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Abstract
While Muhammad Ali has been the subject of countless articles and books written by sports historians and journalists, rhetorical scholars have largely ignored him. This oversight is surprising given both the tradition of social movement scholarship within rhetorical studies and Ali's influential eloquence as a world renowned celebrity espousing nonviolence. Ali's rhetorical performances played a pivotal role in radicalizing the civil rights movement as it (d)evolved into twin forces: Black Power and anti-Vietnam war movements. Ali's rhetoric conjoins messages of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, enabling critics to re-envision civil rights texts. Ali's enduring rhetoric provides a model for analyzing texts and social movements invoking the paradox of the violence in nonviolent civil disobedience.
Acknowledgements
The coauthors would like to thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for sage suggestions on revisions; more helpful input also came from members of the Visual and Cultural Studies Research group at BGSU. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the National Communication Association convention.
Notes
1. Chuck Klosterman, “Reason for the Rhyme, ” ESPN.com, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=alirap1; Henry Adaso, “Hip Hop Timeline: 1925-2006, ” About.com, http://rap.about.com/od/hiphop101/a/hiphoptimeline.htm.
2. Charles Lemert, Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of Irony (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), 4.
3. Victoria Gallagher, “Black Power in Berkeley: Postmodern Constructions in the Rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael, ” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (May 2001): 144.
4. Jeffrey B. Kurtz, “Bearing Witness Still: Recovering the Language and the Lives That Made the Civil Rights Movement Move, ” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8 (2005): 327–54; Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, ed., Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement 1954–1965 (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006).
5. Institutional violence is also often referred to as structural violence in the literature on peace, justice and conflict studies.
6. Johan Galtung, “Cultural Violence, ” Journal of Peace Research 27 (1990): 291–305.
7. Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 2005), 239.
8. Robert Lipsyte, “Prophets, ” in The Gospel According to ESPN: Saints, Saviors & Sinners, ed. Jay Lovinger (New York: Hyperion, 2002), 28.
9. Grant Farred, What's My Name: Black Vernacular Intellectuals (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 60.
10. Debra Hawhee, Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005).
11. Amy Bass, Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 34.
12. David Barash and Charles Webel urge a reconsideration of “nonviolent resistance.” They maintain that “nonviolence is proactive …more than reactive” and that proponents such as Martin Luther King, Jr. were “masters at taking the initiative and keeping their opponents off balance” by employing “tactics” that were “unpredictable, spontaneous, radical, and experimental.” David P. Barash and Charles P. Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2009), 465.
13. John Carrieri, “Muhammad Ali: ‘The Greatest, ’” U. The National College Magazine, April/May 2007, 9.
14. Clayton Goodwin, “‘No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger’: Celebrating 40 Years of the Greatest Boxer of Them All, ” New African (April 2004): 64–66.
15. Quoted in Thomas R. Hietala, “Muhammad Ali and the Age of Bare-Knuckle Politics, ” in Muhammad Ali: The People's Champ, ed. Elliott J. Gorn (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 147.
16. As a result, Ali faced death threats. Howard Bingham and Max Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight: Cassius Clay vs. the United States of America (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 2000), 119, 117.
17. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 119.
18. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 118–21.
19. Quoted in Goodwin, “No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger,” 66.
20. Quoted in Farred, What's My Name, 63.
21. Daniel A. Grano, “Muhammad Ali Versus the ‘Modern Athlete’: On Voice in Mediated Sports Culture, ” Critical Studies in Media Communication 26 (August 2009), 205.
22. Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric and the Possibility of the Subject, ” in The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse, ed. Ian Angus and Lenore Langsdorf (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1993), 54.
23. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” American Rhetoric.com, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
24. Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 138.
25. Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 138.
26. Quoted in Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 138.
27. Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 138.
28. Quoted in Ira Berkow, “Age Hasn't Cooled the Fire Inside Ali, ” New York Times, April 28, 1985.
29. John Ernst and Yvonne Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority: Louisville's Antiwar Movement, 1966–1975, ” The Journal of Southern History 73 (2007): 105–42.
30. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority”, 108.
31. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 119.
32. Quoted in Marqusee, Redemption Song, 175.
33. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 109.
34. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 123.
