The Rumble in the Jungle

Muhammad Ali and George Foreman on the Global Stage

Lewis A. Erenberg

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780226059570
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia nordamericana

The 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, staged in the young nation of Zaire and dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle, was arguably the biggest sporting event of the twentieth century. The bout between an ascendant undefeated champ and an outspoken master trying to reclaim the throne was a true multimedia spectacle. A three-day festival of international music—featuring James Brown, Miriam Makeba, and many others—preceded the fight itself, which was viewed by a record-breaking one billion people worldwide. Lewis A. Erenberg's new book provides a global perspective on this singular match, not only detailing the titular fight but also locating it at the center of the cultural dramas of the day. The Rumble in the Jungle orbits around Ali and Foreman, placing them at the convergence of the American Civil Rights movement and the Great Society, the rise of Islamic and African liberation efforts, and the ongoing quest to cast off the shackles of colonialism. With his far-reaching take on sports, music, marketing, and mass communications, Erenberg shows how one boxing match became nothing less than a turning point in 1970s culture.

1

A REAL FREAK IN BOXING: MUHAMMAD ALI AND THE SPIRIT OF THE 1960S

[Ali] is all the sixties were. It is as though he were created to represent them. In him is the trouble and the wildness and the hysterical gladness and the nonsense and the rebellion and the conflicts of race and the yearning for bizarre religions and the cult of the put-on and the changed values that altered the world and the feeling about Vietnam in the generation that ridicules what their parents cherish.

JIMMY CANNON, 1970

[Clay] is an American who doesn’t wish to be an American, a fighter who doesn’t wish to be a fighter for American patriotism. Now, if this man Clay isn’t a genuine freak, one of the freakiest of all time despite his ideal physical proportions and ring skills, then we haven’t had a real freak in boxing.

DAN DANIEL, THE RING, AUGUST 1966

On their way to their epic battle in Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 30, 1974, heavyweight champion George Foreman and former titleholder Muhammad Ali had come to represent different poles in the raging debate over the role of black athletes in American sports and in the larger fields of race relations, politics, and culture. That the two champions were black raised questions about a Cold War narrative that emphasized progress in American race relations so that any talented young person, regardless of race, creed, or color, could achieve the American dream of success. Olympic athletes were expected to fulfill their patriotic duty and vanquish their Soviet and Eastern Bloc foes in symbolic reenactments of the Cold War. Once they achieved professional success, boxers were expected to serve as proper role models for American boys and young men, and this included a willingness to serve in the armed forces. Yet by 1968 the situation had changed dramatically, especially for black men and women in sports. The impact of the civil rights movement, the growing ascendancy of black nationalism, and the virulent anti–Vietnam War movement worked to challenge the assumptions about the role of black athletes in American life. At the center of this social ferment, Muhammad Ali joined the antiwhite Nation of Islam and refused to serve in the armed forces of the United States. Much to the chagrin of the boxing and political establishment, he rejected his role as an American patriotic symbol and assumed the identity of black and Third World hero. Conversely, his future opponent George Foreman seemed his exact opposite: a living example of the American dream. A beneficiary of the Job Corps, a key program in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, Foreman symbolized a form of liberalism and patriotic civil rights that appeared to be increasingly old-fashioned as the 1960s flowed into the 1970s. In Kinshasa, the question was not just which individual boxer would win but also which set of opposing political and cultural values would triumph.1

No one meeting these two athletes as youngsters would have predicted that they would play such divergent political roles in the overall scheme of things or that boxing would emerge as a focal point for a national and international debate about such weighty matters. Under his original name, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., Muhammad Ali was the product of a relatively stable, two-parent, working-class family. He was born in the segregated black community of Louisville, Kentucky, on January 18, 1942. In the 1950s Louisville prided itself as a border city known for its moderation in race relations. Blacks had the vote and hence a measure of political power to temper some of the harshness of segregation. While schools, parks, neighborhoods, the downtown business district, and places of amusement were largely segregated, because of a strong interracial labor movement and the right to vote, African Americans found more economic opportunities and a better standard of living there than in most Southern cities. Black political power garnered a black park to offset the white one and a separate black college to rival the University of Louisville. In response to Brown v. Board of Education, the city fathers engineered the desegregation of the schools. Neighborhood segregation, however, remained strong. Growing up black in Louisville as the civil rights movement spread across the South, young Cassius could expect some limited economic opportunity, paternalistic white leadership, and a segregated public life to remind him of his second-class status.2

