Muhammad Ali: Legal battles and his right to fight!

It was reported on June 3, 2016 that Muhammad Ali ‘The greatest’ had passed on and since then there has been an outpouring of reports, tributes, accolades, articles written before and after his life; all extolling the virtues and reminiscing on the life of one so great!

Among these however is an interesting piece on Muhammad Ali’s Supreme Court battle over the Vietnam War, titled, ‘When Muhammad Ali Took on America’ by Hampton Dellinger, first published in 1994 by the Magazine Reconstruction and now reprinted after his death by The Slate. It is about one of Ali’s greatest legal battles and how he submitted himself to the American legal system and how his trust in the system eventually paid off. This tiny history of Ali’s expedition with the law, we share with our readers in this edition: EXCERPTS…

On Feb. 25, 1964, 22 years after his birth in Louisville, Kentucky, and a year before his rebirth as Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion of the boxing world. Clay got the title shot through victories that were few but impressive and an attention-attracting style. Clay did not win in silence. He won in a shower of lyrical self-praise and rhyming bravado. He told anyone who would listen that he was “the prettiest, the wittiest, and the greatest.”

At the end of the press conference following the Liston fight, only a few reporters remained when Clay spoke with seriousness very different from his prior ballyhoo. Pressed to defend the separatist tenets of the Nation of Islam it was rumored he had embraced, the new heavyweight champion said the words that presaged his movement from the sports pages to the front pages. He said: “I DON’T HAVE TO BE WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE.”

Although largely unreported, the statement is crucial because it predicts and explains Ali’s actions for the rest of the decade, actions often unpopular and enigmatic at the time: the announcement in 1964 of his decision to join Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, his declaration in 1966 that he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and his refusal in 1967 to be inducted into the U.S. Army on grounds that participation in war violated the tenets of his religion. The last action meant that for 3½ years Ali was forced to defend himself in court while being prohibited from defending his heavyweight boxing title in the ring.

From the start, sports page condemnation of Ali’s stance on the war was almost universal.

In Chicago, Tribune sports writers began the call for cancellation of Ali’s scheduled March 1966 title fight in the city. The cry was taken up on the editorial page, which wrote, “We find it deplorable that so many Chicagoans are unwittingly encouraging him by their interest in a fight whose profits go largely to the Black Muslims, upon whom Clay counts to rise up and save him from his duty to his country.” One week after the Tribune began its campaign, the fight was canceled. In May 1967, in a seething editorial, Sports Illustrated declared that “without his gloves on, Ali is just another demagogue and an apologist for his so-called religion, and his views on Vietnam don’t deserve rebuttal.” While the effect of such aspersions is hard to measure, the widely disseminated sports page criticisms helped justify the actions of elected and appointed officials that kept Ali out of the ring for so long. For example, many New York City newspaper writers supported the decision of the state’s athletic commission.

Ali did have a few defenders—Howard Cosell of ABC, Robert Lipsyte with the New York Times, and syndicated columnist Larry Merchant, among others. Indicative of their support was their willingness to refer to the fighter by the name he adopted in 1964: Muhammad Ali. The debate over his name may seem trivial. But it starkly symbolizes the potential problems and possible abuses fostered by an almost exclusively white fraternity of sports writers reporting and commenting on the actions and behavior of black athletes.

Banned from boxing, Ali pursued other activities to keep himself busy and solvent during his exile. Although no pollsters recorded black sentiment toward Ali during his exile, expressions of support by leaders across the spectrum of black groups, and by blacks in public gatherings.

In 1967, came dissent from Martin Luther King Jr., who decided that peace in Vietnam and progress in civil rights were causes inextricably intertwined. King died before the killing stopped in Vietnam, but his year of opposition reached deep into the black community. He put a new perspective on the war, which probably led many to view Ali’s opposition in a new light. King repeatedly endorsed Ali’s refusal to fight. In speeches encouraging conscientious objectors, King told his audiences to “admire [Ali’s] courage. He is giving up fame. He is giving up millions of dollars to do what his conscience tells him is right.”

As increasing numbers of blacks developed an aversion to the Vietnam War, Ali began expressing his anti-war stance in a secular vocabulary that resonated with black Americans beyond the Nation of Islam. In court, he depended solely on his religious beliefs to justify his draft resistance.

