If you can’t stand the world you live in and you can’t change it, you’ve got to believe in magic, in predictions. That’s Cassius when he was growing up, living with that wild father and all that crazy talk around the house. You’ve got to believe that things are gonna change. So predictions have a great charm and appeal. ‘Next year the white man’s gonna lose his power,’ . . . ‘1966’ll be a bad year for the white man.’ That’s great news to some people dumb enough to believe it. Believing in predictions is a way of warding off evil in the present when you can’t ward it off any other way. You can bear living miserable if you accept a prediction that tomorrow will be better. That’s why you get so much predicting and prophecy in the Negro churches. That’s why you get so much predicting and prophecy from Cassius Clay, too.43
For Clay, the Black Muslims offered security, a sanctuary from the violent world that surrounded him, and he steadily gravitated toward the Miami temple as a result. His frequent visits excited Sabakhan and Saxon, who alerted Jeremiah X, minister of the Atlanta mosque and the chief organizer of the Nation in the Deep South. Jeremiah visited Cassius in Miami, teaching him about the Muslims’ moral code. He explained that they prayed five times a day, at sunrise, noon, midafternoon, sundown, and before bed, and that all Muslims prayed facing east, toward Mecca. But before Clay prayed, he had to make the proper ablutions: rinsing his mouth and washing his hands, feet, and arms. Cleanliness, inside and out, Jeremiah reminded him, was absolutely essential. Furthermore, Muslims were required to attend at least two temple meetings each week, though because of Clay’s schedule—and his celebrity—the minister made an exception.44
Clay learned that Elijah Muhammad instructed his followers to live a “righteous life,” prohibiting extramarital sex, gambling, dancing, attending movies, taking long vacations, lying, stealing, defying civil authority, and disobeying ministers. Muslims, he commanded, should refrain from consuming alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, and from overeating. An overweight Muslim could be fined until he lost the excess weight. And pork was strictly forbidden. The hog was a “parasite,” “dirty, brutal, quarrelsome, greedy, ugly, foul, a scavenger which thrives on filth,” just like the white man.45
In the process of educating Clay about the laws of the Nation of Islam, Jeremiah cultivated a personal relationship with him and later his brother Rudy, who was even more eager to join the Nation. The more Cassius learned, the more he questioned. Jeremiah recognized that Clay’s presence in the movement could create potential conflicts for the boxer and the Nation alike. The minister understood that if the public learned about Clay’s association with the Nation, the boxer might be vilified. It could ruin his career. So Jeremiah sought the counsel of John Ali, the Nation’s national secretary and adviser to Elijah Muhammad. When Jeremiah called Ali on the telephone and informed him that a fighter had attended their meetings, Ali “roundly condemned” the minister “for being involved with a boxer.” Elijah Muhammad himself later told Jeremiah that he’d “been sent to the South to make converts, not to fool around with fighters.”46
Muhammad disapproved of sports, especially boxing, which he maintained was just another avenue for the exploitation of black youths by white, mostly Jewish men. He associated boxing with the evils of gambling, drunkenness, and crime. In his Muhammad Speaks column, he argued that sports encouraged blacks to throw away their money on the white man’s “games of chance.” The only reason the white man allowed blacks to participate in their sports, he claimed, was to distract them from their real problems. Sports were just another tool to keep the black man down.47
Yet perhaps Clay’s pursuit of a righteous life was not as incompatible with boxing as Muhammad believed. In many ways the ritual and regimen of the Nation’s strict code of behavior mirrored the boxer’s spartan training. The Muslim ministers dictated when Clay prayed, what he ate, and how he spent his leisure time. Similarly, Angelo Dundee created his training routine: he told him when to rise in the morning, when to run, when to eat, when to spar, and when to go to bed. Clay’s spiritual mentors and boxing instructors required hard work, sobriety, and proper nutrition. Both worlds—boxing and the Nation of Islam—demanded physical fitness and a purity that rewarded resistance to temptation.48
In Miami, Clay chose to occupy both worlds. There were two places where he felt most comfortable, two sanctuaries that provided shelter from outsiders and antagonistic white men: Muhammad’s Temple No. 29 and the 5th Street Gym. One hardened his body, the other nurtured his soul. Yet he had no idea what would happen when those two worlds collided.
Chapter Two
GOD’S ANGRY MAN
I have no last name. Just a name some white man gave one of my ancestors a long time ago. I’d rather be called nigger.
—MALCOLM X