Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [43]
As the months wore on, it became more difficult for Ali to disguise a growing anxiety. When someone like Ali could make one comment on a 70-mile trip back from Milwaukee, it was clear that a terrible frustration, if not depression, was beginning to overwhelm him. By now, his future as a fighter, his right to the title, began to dominate his conversations with Belinda during long drives to the colleges. “We were sure,” she said, “that he’d never fight again. It got to him in a bad way.” Early in 1969, he finally gave mild release to his frustration on a national TV talk show. He had appeared on these shows often before, full of japery and vows of never wanting to fight again. Now, asked once more if he would ever return to the ring, he answered: “Why not? If they come up with enough money.”
The comment just about blew in the windows of the House of Elijah. To Elijah, it was more than doctrinal affront, it was a repudiation of his humble fork, it was an eager acceptance to the white man’s banquet. He summoned Ali to the mansion and, with Ali looking like a grave prelate, he defrocked him of whatever he was supposed to be. Ali was stripped of his Muslim name, suspended for a year, and generally denounced as a helpless fool, slithering on the floor in front of the feet of white power and money.
In the Muslim newspaper Muhammad Speaks, Elijah elaborated in a statement: “We tell the world we’re not with Muhammad Ali,” he began, then went on to say that Ali could not “speak to, visit with, or be seen with any Muslim, or take part in any Muslim religious activity.” He described his actions as those of a fool, of someone who did not want his survival to come from Allah, but from his enemy, the white man. “Mr. Muhammad Ali,” he said, “has sporting blood. Mr. Muhammad Ali wants a place in this sport world. He loves it. We will call him Cassius Clay.”
The inconsistency of Elijah’s edict shouted for illumination. He had allowed Ali to fight as a minister. He had even let his son manage him. Muslim laws, that is Elijah’s, were in pieces already. Now, by his condemnation, he was fortifying the government’s case that Ali was not sincere in his beliefs. One of Ali’s lawyers was as befogged as everyone else: “It doesn’t make sense. No use in trying to figure it out, because we are not dealing with reasonable people.” Nor did it make much sense to Muslims close to Ali, who had done everything asked of him.
His conviction appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court was at this point also pending, and Elijah’s casting Ali as an unworthy Muslim was bad timing. It probably had no impact on the denial of the appeal, but it compromised him badly to his detractors and doubters; there, you see, even Elijah was branding him as a phony. The appeal denial did not shake Ali; the old man’s excommunication did. He was contrite, puzzled, and now vowed to silence, for “talking too much has got me into this trouble.”
He hadn’t talked too much. After all the frustration, Ali had only started to share Herbert’s optimism, suddenly fired by what he thought would happen legally. If Elijah was harsh and erratic with Ali, he didn’t glance at the culpability of Herbert, who should have been bounced, too. Prior to the appeal, Herbert seemed certain they would get a nolle prosequi (a refusal of the government to prosecute further), and three days before Elijah’s purging of Ali he was trying to arrange a fight. With that view on his mind, Ali took seriously to roadwork in the morning, and he understandably felt that his return was imminent, hence his response on TV. Herbert would ultimately misread the government and be caught off-guard by his father’s new slant on Muslim veracity. Ali said he was now going “to pray hard and study hard, no runnin’ ’round on television.” He was asked by a friend soon after, if he was still running in the morning. “Sure enough,” he said.
Physically, he was trim, a