35. Robert Lipsyte, “Clay Refuses Army Oath; Stripped of Boxing Crown, ” New York Times, April 29, 1967.
36. Anonymous, “Clay Takes Draft Conviction to High Court, ” The New York Times, July 7, 1968.
37. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 125.
38. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 126.
39. “Clay, A.K.A. Ali v. United States: Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, ” Clay v. United States, 403 US 698, 1971. US Supreme Court. Argued April 19, 1971; Decided June 28, 1971, http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=us/403/698.html; Stan Hochman, “Surely There's Someone Better than Muhammad Ali to Deliver Public-Service Message, ” Philadelphia Daily News.
40. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 129.
41. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 129.
42. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 129.
43. Timothy L. Reed, “Peace Profile: Muhammad Ali, ” Peace Review 16 (2004): 109; See also David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of An American Hero (New York: Knopf, 1999).
44. Quoted in Farred, What's My Name, 64.
45. John Lewis with Michael d'Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996), 356.
46. Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase (Salt Lake City: A Peregrin Smith Book, 1982), 49.
47. Quoted in Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 145.
48. Klosterman, Reason for the Rhyme.
49. Both quoted in Dave Zirin, What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005), 67, 65.
50. Simon Barnes, “Baddest Man on the Planet Transformed into Cuddly Teddy, ” The Australian, January 20, 2007.
51. Stan Hochman, “In Ali, Hollywood Has Wrong Messenger in Mind, ” Philadelphia Daily News, January 2, 2002.
52. Bill Lange, “Ali Still Drawing Fire for Refusing to Serve, ” USA Today, November 22, 2005.
53. Hochman, “In Ali.”
54. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 142.
55. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 141–42.
56. Ernst and Baldwin, “The Not So Silent Minority,” 142.
57. Quoted in Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 121.
58. Oprah Winfrey, “Oprah's Interview with Muhammad Ali, ” O Magazine, June 2001, 136–39, 200–205.
59. Remnick, King of the World, 304.
60. Quoted in Zirin, What's My Name, Fool, 63.
61. Juan Williams, “Interview with Muhammad Ali, ” National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/dec/ali/011219.ali.transcript.htm .
62. Chris Kenning, “War With Iraq, The Home Front: Champ Won't Take Sides in War With Iraq, ” The Courier-Journal.com, March 26, 2003, p. A6.
63. Kenning, “Champ Won't Take Sides in War With Iraq.”
64. Kenning, “Champ Won't Take Sides in War With Iraq.”
65. Zirin, What's My Name, Fool, 53.
66. Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 52. Gates explains, Signifying is an African American vernacular practice that includes “marking, loud talking, testifying, calling out (of one's name), sounding, rapping … and so on.” For more on the political implications of Signifying, see also: Adam J. Banks, “Where Do We Go From Here? An Introduction to African American Rhetoric, ” http://writing.syr.edu:16080/~ajbanks/afamrhetoric.html; Adam J. Banks, Race, Rhetoric and Technology (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005).
67. Gallagher, “Black Power in Berkeley,” 153–54.
68. Kim L. Purnell, “Listening to Lady Day: An Exploration of the Creative (Re)Negotiation of Identity Revealed in the Life Narratives and Music Lyrics of Billie Holiday, ” Communication Quarterly 50 (2002): 444–66.
69. Mark Gaipa, “'A Creative Psalm of Brotherhood’: The (De)constructive Play in Martin Luther King's ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail, ” Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (August 2007): 281, 292.
70. Farred, What's My Name, 29.
71. David R. Novak, “Engaging Parrhesia in a Democracy: Malcolm X as a Truth-teller, ” Southern Communication Journal 71 (March 2006): 25–43.
72. Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, “Malcolm X and the Limits of the Rhetoric of Revolutionary Dissent, ” Journal of Black Studies 23 (March 1993): 291–313.
73. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 119.
74. Condit and Lucaites, “Malcolm X,” 308.
75. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 109.
76. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 110.
77. Quoted in Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 140.
78. Hietala, “Muhammad Ali,” 139.
79. Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 89.
80. As quoted in Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 92.
81. Condit and Lucaites, Malcolm X, 307–9. David Novak has also argued that Malcolm X's “ballot or bullet” claim was crafted to be mainly heard by the black audience of the time; see Novak, 35–36. Also, Robert Terrill shows that while whites thought X's message meant for violence to ensue, Terrill makes the case that black perception was somewhat different; see Robert Terrill, “Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X, ” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (Spring 2001): 25–53.
