Malcolm’s rhetoric altered the way many blacks viewed themselves and their country. In “The Ballot or the Bullet,” he spoke about what it meant to be an American. He reminded them, “Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.” How could a black man call himself an American as long as he was denied basic freedoms? If black men and women were Americans, then they would not need civil rights legislation. “You and I,” he declared, are “African-Americans—that’s what we are—Africans born in America.”
Muhammad Ali also began to see himself as an African born in America, interpreting his title in global terms. After meeting with African ambassadors who praised him as an international hero, he began to view himself as something more than an American champion. When he changed his name and announced that he was a Muslim, critics vilified him as unpatriotic and un-American. He understood, as Malcolm had said, that being born in America did not make him an American. In his search for self-discovery, he decided to travel to Africa. When he returned, he came back a new man, one who defined himself as a global citizen, declaring, “I’m not an American. I’m a black man.”56
Chapter Fifteen
KING OF THE WORLD
Millions of so-called Negroes in this country have a distorted image of our homeland. They think Africans eat each other and live in mud huts. They’ve been brainwashed by the white man—why, I’ll show you muddier huts in Harlem than they’ve got over in Africa.
—MALCOLM X
I heard a voice once that told me one day I would be a world figure.
—MUHAMMAD ALI
“The king! The king!” the crowd shouted, swarming the famous American as he sat in an open-top cream-colored convertible.
“Who’s the king?” Muhammad Ali called, basking in the adulation and equatorial sunshine of Accra.
“You!” the locals assented, celebrating the arrival of the self-proclaimed “king of the world.”
From the moment Ali set foot on African soil, Ghanaians treated him like royalty, showering him with praise and gifts. At the Accra airport, on May 16, 1964, the minister of foreign affairs, the director of sports, the chairman of Ghana Boxing Authority, and other state officials welcomed him. President Kwame Nkrumah, the first national leader to embrace Ali, directed the government’s radio stations and newspapers to promote the American champion as an African hero, “a source of inspiration to the youth of the world.” In the words of a writer from the state-owned Daily Graphic, “If there is one man who can assist positively to bring about [Nkrumah’s] cherished aims of projecting the African personality”—an Africa freed from the vestiges of colonialism—and disprove “the superiority complex of the white man, he is Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay).”1
Muhammad Ali proclaimed that he was “the king of the world.” And sometimes it seemed so. In Lagos, Nigeria, during his tour of Africa, he was the vortex of swirling humanity. Associated Press
Ali told reporters that he was “anxious to get around and see Africa and meet my own brothers and sisters.” Unsure how his words would translate in a foreign land, he spoke cautiously when he explained that white slave traders had captured his ancestors from Africa and sold them into bondage in America. “We are glad to be back home to see things for ourselves, meet pretty Ghanaian girls, take pictures, and tell our people that there are more things to be seen in Africa than lions and elephants.”2
As Ali prepared to leave the airport, children shouted his name and waved welcome signs while policemen brandishing truncheons ordered the crowd to back away from the motorcade. Driving through the paved streets of Accra, Ali marveled at what he saw: streetlights; honking buses and taxis; apartment buildings; and department stores, hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants where blacks and whites socialized amicably. The city came alive with the sounds of Highlife music blaring from storefront windows, laughing children running through the streets, and saleswomen bartering with customers in the Makola Market. He was surprised to see that Accra had “wide streets, tall buildings, and other modern features.” He explained to a local reporter that whites had so distorted the image of Africa that black Americans would not dare visit their homeland. “They never told us about your beautiful flowers, magnificent hotels, beautiful houses, beaches, great hospitals, schools, and universities.”3