Long live Muhammad Ali! Democracy! Democracy! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sting like bee! Float like a butterfly! Concerning the wonderful, recent ZCommunications Daily Commentary – “Mike Marqusee: Fifty Years Ago, Cassius Clay ‘Shook Up The World,’ “- I was 16 years old fifty years ago, living and studying at an exclusive, elite co-ed boarding and day school, Chadwick School, Rolling Hills, southern California when Cassius Clay ‘Shook Up The World’ by defeating the Big Bear, Sonny Liston, in six rounds and uttered those famous words, ” Sting like bee! Float like a butterfly! ” – that resonated globally. And he also uttered, “I’m the greatest!” that personified and symbolized his defiance to illegitimate authority and his quest for human dignity denied for centuries to Afro-Americans. l listened to the fight on radio, stunned by the dramatic ending that changed boxing, me, the world, and America forever, offering a beacon of hope and dignity to the Third World! He was colorful, brash, inspiring, and uplifing who became a hero to young Americans , particularly Afro-Americans, setting the world ablaze with his fiery, defiant internationalist, anti-imperialistic and anti-colonialist rhetoric , refusing to be subservient to European colonial powers and America, the superpower & global imperial power, blasting Southeast Asian nations, Vietnam and Laos, to bits with indiscriminate, carpet bombing; to supporting client states in Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, to perpetuating an apartheid system in the American south; to aiding and abetting racist aparthied South Africa and the corrupt, tyrannical semi-feudal Congo regime of General Mobuto. Every thing about him was uplifting and defiant against the oppressive status quo! He refused to be an Uncle Tom, a puppet of the dominant, elite white racist European colonial and imperial structure in America, that had enslaved Afro-Americans, that had perpetrated genocide against Native Americans, and that also had foreign policy implications! He was defiant towards the status quo and illegitimate authority such as staunch American racial supremacists like Governor George Wallace of Alabama, Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia, a populist Democrat, who came to prominence as a staunch segregationist,[1] when he refused to serve black customers in his Atlanta restaurant, in defiance of the Civil Rights Act, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Senator Eastland of Mississippi, and Bull Connor, the brutal racist police commissioner of Montgomery Alabama and KU Klux Clan member, the extremist group that espoused racial hatred against jews and Afro-Americans, including other minority groups. And I’ll never forget him in his boxing fight with Floyd Patterson for the World Heavyweight boxing championship, in which each time after he would hit Floyd with his trademark, stinging jab and other punches, he would ask him angrily, “What’s my name?”, because Patterson refused to call him Muhammad Ali. He called him Cassius Clay which absolutely infuriated him because he refused to recognize his re-discovered cultural and ethnic identity. He felt disrespected by him. And so Muhammad Ali was determined not to allow Patterson to do that to him nor anybody else. He was determined to keep, embrace, and nurture his newly rediscovered identity, and he would not permit anyone to interfere with his desire.
What a mountain of a man that Muhammad Ali is! A true North American folk hero like Grizzly Adams, Henry David Thoreau, the American essayist and non-violent social and political activist, and American novelist, Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Clemens! God bless Muhammad Ali! .
Even now what Muhammad Ali did fifty years ago continues to inspire me and billions of people globally. It resonates in my heart, mind, soul, and body. He has people realize that they can overcome adversity, oppression, and other injustice and achieve dignity and fulfillment in their lives. Thus, it shows very clearly that love, truth, determination, courage, faith, and hope ultimately prevail.
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