82. Grano affirms, “Ali is the prototype against which the modern athlete is … publicly shamed, ” “Muhammad Ali Versus the ‘Modern Athlete,” 192.
83. Reporter John Bingham states, “…instantly recognizable as the array of past presidents lined up … was one true American legend … boxer Muhammad Ali … ” John Bingham, “Obama Inauguration: Hollywood out in force for real life epic.” Telegraph UK, January 20, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4299955/Barack-Obama-inauguration-Hollywood-out-in-force-for-real-life-epic.html.
84. Ellen Gorsevski, Peaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 168.
85. Bradford Vivian, “‘A Timeless Now’: Memory and Repetition,” in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2004), 190.
86. Robert E. Terrill, “Colonizing the Borderlands: Shifting Circumference in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X, ” Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 67–85; Robert E. Terrill, Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2004).
87. Lemert, “Trickster in the Culture of Irony,” 151.
88. Bingham and Wallace, “Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight,” 102.
89. John Louis Lucaites and Celeste Michelle Condit, “Reconstructing <Equality>: Culturetypal and Counter-Cultural Rhetorics in the Martyred Black Vision, ” Communication Monographs 57 (March 1990): 5–24.
90. Mark Vail, “The ‘Integrative’ Rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech, ” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9 (2006): 51–78.
91. James Tyner and Robert J. Kruse, “The Geopolitics of Malcolm X, ” Antipode 36 (2004): 26.
92. Angela Davis, in The US versus John Lennon. Directed by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld. Santa Monica, CA: Lion's Gate Films, 2006.
93. Carrieri, “The Greatest,” 9.
94. Marqusee, Redemption Song, 242; Douglas Hartmann, Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 13–14.
95. Simon Henderson, “‘Nasty Demonstrations by Negroes’: The Place of the Smith-Carlos Podium Salute in the Civil Rights Movement, ” Bulletin of Latin American Research 29 (March 2010): 78–92.
96. Vail, Integrative Rhetoric, 72.
97. J. Justin Gustainis and Dan F. Hahn, “While the Whole World Watched: Rhetorical Failures of Antiwar Protest, ” in American Rhetoric and the Vietnam War, ed. J. Justin Gustainis (Westport: Praeger, 1993), 121.
98. Eyes on the Prize, America's Civil Rights Movement (1954–1985), “The Time Has Come (1964–1966).” DVD. Directed by James A. DeVinney and Madison Davis Lacy Jr. Boston, MA: Blackside, 1987. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html.
99. Marqusee, Redemption Song, 239.
100. Marqusee, Redemption Song, 239–40.
101. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” (speech, Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967).
102. Marqusee, Redemption Song, 238–44.
103. Grano, “Muhammad Ali Versus the ‘Modern Athlete, ’” 197.
104. Quoted in Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 136.
105. African American singer, Harry Belafonte, a key celebrity supporter of the civil rights movement, said:
Muhammad Ali was the genuine product of what the movement inspired.… He said, ‘I will not play in your game of war. I will not kill on your behalf. What you ask is immoral and unjust, and I stand here to attest to that fact. Do with me what you will.’ He was very inspirational. He was in many was as inspiring as Dr. King, as inspiring as Malcolm [X].. .. He stood courageously.. .. They could not break his spirit nor deny his moral imperative.Quoted in Bingham and Wallace, Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, 137.
106. Julian Bond, “The Media and the Movement: Looking Back from the Southern Front.” Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle. Ed. Brian Ward. (Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 2001), 16–40.
107. Vail, “‘Integrative’ Rhetoric,” 52.
108. Bingham, Telegraph UK.
109. Michael L. Butterworth, “The Politics of the Pitch: Claiming and Contesting Democracy through the Iraqi National Soccer Team, ” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4 (June 2007): 184–203; Daniel A. Grano, “Ritual Disorder and the Contractual Morality of Sport: A Case Study in Race, Class, and Agreement, ” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10 (2007): 445–74.
110. Purnell, “Listening to Lady Day,” 447.
111. Ira Berkow, “Age Hasn't Cooled the Fire Inside Ali, ” The New York Times, April 28, 1985.