How Lucky We All Were to Witness That Kind of Greatness

Greatness. I am not an expert on Muhammad Ali or sports. I know little about his record as the best boxer ever. But I know the impact he had on little black kids of the 60s. When I was a kid (I was born in 56) nobody had seen the likes of him, as you can imagine. Think about the times. Think about what was going on. He was mouthy, beautiful, just fine and when he got in the ring he kicked everybody’s ass.

He was black America’s Elvis in many ways. He was hip hop before hip hop. He was Kanye before Kanye, but he had substance and class (Ooops did I say that). When he said he was so pretty, he was right. And when he said he was the greatest, he didn’t lie. He delivered. Even in the way he lived his truths. And because of that, he was one of the scariest men to mainstream America at the time.

Interesting, today the world mourns him. He is the lead story. And America has lost an icon.But if you look back, he was hawked by the FBI, he could have lost everything when he refused to fight in a war he didn’t believe in, and because he dared to be who he is on his terms, white America hated him. I think about the emotion he inspired in Atlanta when he held the Olympic torch.

He was the great black hope for young black kids, but white people in that time were so afraid of him and what they saw as his arrogance. How dare he?And it didn’t help that he was a BLACK Muslim at a time when people didn’t know what the hell that was. You might as well have called him a tiger with two heads. Many of us remember when he went from being Cassius Clay, to becoming Muhammad Ali. At that time there were openly Muslim folks like him and Malcolm X and then there were people like Lou Alcindor who would go on to be openly known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar or Jim Brown who never changed his name.

And because he was not a Baptist or Methodist he was more than a little scary to church going black folks. People were unsure of anything that wasn’t Martin Luther King. But they were proud of him. In fact, another sports icon, Jackie Robinson public icon, took him to task for being a hindrance to the civil rights movement because he was a member of the Nation of Islam.

I remember being at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and people were running and screaming. I thought a lion had gotten loose. In a way I was right. He was hanging at the zoo with his kids and fans literally mobbed him.

Remember he was a lion when white America wasn’t trying to have any black lions running around this country. And now, as we eulogize him, he is universally considered the greatest athlete and humanitarian of all time. If you don’t know, I hope you take time to learn about him and all that he was. His book, the Soul of a Butterfly is a great place to start.

I am struck this morning most about how lucky those of us black Americans who were raised in the 60s are to have lived during this time of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali. For our kids and our grandkids, Muhammad Ali will be the stuff of legend and lore. For us, he is and will always be real AND the Greatest. He was a bona fide hero. Rumble, young man. Rumble.