My go-to memory of Muhammad Ali was being glued to the radio in our Philadelphia kitchen listening to his 1964 upset win over Sonny Liston for the World Heavyweight Championship. There then followed a career like no other. A braggadocious, charismatic, graceful, hybrid athlete-showman like no other. He owned the media, inside and outside the ring.
But for all his accomplishments and controversy, nothing made more of a gut impact than his stand for civil rights and his position on Vietnam. He gutted his own career–at its peak–by refusing induction in the military draft. He explained–in inimitably Ali fashion–his unvarnished reasoning.
“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he famously said. “Shoot them for what? They never called me nigger.” He pulled no punches.