Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [19]
If we are to believe a Louisville friend who grew up with him, knew him like a brother, Clay was far removed from the depiction by the press and politicians. The prospect of being drafted paralyzed him with fear. The white world was a threatening environment, what more the military. “He finds it safer to be with Negroes,” the friend said. “It allays his fears of all those things his father used to tell him the whites do to him. He’s scared to death to venture away from it. The idea of going into the army with all those strangers, to put himself into that strange environment, with white people at that—man, that really hit him where he lived! He was scared to death. That was the real Cassius Clay!”
Clay’s lawyers made a final effort in Houston on April 25, 1967. Their contention was that there were no blacks on the Louisville draft board that had called him up. They were after an injunction to prevent any arrest of Clay if he refused induction. Clay took the stand and delivered his standard speech. He said he had given up a pretty wife for his religion, given up a “fortune of business offers,” and wrapped it up by saying: “War is against the teachings of the Holy Qur’an. I’m not trying to dodge the draft. We are supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or The Messenger (Elijah). We don’t take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.” Ali was at ease on the stand, and he looked like he might find being a martyr a nice fit to the grand estimation of himself.
The next day Clay reported to the induction center without a traveling bag. He went through the physical, joked with the other twenty-six recruits. According to one, he said: “The Vietcong don’t scare me. If they didn’t get me, some guy from Loosiana or Texas would. I’d have to watch for them slant eyes and the guys behind me, too.” He was given sandwiches for lunch and threw away the one with ham. There were protests of young blacks outside, some shouting Muslim refrains while others tore up their draft cards; nothing like the riot Clay had predicted. Clay refused three times to step forward for induction. He was warned of “felonious action,” then he signed a statement. Clay’s legal argument had four points; no war except for Elijah; no blacks on the draft board; exemption as a working minister; and as a black he couldn’t kill other people of color. Of the last it could be said by his critics: Who killed Malcolm X? Larry, Moe, and Curly?
The legal and illegal pace against Clay shifted into high gear. First, almost simultaneously with the induction procedure, he was stripped of his title by the New York State Athletic Commission, an action by political flunkies that, in the “best interest of boxing,” deprived him of the right to work. Forty-nine states followed the New York lead, and Clay was in a limbo that he and the Muslims hadn’t calculated. A violation of civil rights? Without question, it was an obscene example of vigilante moral vengeance in cold and blunt opposition to due process. On May 8, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston and pled not guilty. The man who signed off on the indictment was Ramsey Clark, LBJ’s attorney general, later the gushing conscience of the left and the rest of