According to several family friends, the Clays were a proud family, descended from slaveholders—Henry Clay on his father’s side and an Irish man named Grady on his mother’s—as well as enslaved women. The family’s apparent stability belied its tumultuous nature, however. As one of Cassius’s early white backers noted: “There was a lot of trouble, bad trouble, between his father and mother . . . but Cassius would bite his tongue before he’d mention it. He had too much pride.” Much of the family’s explosiveness lay with his father, Cassius Clay Sr., a frustrated artist-turned-sign-painter whose artwork decorated many churches and small businesses in Louisville’s segregated black neighborhood. Having witnessed his own aspirations shrink under the weight of discrimination, he took out his frustrations in violent arguments with his wife, the fair-skinned and gracious Odessa, who worked as a domestic for various white families. Cassius Sr.’s drinking and womanizing were sore points in the family. When he drank to excess, he would pick fights with his drinking buddies, his wife, and his sons, Cassius and the younger Rudy. Several times Odessa was forced to bring her husband to court for roughing her up. In one instance, young Cassius tried to protect his mother only to receive a stab wound in his thigh for his efforts. At other times the police picked up Cassius Sr. for reckless driving, disorderly conduct, assault, or battery, always when he was drinking. As an old friend put it, “The father isn’t a criminal or even an evil man. He’s just a frustrated little guy who can’t drink.” As a result, Cassius and his brother, Rudy, grew up in an atmosphere of impending explosion. At the same time, the young Cassius grew up hearing his father pour out his vitriol at a white society that had limited his hopes and dreams as well as those of most black people he knew. Cassius’s father was a proto–black nationalist, though without any formal affiliation.3

Cassius Jr. found sanctuary in boxing, just as George Foreman would over a decade later. At twelve years old his cherished bicycle was stolen. He reported the theft to the nearest policeman, Joe Martin, who ran a boxing program in a nearby church basement. When Cassius threatened to thrash the thief, Martin urged him to learn to box first. From then on Cassius lived, breathed—and talked—boxing. He got up at 5 a.m. for roadwork, went to school, and at night spent hours in the gym. As a boxer he had “something to do every day. Go to the gym, put on my gloves and box.” Although he hung out on the streets, and even belonged to a street gang for a while, he preferred the gym. Boxing became one of the key anchors of his identity.4

Hearing a Rocky Marciano title fight on the radio fed Clay’s dreams of becoming a champion. The other kids made fun of his aspirations and his incessant bragging, but boxing made him “feel like somebody different.” As his reputation as an amateur grew, “pretty soon I was the popularest [sic] kid in high school,” he said. High school and college held no interest because people in his neighborhood who did well in school ended up frustrated and lost on the streets. Poor grades prevented him from graduating, but at the principal’s behest he was awarded a certificate of attendance. Clay could fight but he could hardly read, the latter probably a result of undiagnosed dyslexia. Still, his intense ambition fueled a self-discipline that kept him away from smoking, drinking, and drugs. With the help of black trainer Fred Stoner, who worked on the youngster’s style, and Martin’s entrée with various amateur bodies and local television stations, Clay soon began appearing on Louisville television as he advanced through the amateur ranks on his way to becoming a local hero.5

His distinguished amateur career ultimately led him to the 1960 Rome Olympics, where the six-foot-three boxer won a gold medal as a light heavyweight by beating a Russian and a Pole. The garrulous and handsome Clay also made friends all over the Olympic Village. “With his frilly, hands-down, show boat style he affected as an amateur,” noted Houston Horn in Sports Illustrated, “and the elaborate dance patterns he used to flit away from danger, he cha-chaed through three rounds with the Polish boy and reduced him to bloody defenselessness.” His medal, Horn declared, made him “an international celebrity,” and he spent the rest of his time in Rome making himself “one of the best-known, best-liked athletes in the Olympic Village.”6

