Remembering The Greatest – Muhammad Ali’s Powerful Legacy

FEATURING MUHAMMAD ALI WITH JULIUS LESTER – The world mourned on June 3rd as the news of Muhammad Ali’s death spread. Ali, widely regarded as the greatest boxing champion the world has ever known, left behind a powerful legacy of defiance, rebellion, and moral clarity.

In her obituary of Ali, printed in the New York Times, Joyce Carol Oates wrote, he “would not be the ‘white man’s Negro,’ he would not be anything of the white man’s at all.” Ali converted to Islam at a very young age. He refused to fight the “white man’s war” in Vietnam, and in doing so, earned the ire of war hawks in the US, but also legions of admirers the world over.
He was just as much as champion off the boxing stage as he was on it, applying his political analysis and lending his name to many causes.

Ali lived with Parkinson’s disease for many years before dying at the age of 74. His voice is preserved in the Pacifica Radio Archives, and today we pay tribute to Muhammad Ali, through his own words. Here is an excerpt of an interview that Julius Lester did with Ali in 1968 when Ali was deeply influenced by the Nation of Islam and the idea of black separatism.

For more information visit www.PacificaRadioArchives.org.

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