By the summer of 1968, while supporters, promoters, and his lawyers continued their efforts to find a city willing to allow Ali to fight, the appeal of his conviction for draft evasion had worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had unanimously upheld the jury’s guilty verdict. The Supreme Court was under no obligation to review the 5th Circuit’s decision. And in late August, in one of the weekly conferences in which the justices decide which appeals will be heard, the court members voted not to hear an appeal in Clay v. United States. ALI’S LEGAL BATTLE HAD BEEN LOST! The conviction would stand! The sentence—a five-year prison term—would have to be served.

…But then on Aug. 30, 1968, the Justice Department admitted that Ali had been overheard on telephone conversations with persons, including Martin Luther King, whom the FBI had been wiretapping. It was, as a then Supreme Court law clerk recalled, “like an act of God.”

On the basis of the revelation, the Supreme Court remanded Ali’s case to district court with instructions to determine whether the wiretaps were illegal and, if they were, whether the government had obtained evidence from the recordings that aided its case. Ali, for the moment, was kept out of prison. He was also still kept out of the ring.

In November 1969, Ali’s lawyers finally brought the question of his right to box into the judicial arena by filing a lawsuit against Edwin Dooley and the New York State Athletic Commission for revoking Ali’s license. His lawyers claimed that the commission arbitrarily punished their client “while on several occasions licens[ing] [other] professional boxers notwithstanding evidence that such individuals would be far more likely to be detrimental to the interests of boxing than the plaintiff.” The claim was initially rejected by the federal district judge for lack of evidence. After the dismissal, Ali’s lawyers laboriously searched through New York State’s criminal records and found more than 200 instances of convicted felons being licensed by the NYSAC: men convicted of armed robbery, arson, rape, second-degree murder, and desertion from the Armed Forces had been allowed to box by the NYSAC. In light of the new evidence, Ali was granted a new hearing. THIS TIME THE COURT RULED IN HIS FAVOR; ALI HAD REGAINED THE RIGHT TO FIGHT!

Simultaneous with the lawsuit against the NYSAC, supporters and promoters continued searching the country, supplicating cities and their officials to allow Ali to fight. Finally, in the least likely of places, a city was found willing to submit itself to media condemnations and politicians’ recriminations. Atlanta—in the middle of the South, in the domain of segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox—agreed to give an ostracized black boxer the opportunity to fight. The city’s liberal Jewish mayor withstood pressure from several sides and honored an agreement to let Ali fight Jerry Quarry in October 1970. At the time the deal was made between Ali and Atlanta, the outcome of his case against the NYSAC was still much in doubt. AS IT TURNED OUT, HE WON HIS CASE IN SEPTEMBER 1970. AND, AFTER A 42-MONTH LAYOFF, HE WON THE FIGHT IN OCTOBER.

For the moment, Ali was free to engage in the activity he excelled at without parallel. But he enjoyed a tenuous emancipation. Both the district court and the appellate court that reviewed Ali’s case on remand from the Supreme Court ruled that “the wiretaps were made in connection with persons other than the defendant [and] resulted in no prejudice and had no bearing on defendant’s conviction.” The case was appealed again to the Supreme Court and this time the justices agreed to hear it.

On April 19, 1971, Chauncey Eskridge argued before the Supreme Court that Muhammad Ali was a legitimate conscientious objector, forbidden to fight by a religion in which he fervently believed. Two months later, the court declared a winner in Clay v. United States: a unanimous decision for Muhammad Ali!

In a doubt-filled world, it is comforting to see someone so pure in his devotion and so sure in his belief. Ali also seems to vindicate America. ALTHOUGH HE SURELY COULD HAVE, HE REFUSED TO EMIGRATE, INSTEAD SUBMITTING HIMSELF TO THE AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM. And in the end, the system worked. Ali’s conviction was overturned. He was allowed to continue with his career.

But today it is clear that Ali’s 1971 vindication in the Supreme Court was, at most, an exceedingly narrow victory. Before Ali won in court, he lost a vast amount of a commodity whose value cannot be measured.

Hampton Dellinger is a partner with the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.