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Blood brothers book ali muhammad8/28/2023 He is world champion he is "king of the world" he is now Muhammad Ali, a converted Muslim for the world to see. In 1964 the underdog Clay - fond of spouting silly and rhythmic poetry in pre-bout press gatherings - fights Sonny Liston and takes his first championship belt. Soon enough, politics and Malcolm X's growing dismay about Elijah Muhammad's serial infidelities give way in this narrative to Clay's boxing prowess. "My first impression of Malcolm X," the boxer confided, "was how could a black man talk about the government and white people and act so bold and not be shot at?" The young prizefighter first met Malcolm X in Detroit: the young lion and the older lion, both trying to figure out how to tear at the bone of racism. "My hobby is stirring up Negroes," Malcolm had said. Elijah Muhammad, whose presence hovers over this book like Mephistopheles, treated him like a son. He was claiming headlines and gathering followers. Malcolm was leading protest marches through an assortment of major cities. If the morphing of Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali needed a final push, the stardom of Malcolm X seemed to provide it. "Both worlds - boxing and the Nation of Islam - demanded physical fitness and a purity that rewarded resistance to temptation," the authors note. its teachings and guidance began to salve his wounds of second class citizenship.There was something at ground level that seemed to intertwine the sport of boxing and religion. The young Clay, entering the ranks of professional boxing, became intrigued with the Nation of Islam. Once out of prison, Malcolm X - who had found Islam behind bars - became a rising star in the Nation of Islam, steadily promoted by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Young Malcolm, fatherless and restless, became a thief, a pimp, and a convict, entering a Massachusetts prison in 1946, where he would remain for six years. "One man was scarred by his father's absence," the authors write, "the other by his father's presence." Earl Little was a black nationalist, a follower of the teachings of Marcus Garvey, and a man who unsettled many Lansing whites. Did he really slip beneath the streetcar? Blacks scoffed, believing it foul play at the hands of whites. The father's life came to a gruesome end in 1931 in Lansing, Michigan, following a streetcar accident. He brought home a boxing medal from the 1960 Rome Olympics, and began to find it harder to swallow why he must still dine in segregated restaurants.Įarl Little was Malcolm's father. The younger Clay - feral, handsome, and loud - was a star in the Louisville boxing scene who wanted to get away from his father. was a mean and petty man who beat his wife. Although the book promises more than it delivers, it is earnest and, by focusing mostly on the years between 19, smartly constructed.įamily dysfunction lay in the upbringing of both men. Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith's "Blood Brothers" tells the story of these two galvanizing and hypnotic personalities, and of the America that produced them. These were not men with the patience to wait for justice. As for Ali - who changed his name from Cassius Clay in 1964 - he pronounced he would not abide by the military draft. Being denied the vote might give way to bullets, Malcolm X ominously intoned. They even possessed a penchant to make some blacks, of a conservative bent, quite nervous. Edgar Hoover's FBI, local police departments, and mainstream society. Both were in the vanguard of black independent thinkers who shook up a host of people, among them J. Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali were two of the marquee figures from that fire-next-time era. The newsreel footage of the clashes - against the backdrop of state-sanctioned segregation - shocked the world. Attempts to register to vote, to integrate colleges and universities, to become part of the American Dream, as it were, often resulted in bloodshed. In the early 1960s, as we know, America was alternately beguiled and frightened by the urgency of demands for equal rights from its black citizenry.
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