After winning his cherished medal, eighteen-year-old Clay followed a conventional Cold War script for American athletes. American and Russian officials understood that international sporting spectacles were perfect settings for their two nations to demonstrate their respective strengths and compete for the allegiance of recently independent Third World countries. In this setting, black and white athletes were expected to be vigorous symbols of an American way of life open to all, regardless of race, creed, or color. The Soviets would attempt to exploit American racial segregation and discrimination, but US athletes were advised to make clear that progress was being made and that racism’s worst aspects were a thing of the past. Clay played his part perfectly, refusing to criticize American society, especially abroad. This made him acceptable in Louisville and across the nation as sit-ins and Freedom Rides raised the question of African American intentions and made many whites anxious about the future of segregation. As Clay recalled about the Olympics, “This Commie comes up [and asks], ‘Now how do you feel, Mr. Clay, that even though you won a gold medal you still can’t go back to the United States and eat with the white folks because you’re a colored boy?’” Clay responded: “Tell your readers we’ve got qualified people working on that problem, and I’m not worried about the outcome. To me, the USA is still the best country in the world counting yours. It may be hard to get something to eat sometimes, but anyhow I ain’t fighting alligators and living in a mud hut.” When the Soviet reporter asked if he really meant it, he replied, “Man, of course I mean it. Who do you think I am? . . . Poor old Commie, he went dragging off without nothing to write the Russians.”7

Clay’s stance earned him praise in the local black weekly, a sign that moderate Negroes (the accepted term for people of African descent during the 1950s and mid-1960s) were also anxious about changes in the city’s racial structure. The Louisville Defender called him “an ambassador of goodwill . . . with his stark honest interpretation of U.S. race conditions.” Amid nationwide racial unrest, Clay’s patriotism earned him praise and produced a sigh of relief from local officials. It also earned him a public reception and television interview with Louisville mayor Bruce Hoblitzell, as well as a celebration at Central High School arranged by Louisville’s leaders. School officials lauded his achievements and his patriotism, and his father was invited to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The mayor also called upon Clay to meet with visiting foreign reporters and dignitaries, to whom he repeated that in the United States he did not have “to live in African mud huts.” As Ali reflected years later, he felt proud to represent “America on a world stage.” “To me,” he said, “the Gold was more than a symbol of what I had achieved for myself and my country; there was something I expected the medal to achieve for me.” Along with his poor school record and his ties to a white policeman, the young Olympic champion seemed like “a good Negro,” one that Louisville and the nation could endorse.8

Just as George Foreman would discover in 1968, Clay found that there was gold in the gold medal for a “good Negro,” acceptable to the larger white community. As a sign of the community’s endorsement, a group of local wealthy white businessmen formed the Louisville Sponsoring Group (LSG) to help guide Clay’s professional career. Initially, the group helped him preserve a safe image amid the racial turmoil of the early civil rights movement. Allied with the Louisville elite, Clay’s first pro fight against white boxer Tunney Hunsacker was billed as a “good deed” benefit for the city’s Kosair Crippled Children’s Hospital. Needless to say, Clay wore trunks adorned with the words US Olympic Team.9

For his professional career, Clay might have chosen mob-connected managers and trainers, as had Sonny Liston, who parlayed his role as an enforcer for the St. Louis mob into a boxing career. During the 1950s and early 1960s the sport was under the control of the International Boxing Club (IBC), a creation of wealthy sportsman James Norris and mob kingpins Frankie Carbo and Frank “Blinky” Palermo. When he became champion, Liston’s mob ties stained his crown, the sport of boxing, and, at the height of the Cold War, the reputation of the United States as a lawful country. Along with the television quiz-show scandals, juvenile delinquency, and mob-run unions, boxing was seen as part of the corruption of the American way of life.10

