Muhammad Ali ON The Fourteen Words

 

This is fairly straightforward, below are two pages from Muhammad Ali: His Life And Times. I met or at least saw The Greatest when he visited London. The linked photograph was taken by me.

I’ve been an Ali fan since I saw him knock out Sonny Liston (as Cassius Clay) in 1964 – I was eight years old at the time. I can also just about remember his first fight with Henry Cooper (although I don’t think I rooted for either of them). This entire book is now available free on-line from various websites, but the two pages here, which were scanned a few years ago, sum up Ali’s position on race, mine, and that of every right thinking white man, including those who for all the usual reasons would not dare to enunciate it so clearly, if at all, ie, I don’t hate the white man/black man, but I want my grandchildren to look like me. And my great-grandchildren. To the Nth generation. What is so terrible about that?

Ali mentions also en passant the Vietnam War. He took a lot of flak at the time for his principled stand against this unnecessary conflict, but the passage of time demonstrated that he was right and we were wrong.


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