Clay called himself “the greatest” boxer in the world and subsequently changed his name to Muhammad Ali. With his loud, rhyming proclamations of invincibility and prettiness, Ali had become a popular, if controversial, international sports and cultural icon. Yet after embracing the Nation of Islam and the Muslim faith, claiming conscientious objector status and refusing to be drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War era, Ali was stripped of his championship title in 1967.

To support himself while he challenged his draft evasion conviction and ban from boxing, Ali embarked on several income generating ventures—including writing his autobiography. Ali asked award-winning broadcast dramatist and journalist Richard Durham to be his credited ghostwriter.

Durham had a popular radio program in Chicago, Illinois, called Destination Freedom that, as Blackpast.org describes, “was unlike anything else being broadcast over the airwaves. For over two years audiences tuned in every Sunday night and were treated to dramatized stories featuring prominent African Americans. …What made Destination Freedom so important was its then-novel portrayal of African Americans.”

With the support of their Random House editor (and future Nobel Laureate) Toni Morrison, Durham traveled and worked with Ali for six years to capture the champ’s battles both in and out of the ring. As Sonja Williams writes in the book Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom, Durham recalls that he,

wanted to write about the totality of Ali’s multi-layered character. “Some people have two personalities. Muhammad has five,” Durham once told a Chicago Defender reporter.

In 1975, Durham and Ali published The Greatest: My Own Story, becoming a bestseller. The book was translated into several languages and re-released November 2015. As Ismael Reed wrote in a review for the New York Times:

It is a book that portrays Muhammad Ali as generous, heroic and intelligent—possibly a genius. … Richard Durham has done a very professional job in getting the Champ’s style and tone down on paper…

Read more about the Ali-Durham collaboration and about Durham’s life as a writer in Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom.

The post Feb. 25, 1964: Muhammad Ali Won the Heavyweight Boxing Title appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The image of John Carlos and Tommie Smith with their fists in the air at the 1968 Olympics is recognized around the world.

Yet, as with so much of history, we know about the event but not the story of the organizing by athletes leading up to the Olympics, nor what happened to Carlos and Smith afterward.

Read this beautifully written book and you will realize that the full story is as powerful and gripping as the photo.

The John Carlos Story is highly recommended for grade 7 to adult.

ISBN: 9781608461271 | Haymarket Books

Book Events

John Carlos and Dave Zirin visit a school in Washington, D.C.: Article, student comments, film clips, and photos

Book Launch on Oct. 1, 2011, hosted by Teaching for Change, in Washington, D.C. See photos below of event with a standing room only audience.

Book Trailer

Video Clip

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 2008 Arthur Ashe Courage Award

Related Resources

• People’s History of Sports in the United States: book by Dave Zirin
• Not Just a Game: film by Dave Zirin
• An Interview with John Carlos by Dave Zirin from Z Magazine: The Spirit of Resistance Lives
• Interview with John Carlos and Dave Zirin on Democracy Now! Part 1 Part 2 on October 12, 2011
• Elegy for Peter Norman by Josh Healey
• Interview with John Carlos and Dave Zirin on the Kojo Nnamdi Show

Reviews

“An intelligent and insightful look into the journey of one of our most underrated heroes. Mr. Carlos’ passion for justice and fairness has changed our world. You can feel his passion (and his anger) in every word.” —Jemele Hill, ESPN columnist and television analyst

John Carlos with Gwendolyn at CCPCS.

“John Carlos was just so inspiring. Out of all the important people that have come to speak to us—he’s the only one who kept me awake. After hearing him speak and his story, I want to be somebody better in life. I don’t even really like to read, but I want to read his book, and capture all the important parts of it, and rethink myself, how I can be a better person, and how I can make a change.” —Gwendolyn, 11th grade. Comment made after John Carlos spoke at her school in Washington, D.C.  Read full description of the school visit and more comments from students.

