Excerpt: Ebony, January 1975

MUHAMMAD ALI CHALLENGES BLACK MEN

‘Respect your women; love and protect your children; stand up for what you believe’

By Charles L. Sanders.

¶ 4           

Ali paused at the top of the plane’s steps long enough to savor the cheers of the crowd—paused just long enough. His timing is phenomenal and he is as much a master of showmanship as is Cab Calloway. He stood up there like a Black Prince. His well-fitting brown suit picked up, in the sunlight, the copper in his skin and he sort of, with his smile and all, sparkled like a penny polished with Bon Ami. His face was unscarred and, as men faces can be was something approaching beautiful. He bounded down the steps and plunged into the sea of people surging toward the plane and he headed toward Mrs. Odessa Clay, his mother, who stood a bit apart from the crowd wearing the white mink stole Ali gave her not long ago. The Champ, who cuts and batters men in the ring and sends them, as he sent Joe Frazier, on trips of suffering and pain, greeted his mother with a tender embrace.

¶ 19

“You mentioned something about me always standing up when my mother comes in a room,” [Ali] he said “One of the reasons I do it is because she’s my mother and she’s the one who gave me life.  But another reason is that all Muslims give great honor to womanhood, the black woman mainly, because the Hon. Elijah Muhammad teaches us that she is the Queen of the Planet and the Mother of Civilization. If a man doesn’t respect his woman then he doesn’t respect himself, for woman is man’s field which produces his greatest crop, his children, and if man doesn’t protect his field then bad children are produced.”

¶ 31

“I challenge all black men to not just play with their children and think about how cute they are and buy them all kinds of pretty things. I challenge them to help their children find their purpose in life and then see that the purpose is fulfilled.” —Muhammad Ali

Ali brought beauty and grace to the most uncompromising of sports. Thank you.

(B/W photo by Howard Bingham)