Joe Louis was a Civil Rights activist the American public is STILL unaware of. The American Press simply was not ready for what has become known as Civil Rights. Joe wrote 84 articles for the newspaper THE NEW YORK AGE in which he deprecated Bing Crosby for his lily-white annual golf tournament and the president of Eastern Airlines, a WW I ace when he and two colleagues were disallowed to get on an Eastern Airlines plane in the deep South. When Joe was in the Army, he told his officers that he would stop giving exhibitions unless blacks were allowed to be closer to ringside and in England during WWII, he objected to blacks being disallowed to attend a movie theatre in southwest London and two US generals were reassigned over the flap according to Joe’s lawyer, Truman Gibson.

Jack Johnson simply did not like Joe Louis. Jack simply was jealous of Joe’s popularity and success and he trained Abe Simon for his challenge (unsuccessful) against Joe.

Ali gave the Black people, the weak and the disadvantaged individuals as well as plenty of communities subjugated, brutally oppressed and deprived for centuries, the courage and conviction with regards to the fact that they possess the fundamental rights, honour and capabilities identical to their white counterparts and people from the privileged strata of the society. As a result, these people set out to build a true sense of dignity and began to take immense pride in their identity.

Ali, like MLK, wasn’t fighting exclusively for the American Black people rather he chose to represent the ‘peoples’ of the world, long exploited by their ‘colonial masters’.

He took on the entire American government at a time when most Americans would literally love to burn him alive! More crucially, he was the first celebrity to have firmly placed in his model of ‘righteous rectitude’ the establishment of the rights of people in America as well as the end of injustice of astronomical proportions meted out to other world nations by the USA, the UK and their loyal allies.

The fact that a huge sense of pride as well as a considerable degree of preparedness to fight for their rights was being instilled into the people and nations, oppressed everywhere on earth, by a ‘Black Muslim Boxer’, was readily translated as the biggest menace for the American society. Let’s not forget, many Black people, too, were quite enthusiastically vocal against everything Ali was saying or doing. They were the ‘Uncle Toms’ and/or had had vital interests that they could fulfil only by pleasing their ‘white masters’. However, as far as the US government was concerned, Ali’s ‘head-on collision’ with them was deemed far worse than just a ‘humiliation’ as he shook the very core of the ‘mighty’ US government with his explicit and firm rejection of their foreign policy. As though he said to them yelling at the top of his voice: Feel Me, Grill Me, Better Still- Kill Me But Don’t Even Try to Seal Me* (*Seal his soul). This amounted to a forthright dismissal of their widely propagated and generally accepted claim of superiority over other races and nations! No American had said or done anything like it to any US administration; countries upon countries queued up to lick the US government’s ar.e; and most of the European countries, virtually all in the Middle East and Asia; and the greatest majority of the African nations had chosen to align themselves politically with the expectations of the USA and of course, some of its prominent allies.

The US government explored all avenues to annihilate Ali at any cost or at least, crush his globally well-documented and publicised principles, values and beliefs, which had already begun to wobble their belief of invincibility as the ‘supreme authority’ within the USA and made a sizeable dent in its schema founded upon, ‘world-domination’. Inextricably, they progressively became paranoid in the face of Ali’s unconventional and idiosyncratic stance, which he thoroughly backed up with each of his actions.

Ali went from one college to another, not to defend his initiatives or put his approaches, his actions across to the college community, at large, but predominantly to challenge the clichés ingrained deep in the hearts of the White students and academics. Millions witnessed the magnitude of hostile gestures with which he was greeted; and the innuendos as well as sordid remarks that did ensue. Yet to everyone’s sheer surprise, at all colleges/universities, across all intellectual, logical and affective dimensions, he simply pulverized each one of the aliaversysts (My silly innovation – it means ‘Ali Haters’) or the hawkish proponents of the US foreign policies. None of them-not a single student or professor could refute the rationale of Ali’s moral stand on all issues; not in the slightest! No wonder, almost all of them became the biggest ‘Ali Fans’, soon afterwards.

It has to be asserted that Ali was the first ever ‘Human Rights Activist’, who clearly ventured ‘beyond boundaries’; he never confined his struggle to the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ alone. Johnson, MLK, Malcolm X and many more would all be revered for centuries to come but Ali is ‘unique’ in that he has changed the way people everywhere value their rights and pride themselves on their physical appearance, race, colour, ethnicity, occupation and competency. He was, amongst all, most instrumental in the success of the Civil Rights Movement yet he is massively, indeed, deliberately underrated.

Ali is the reason why hundreds of millions of people the world over have learnt how to get back up after a fall; thousands of top MNCs are inspired by his life both in and outside the ring; and almost all sports personalities and teams read books about him and watch documentaries on him simply to find an additional degree of determination and to borrow some of the Greatest’s incomparable fighting spirit.

Muhammad Ali is the ‘force’ that explains why Michael Jordan could ‘fly’, Tiger Woods dreamed to become the greatest golfer of all time and Obama could become the President of the United States of America. There was no one like him for hundreds of years prior to his arrival and there would not be anyone like him in another three or even four centuries. Take my word for it!