Houston, Texas. “Standing beside twenty-five other nerve-racked young men called to the draft,” writes David Remnick at The New Yorker, Ali “refused to respond to the call of ‘Cassius Clay!’” Offered the choice of going to Vietnam or to jail, he chose the latter “and was sentenced to five years in prison and released on bail.” Ali lost his title, his boxing license, his passport, and — as far as he knew at the time — his career. He was newly married with his first child on the way.
When Ali refused to go to Vietnam, he was “already one of America’s greatest heavyweights ever,” notes USA Today. “He’d won an Olympic gold medal for the United States in Rome when he was just 18 and four years later, against all odds, defeated Sonny Liston to win his first title as world champion.” Ali, it seemed, could do no wrong, as long as he agreed to play a role that made Americans comfortable. He refused to do that too, becoming a Muslim in 1961, changing his name in 1964, and speaking out in his inimitable style against racism and American imperialism.