“The John Carlos Story included plenty of humor, historical anecdotes and sometimes depressing moments, all written in a conversational manner. For a book with this much history it can be easy to get preachy or sound like a textbook, but Carlos does neither. The personal aspects of the narrative intrigued me from beginning to end. For that reason, I’ll more than likely re-read this book just to enjoy it all over again.” —Shamontiel L. Vaughn, Chicago Tribune (Read full review).

“John Carlos is an American hero. And finally he has written a memoir to tell us his story — and a powerful story it is. I couldn’t put this book down.” —Michael Moore

“Biblically, athletes with superior attributes were seen as gifts from God. Whether it was Samson staring down the Philistines or David slaying Goliath, they and latter-day heroes such as Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali, selflessly used their gifts and magnificently magnified platforms to transform society. It is in that tradition that John Carlos, and his teammate Tommie Smith, raised their fists in solidarity with the American civil rights struggle, as well as the struggles of those who exist on the downside of advantage. It was a statement for the ages. This act of righteous defiance lifted us all to a new level of dignity and shared responsibility to improve the conditions of the poor the world over. . . But the price of heroism is high. John Carlos paid and this is his story.” —Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.

“The John Carlos story is the remarkable chronicle of an epic life sketched against the defining crisis of race in America. Carlos’ athletic genius on the field is matched by his heroic will to overcome trials and tribulations in his personal life, and to find resurrection in his professional life. This is an inspiring and eloquent story about a great American whose commitment to truth, justice and democracy were tested and found true.” —Michael Eric Dyson

“John Carlos’ life story is an insightful and gripping look at the times he lived and the Olympics he helped make so memorable. He shows us that the one day that made him famous was only the most outward and visible sign of a touching and thoughtful life.” —Frank Deford

“The John Carlos Story is a blow by blow detail of triumph vs tragedy from the jump. Again Dave Zirin uncovers, and yet illuminates the mere footnotes of this sports history hero with his impeccable balance of truth. This story drills a hole into the myth of black athlete success and worship.” —Chuck D, Public Enemy

“John Carlos tells a compelling story of courage and the consequences of action. He, Tommie Smith and many other Black athletes took a stand against racial injustice in the U.S. and racial injustice in sports. They were ridiculed by many mainstream commentators at the time, but their actions helped to transform both the sports world and this country. This book was by and about someone who has been and remains one of my heroes.” —Bill Fletcher Jr., editorial board member, BlackCommentator.com

The post The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

In 1949, photographer Don Normark visited Chávez Ravine, a close-knit Mexican American village on a hill overlooking downtown Los Angeles. Enchanted, he stayed for a year and took hundreds of photographs documenting community life. But little did Normark know that he was capturing the last images of a place that was about to disappear — within a few short years, the entire neighborhood would be gone. Chávez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story tells the story of how this Mexican American community was destroyed by greed, political hypocrisy and good intentions gone awry.

Photographer Don Normark in an early self-portrait.

In this film, filmmaker Jordan Mechner explores what happened, interviewing many of the former residents of Chávez Ravine as well as some of the officials who oversaw the destruction of the community. Narrated by Cheech Marin and scored by Ry Cooder and Lalo Guerrero, Chávez Ravine combines contemporary interviews with archival footage and Normark’s haunting black-and-white photographs to reclaim and celebrate a beloved community of the past. [Description from Independent Lens.]

Background

Located in a valley a few miles from downtown Los Angeles, Chávez Ravine was home to generations of Mexican Americans. Named for Julian Chavez, one of the first Los Angeles County Supervisors in the 1800s, Chávez Ravine was a self-sufficient and tight-knit community, a rare example of small town life within a large urban metropolis. For decades, its residents ran their own schools and churches and grew their own food on the land. Chavez Ravine’s three main neighborhoods — Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop — were known as a “poor man’s Shangri La.”

The death knell for Chavez Ravine began ringing in 1949, the same year that Don Normark captured his collection of photographs of the community. The Federal Housing Act of 1949 granted money to cities from the federal government to build public housing projects. Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron voted and approved a housing project containing 10,000 new units — thousands of which would be located in Chavez Ravine.

