Smith and Roberts also sifted through thousands of pages of FBI documents. “He told us many stories he hadn’t told before,” Smith said. Saxon was there when Clay defeated Sonny Liston in Miami and decided to change his name to Ali. Saxon replied: “That’s what they call divine intervention, my brother.” Smith introduced himself and said, “I’ve been looking all over for you.” While doing research for the book seven years ago, Smith knew Saxon was still alive but was having trouble tracking him down.īy pure coincidence, Smith was flying to a friend’s wedding in Detroit and was sitting at a gate at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport when he saw a man in a wheelchair wearing a glistening ring with “ALI” embossed on it. Smith said the best interview he got for his book was “Captain” Sam Saxon, who ran a mosque in Miami in the early 1960s while Clay was training there for a boxing match and introduced Clay to Malcolm X. “Those young women forced him to confront part of his past,” Smith said. Smith thinks the daughters of both men made him shift his thinking. Only years later did Ali begin to regret the estrangement. “Some viewers will be surprised how vengeful and vindictive Ali was after Malcolm was murdered,” Smith said. Ali sided with Muhammad and disavowed Malcolm X. In 1964, Malcolm X sharply critiqued the behavior of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and was booted from the organization. “Having that level of intimacy on film is hard to replicate in a book,” Smith said. The daughters of both men also received plenty of airtime and are passionate and eloquent. Smith called Ali’s brother a compelling interview and his voice and intonations evoke his brother, who lost his ability to vocalize his thoughts with the bravado of yore once Parkinson’s Disease set in.
The electricity that came from his body was sacred.”
“He had that air about him,” the younger Ali said. One person the documentary got to interview that Smith did not: Muhammad Ali’s younger brother Rahman Ali, who recalled Malcolm X himself. “By nature he is evil,” Malcolm X said in an archival clip, referencing the white man. Malcolm X boldly critiqued the dominance of white society in a way that made many whites and even some Blacks uncomfortable.
#Blood brothers book ali muhammad free
The doc shows Ali in the 1960s proclaiming: “I’m free to be what I wanna be and think what I wanna think.” “They’re changing the way the world saw the Black man.” “It was a moment of transition and Ali is really at the forefront of this transition, as is Malcolm,” Boyd said. There is a tremendous cost to being a free and loving person.” “On the other hand, there’s a cross to bear. “Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali were the two most freest of Black men in the 20th century,” said West in the doc. The documentary provides added perspective from figures such as civil rights activist Al Sharpton, historian and Harvard University professor Cornel West and University of Southern California professor of cinema and media studies Todd Boyd. Secretly, Clay began meeting with the leaders and struck up a friendship with Nation of Islam’s Malcolm X, who was intrigued by Clay’s fame and potential to bring more followers to the cause. But while he was known for spouting memorably absurd poetry to boxing writers, he had become interested in the teachings of the Nation of Islam as a way to understand where he stood as a Black man in America. He was a man of many masks.”Īli was a gold medalist for Team USA at the 1960 Rome Olympics, then became a comic braggart known as the Louisville Lip. He said he and Roberts spent a long time talking about possible books connected with Ali and decided to focus on this particular relationship, which hadn’t been explored to this level of detail before.įor Ali, Smith said, “this was a really fascinating period in his life as he evolved from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.
0 kommentar(er)