Clay might have chosen a black management team, as had Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, but black managers still had to rely on white promoters, like Madison Square Garden’s Mike Jacobs. If Clay had to be dependent on white businessmen, a local white management group appeared to him the best choice for a hometown hero. To the public, it seemed that responsible members of the Louisville white elite were in charge. Under this arrangement, Clay became the first corporate athlete in sports, backed by young Louisville millionaires who controlled significant Kentucky industries such as newspapers, distilleries, horse racing, and tobacco. While they hoped to profit by investing in Clay’s professional career, they paid his training expenses and also established a $50,000 trust fund for his future, a $10,000 signing bonus, a guarantee of $4,000 for the first two years, and $6,000 as a draw against future earnings for the following four years. As a result, the LSG came off as paternalistic white knights helping a talented colored boy in need of counsel and control in a sport that was still mob dominated. They wisely chose Archie Moore to train Clay full-time, but when that did not work out, they picked Angelo Dundee as his trainer but kept Clay away from promoter Chris Dundee, Angelo’s brother, because of Chris’s reputed mob ties. All in all, the LSG, composed of the city’s “best” white people, seemed a beneficent influence good for Clay and for the image of the white community of Louisville.11

As Clay ascended the heavyweight ladder, his good cheer, clean-cut good looks, and reputable sponsors helped invigorate a sport dominated by the reclusive champion Floyd Patterson and his sinister challenger Sonny Liston, and reeling from the recent deaths in the ring of Benny “Kid” Paret and Davey Moore. In contrast to the sullen Liston and the desperately shy Patterson, Clay was handsome, open to the press, mob-free—and highly garrulous. Even so, it became clear early on that he was cast in a different mold from other heavyweight boxers, and black fighters in particular. A key symbol of the 1960s cultural explosion, even before he became champion, Clay revolutionized the norms of boxing just as others were challenging conventional wisdom in politics, race relations, and sexuality.

One of the things Clay brought to boxing was a different masculine image of the fighter at a time when young white and black men were beginning to revolt against the expectation that they conform to the rules of the corporation, racial hierarchy, and rigid gender definitions. Instead of slugging it out in the center of the ring as Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, or Sonny Liston did as emblems of tough, raw male power, Clay used his speed, guile, and improvisational skill to outthink and outmaneuver his opponents. As famed artist and boxing fan LeRoy Neiman put it in 1967, Ali “changed the heavyweight concept.” He could not punch like the pile drivers, but he was constantly moving and racking up points: “The fact is that the Big Punch no longer is the major desideratum in heavyweight boxing. The game is counting points, resting heavily on combinations, and placing great reliance on a stiff, steady, punishing jab.” Clay’s punch would not knock a man out, as did Louis’s, but it could cut a man to ribbons and so befuddle him that he never saw the more powerful right cross or left hook. This is what Clay’s assistant Drew “Bundini” Brown meant when he urged him to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!”12

Although six foot three, the young boxer moved like a welterweight, dancing around the ring, peppering his opponents from every angle. Very few big men possessed his agility. This together with his phenomenal speed also allowed him to challenge other ring conventions by holding his left low and leaning his head away from punches. Writer and boxing enthusiast Budd Schulberg argued that this mobility was physically unnecessary, but it added a new psychological weapon: “hit and run, jab and dance, to befuddle, frustrate, and tire the enemy before zeroing in.” Clay’s speed also made him exceedingly difficult to hit. In fact, his willingness to withdraw from danger raised doubts about his toughness, and hence his masculinity, among boxing cognoscenti. Could a boxer who bragged about how pretty he was and how little he got hit get very far in a fistic milieu of bent noses and cauliflower ears? Was he willing to stand and trade punches or would he run at the first sign of trouble? To make the point explicit, Sonny Liston, annoyed by his young challenger’s constant bragging, called him “a faggot,” a lightweight who would fade at the first blow. Charges such as these were rife not only in boxing but in America at large. Along with breadwinning and soldiering, heterosexuality remained a key component of masculinity.13

According to trainer Angelo Dundee, Clay also “changed the way things work” in other ways. “In promoting boxing, he made the fighter the main guy.” In the age of television, his good looks and outrageous manner made him a media star. A good deal had to do with his openness to the press. As Clay put it, “I’m the best friend a reporter ever had because I always give good quotes, changing them around so everybody gets a fresh one.” Even more, he started accurately predicting the round in which his opponent would lose—this began with his two round KO of Lamar Clark, after which he proclaimed, “From now on they all must fall in the round I call.” Jet hailed him as a prophet after he called thirteen out of fourteen predictions correctly in his first seventeen bouts. “I challenged the old system,” he recalled, “in which managers, promoters and owners looked upon fighters as brutes without brains.” In the past, boxers were “...