The Resurrection: Atlanta, Racial Politics, and the Return of Muhammad Ali

Abstract

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again. --William Cullen Bryant, Battle Field (1839) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The wait was over. On October 25, 1970, on eve of Muhammad Ali's first professional boxing match in forty-three months, African Americans flooded streets of Atlanta, anxiously anticipating what Ali called his day of judgment. They came from all over: Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, Harlem, Miami, and Philadelphia. Peachtree Street had never been more colorful. Rows of chrome covered cars, gold limos, and purple Cadillacs lined road. One fan, a slender man smoking a foot-long pipe, wore an ankle-length mink coat matched with a tall mink hat. Another man who washed dishes for a living told a reporter that he had saved for months so he could buy a puce suit and bet one thousand dollars on Ali. Women dressed up like it was New Year's Eve, sporting bouffant Afros, fake eyelashes, and sleek sequined mini skirts. The fight attracted a wide assortment of people, politicians and celebrities, hustlers and gangsters. The biggest names in black America were in town: Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Hank Aaron, Harry Belafonte, Curtis Mayfield, Diana Ross, Coretta Scott King, Whitney Young, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, and Julian Bond. It was, Sports Illustrated observed, the most startling assembly of black power and black money ever displayed. (1) That evening, Ali strutted down Atlanta's thoroughfare with a loud, laughing entourage following closely behind. fans shouted his name as he passed corner newsstands, clubs, hotels, theaters, and restaurants. Crowds swarmed him. In Atlanta, nothing else seemed to matter with champ in town. He owned city. It was a powerful scene, playwright Jack Richardson wrote, sheer black, street-corner ebullience out for a Sunday evening promenade. When Ali's fans spilled out onto streets of Atlanta one knew that there was a new tempo in town that was much more devastating to Old South rhythms than gospel cadence of a freedom march. (2) His fans last saw him in ring on March 22,1967, when he knocked out Zora Folley in seventh round at Madison Square Garden. About a month later in Houston, as war in Vietnam intensified and draft calls escalated, Ali refused induction into United States Army on religious grounds, claiming that he objected to wars not declared by Allah. Many Americans already despised him for his membership in Nation of Islam, a separatist Muslim sect framed by mainstream media as a subversive cult. Excoriated as an insincere, unpatriotic draft-dodger, Ali polarized country. Immediately after he refused induction--before he had even been charged with a crime--the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) suspended his boxing license and withdrew his heavyweight championship title for conduct detrimental to best interests of Athletic commissions across country followed New York's example, leading critics to predict slow death of boxing. On June 20, 1967, a federal court convicted him of draft evasion and sentenced him to maximum five-year imprisonment and $10,000 fine. For next three and a half years, free while his case worked its way through courts' appeals process, Ali waited to learn his fate. (3) Never before was his widespread support in black community more evident than when he returned to boxing in Atlanta, a rapidly changing metropolis and Black Mecca of postwar New South. During civil rights era, white moderates and black elites envisioned a harmonious city, proudly proclaiming Atlanta as City Too Busy to Hate. Atlanta's culture of racial moderation and influence of Leroy Johnson, a black state senator who wielded significant political power, made Ali's return to boxing possible. For over three years, promoters and politicians in dozens of cities had failed to arrange an Ali match, but Johnson leveraged his unique connections with black and white municipal politicians to secure a boxing license for former champ. …