Blog: Muhammad Ali: Champ, Activist, Person with a Disability
Dennis Borel
CTD Staff
June 15, 2016
Like all kids in sports-crazy Detroit, I grew up following professional sports. Boxing was the top individual sport and the heavyweight champion was the most followed single athlete. When Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. arrived on the scene, we all liked him. He was fun and far different than someone like Sonny Liston who, to use a classic Detroit description, was someone you never wanted to run into in a dark alley. Our young eyes didn't expect to see Clay beat Liston, but he did.
When Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, most of us saw it as solidarity with a black religion. We made no connection with the worldwide Islamic faith- which quite frankly, we knew little about. But this didn't make a difference to us- he was still very cool.
Some conflicting opinions came in 1967 when Ali refused military service in Vietnam. This was a time when it was a very sobering rite of passage for teenage boys, like me, to register for the draft on our 18th birthday. Sentiments on Ali, like Vietnam, became ambivalent. We were wondering what made him so special. As time passed, Vietnam seemed ever harder to accept. It was not the righteous war of our fathers, and we knew it. There was a reason the government could not fill the ranks with enlistments and had to draft many young men. Ali's stance didn't seem so questionable.
When he came back to the ring in 1970, we realized that we'd missed him and still respected him as a fighter. By then, I lived in the North African country of Morocco and had opportunities to visit remote villages and simple family shelters lacking electricity, water, heat, and much decoration. Many times though, a picture of Ali was tacked to the wall, usually cut out from a magazine. This convinced me that Ali was the most famous person in the world.
Ali's disability became apparent after his storied boxing career ended. Even as Parkinson's took more of his ability to speak and move, he never shied away from the public. In a stunning appearance, he lit the torch at the 1996 Olympics with his arm shaking uncontrollably.
Ali was not the only person with a disability to make public life a lifelong pursuit. Yet, there is no doubt that his dignity, peaceful bearing, and huge global fame helped carry a message-- disability can happen to anyone, is simply part of the human condition, and doesn't matter in the measure of a person.
Photo by Ira Rosenberg [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
---
About Dennis
As CTD's Executive Directed since 2000, Dennis is frequently called upon for research, policy analysis, and recommendations to the Texas Legislature and state agencies on issues surrounding disabilities.
