Muhammad Ali

Perhaps the greatest man I ever shook hands with (twice!) and the second time he had lost [or wasn't using!] the power of speech but that didn't seem to matter somehow as the eye contact alone said it all. His hands were enormous! I felt at 6' tall I would be the same size as him in height but I was towered over and in shaking his hands that his fingers could stretch up my arm! He came to sign at Blackwell's Book Shop and the general books department had a biography or something I forget, but I just had to see the great man. Some folk thought a 'sportsman' was beneath a book signing at the famous academic book shop. Charisma charm presence? Call it what you will I felt the presence of greatness. They were wrong. 

When his name was called, he refused to step forward.  His name was called two more times, again he refused to step forward. Finally, an officer warned him he was committing a felony punishable by five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. Again, Muhammad Ali refused to budge when his name was called. He was the Greatest Fighter who ever lived yet he refused to fight in a war he did not believe in, saying he was not going 10,000 miles to “drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights.” He added “this is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end.” As a result, he was arrested and on the same day the New York State Athletic Commission suspended his boxing license and stripped him of his title. Other boxing commissions followed suit. Ali would not be able to obtain a license to box in any state for over three years. Years later he explained, “Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free. And I made a stand all people, not just black people, should have thought about making. He added “I wanted America to be America…Freedom means …carrying the responsibility to choose between right and wrong…and, I did what I thought was right.”