by GORDON MARINO
Malcolm X (in glasses) and Muhammad Ali (in leather jacket) in 1964 PHOTO/Jack Kanthal/Associated Press
BLOOD BROTHERS
The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X
By Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
Illustrated. 362 pp. Basic Books. $28.99.
There is today a thriving industry of hagiography on Muhammad Ali. It is, however, not easy to explain how the Louisville Lip morphed from a blarney-filled boxer into a global symbol of racial pride and self-respect. According to Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith in “Blood Brothers,” the chrysalis was Ali’s intense but tragic friendship with Malcolm X.
As early as his high school years, Cassius Clay had been intrigued by the Nation of Islam. In 1962, the heavyweight contender traveled to Detroit to listen to the Nation’s “Supreme Minister,” Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X.
For African-Americans, the Nation represented a militant alternative to picket lines, fire hoses and attack dogs. Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm sneered at Martin Luther King’s strategy of nonviolence, supported segregation and declared that the white man was the Devil. How did this hostile-to-paranoid worldview attract the people-loving boxer who was bankrolled by a lily-white investment group?
One of the signal contributions of “Blood Brothers” — a rigorously researched book that gracefully pivots between the world of the ring and the racial politics of the early ’60s — is its excavation of Cassius Clay Sr.’s impact in shaping his son’s views on race, and thereby enhancing the appeal of the Nation of Islam. Roberts and Smith, historians who have written sports books, explain: “Cassius Clay Sr. told parables that taught young Cassius .?.?. about the world. All the stories had the same general theme: Black men die after seemingly harmless encounters with white men.”
At their first meeting, Malcolm X didn’t know who Clay was. But from the start, “Malcolm had magnetized Clay, drawing him toward the inner circle of the Nation.” Within months, the fighter and the minister who was famous for the line “by any means necessary” were orbiting each other.
Though Clay’s boxing brain trust feared that an association with the Nation and Malcolm would deck his chances at a title shot, the fighter was spellbound. At every opportunity, he traveled to sit at Malcolm’s feet and imbibe the stirring and frequently violent rhetoric. The more time he spent with the minister, the more “Clay began thinking of himself as divine, graced by the power of Allah.” When the press asked him about his influences, Clay liked to say, “Who made me is me.” But in many ways, Malcolm X formed the man whom all the world would come to know.
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