50 years ago today: Muhammad Ali vs. Vietnam War
Fifty years ago today, the anti-Vietnam War movement gained a unique ally: Muhammad Ali. When, on February 17, 1966, his Louisville draft board reversed a series of previous policies and decisions and announced his eligibility for the draft, Ali was widely quoted as having said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong."
Early in 1966, a majority of Americans most assuredly did have a quarrel with the Vietcong (even if not 1-in-10 knew - or cared - who they were). At that stage of the war, Americans were already tired of hearing about it and wanted it ended - quickly. Half or more still supported LBJ's war policies, and the vast majority favored either bombing North Vietnam into submission or forcing a Korea-like permanent truce (which, by halting Vietcong operations in the South, would have constituted an American "victory").
African Americans, however, were less gung-ho. Three-fourths favored either a cease-fire or withdrawal. Malcolm X had come out against the war as early as 1963. Blacks already knew that Vietnam was a classic example of a rich man's war, poor man's fight. In disproportionately high numbers, it was their sons and brothers who were doing the fighting and dying in Vietnam. So when Muhammad Ali declared that he had no quarrel with the Vietcong, he undoubtedly spoke for many other African Americans as well. (According to New York Times sports reporter Robert Lipsyte, who was with Ali in Miami the day draft board ruled, what he actually said was, "I ain't got nothing against them Vietcong.")
Ali's reticence to "go shoot my brother, or some darker people or some poor, hungry people in the mud for big powerful America" was undoubtedly motivated by more than his conscience. Lipsyte (and others) made it clear that Ali's first reaction was one of "Why me?" Didn't the hundreds of thousands of tax dollars he was already paying constitute sufficient contribution to the war? Wealthy whites had been allowed to buy their way out of their country's most desperate battle, the American Civil War, but now a young black man of humble origins couldn't do the same for one of the nation's least justifiable aggressions?
