Many Americans were just as outraged that the army had rejected Ali as he was that they refused to use his Muslim name. Furious citizens, soldiers, and veterans grumbled that Ali was certainly smart enough to peel potatoes, scrub a ship deck, or polish boots. A real American, they complained, would certainly find a way to serve. In Philadelphia, a concerned Irish Catholic mother, whose son had been recently drafted, resented the special treatment Ali seemed to receive from the military. She could hardly believe that Ali failed the military’s entrance requirements. In a letter to President Lyndon Johnson, she asked why the army did not draft the famous boxer. “Is it because he is a millionaire and pays lots of taxes? Is it because he is heavyweight champion of the world? Is it because he is colored and colored people are being handled with ‘kid gloves’ these days?”46
Those who knew Ali well were not really surprised that he had flunked the military exam. Petros Spanakos, a bantamweight teammate of Ali’s during the 1960 Olympics, wrote to columnist Red Smith, explaining that he had no doubt that his old roommate could not pass the written exam. When they roomed together in Rome, Spanakos “spelled out, corrected, and finally wrote [Ali’s] letters home.” Louisville Sponsoring Group member William Faversham told a writer that he had also witnessed Ali struggle to read. While he could read a newspaper column in three or four minutes, it could take Ali more than twenty. Faversham recalled that in January 1963, shortly after Ali fought Charlie Powell, he suggested that Ali could schedule a match against Doug Jones in March. Uncertain if he had enough time to train, Ali asked, “How many months until March?”47
From every angle, Americans scrutinized Ali’s intelligence. J. Edgar Hoover was so convinced that Ali had deliberately failed the test that he ordered special agents to obtain the champ’s high school transcript, which only proved that Ali lacked a rigorous academic education. Critics emasculated him as simple-minded and childlike. Others reduced him to the big, dumb boxer, as ignorant as Amos Jones’s friend Andy Brown, a bombastic and buffoonish black man.48
A few days after the army disqualified Ali, Robert Lipsyte ventured into Harlem to interview the champ, but first he dropped by Lewis Michaux’s bookstore, where he interviewed Malcolm X. Accompanied by the reporter’s friend, comedian and activist Dick Gregory, Lipsyte found Malcolm lounging in a back room, rapping with Michaux. Malcolm spoke “warmly” about Ali, “less like his guru than an older brother or uncle.” Divulging no hard feelings, he had nothing but nice things to say about him. When the writer asked Malcolm if he had tried to persuade the champ to join MMI, Malcolm shook his head and explained that Ali would have to decide for himself how he would live his life. As Lipsyte turned toward the door, Malcolm praised his fight coverage as among the best. Lipsyte smiled and thanked him. Later, when he recounted the story to an editor at the New York Times, he received a flippant reply: “That’s just great, we’ll put it up on the [newspaper] trucks, ‘Malcolm X Loves Lipsyte.’”49
After departing Michaux’s bookstore, Lipsyte and Gregory crossed the street to the Hotel Theresa, where the champion was staying in a suite just a few floors above Malcolm’s second-story office. In the most popular accounts, Ali immediately cut Malcolm out of his life and stopped seeing him after March 6, but that would be hard to believe since Ali was staying in the same building where Malcolm worked. The reality was that neither man had let go of the other. After Ali returned to Harlem in late March, a reporter from the New York Post interviewed Malcolm and noted that “a parade of visitors” entered his office, including Ali, who dropped by “for a swift low-voiced chat.” Ali may have been “a follower of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad,” the writer observed, “but schism has not damaged an old friendship with Malcolm X.”50