The movie shows how it was almost inevitable that he would find an outlet for his radicalization, and a meeting with Malcolm X led him into the Nation Of Islam and he became a follower of Elijah Muhammad. In the early sixties there were probably no two scarier figures in white America's mind than Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad. While Martin Luther King Jr. might be a troublemaker, he wasn't advocating equal rights by "whatever means necessary" as Malcolm X was. In the days leading up to Ali's first fight for the heavyweight championship with Sonny Liston, his camp was doing everything they could to ensure that no one found out about his conversion or his association with the Nation of Islam for fear that the promoters would cancel the fight.
The movie does an excellent job of both analysing the fight between Liston and Ali in 1964 that gave him the world championship and showing how that catapulted him to the status of international celebrity and idol to black people in America and abroad. Unfortunately his association with the Nation Of Islam appears to have made people in power nervous. For in 1966, without any tests or warning, the draft board upgraded his status to 1A - meaning that he could be drafted and sent to Vietnam. At the time opposition to the war wasn't as widespread as it was even a year or two later, and so when Ali said he wouldn't serve on the grounds of being a conscientious objector for religious reasons he created a national uproar. Every single boxing commission in the United States revoked his licence and he was stripped of his title. When he was found guilty of refusing to be inducted into the military in 1967 he faced a potential five-year jail sentence, and a substantial fine. It wasn't until 1971 that the Supreme Court of the United States reversed that decision and he was acquitted.
Article comments
1 - King
The problem is that he wasn't made in Miami. I love Ali...and I love the Ali center. Louisville for life.