Viewed by neighborhood outsiders as a “vacant shantytown” and an “eyesore,” Chávez Ravine’s 300-plus acres were earmarked by the Los Angeles City Housing Authority as a prime location for re-development. In July 1950, all residents of Chavez Ravine received letters from the city telling them that they would have to sell their homes in order to make the land available for the proposed Elysian Park Heights. The residents were told that they would have first choice for these new homes, which included two dozen 13-story buildings and more than 160 two-story bunkers, in addition to newly rebuilt playgrounds and schools. Some residents resisted the orders to move and were soon labeled “squatters,” while others felt they had no choice and relocated. Most received insubstantial or no compensation for their homes and property.

Film Clip

Using the power of eminent domain, which permitted the government to purchase property from private individuals in order to construct projects for the public good, the city of Los Angeles bought up the land and leveled many of the existing buildings. By August 1952, Chávez Ravine was essentially a ghost town. The land titles would never be returned to the original owners, and in the following years the houses would be sold, auctioned and even set on fire, used as practice sites by the local fire department.

Photos by Don Normark. Click image collage for album.

The plan for Los Angeles public housing soon moved to the forefront of a decade-long civic battle. The story of Chávez Ravine is intertwined with the social and political climate of the 1950s, or the “Red Scare” era. While supporters of the federal public housing plan for Chávez Ravine viewed it as an idealistic opportunity to provide improved services for poor Angelenos, opponents of the plan — including corporate business interests that wanted the land for their own use — employed the widespread anti-communist paranoia of the day to characterize such public housing projects as socialist plots. In 1952, Frank Wilkinson, the assistant director of the Los Angeles City Housing Authority and one of the main supporters behind Elysian Park Heights, faced questioning by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was fired from his job and sentenced to one year in jail.

The Los Angeles City Council attempted to cancel the public housing contract with federal authorities, but courts ruled the contract legally binding. But by the time Norris Poulson was elected mayor in 1953, the project’s days were numbered. Poulson ran for office using the Chavez Ravine controversy as a platform, vowing to stop the housing project and other examples of “un-American” spending. After much negotiation, Poulson was able to buy the land taken from Chavez Ravine back from the federal government at a drastically reduced price, with the stipulation that the land be used for a public purpose.

Los Angeles was also a rapidly growing city in the 1950s. Despite its expanding population, the city had yet to host a major-league sports team. County supervisor Kenneth Hahn began to scout out potential teams that might be willing to relocate to Los Angeles, including the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley soon struck a deal with the city officials, acquiring the minor league Los Angeles Angels and its small ballpark with the promise of a new stadium to be built on the land from Chavez Ravine. As Frank Wilkinson explains in the film Chávez Ravine, “We’d spent millions of dollars getting ready for it, and the Dodgers picked it up for just a fraction of that. It was just a tragedy for the people, and from the city it was the most hypocritical thing that could possibly happen.”

O’Malley’s move to Chávez Ravine did not occur without major controversy. Vicious inter-city politics included allegations of Mayor Poulson making illegal deals with the Dodgers while betraying the public, while supporters of the stadium, including public figures such as Ronald Reagan, argued that opponents were “baseball haters.” In the end, O’Malley supporters won a public referendum by only three percent, allowing O’Malley to build the stadium in exchange for giving the Angels’ ballpark back to the city. Additional lawsuits froze the official transfer of land and delayed construction, but in 1959, the city began clearing the land for the stadium after removing the last few families that had refused to leave Chávez Ravine. On April 10, 1962, the 56,000-seat Dodger Stadium officially opened. [Background from Independent Lens.]

Film website on Independent Lens | Purchase from Bullfrog Films.

The post Chávez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Surrounded by hundreds of other families struggling to rebuild their lives, he finds a young girl playing soccer with a ball made of rags. As he and other children join the game, they give hope to others in the camp.

This is one of the best books we have seen for describing life in Haiti after the earthquake to children ages 5 to 10. The illustrations are affirming and the story both honest and engaging.

ISBN: 9780399255472 | Putnam Juvenile [Out of print]

The post Hope For Haiti appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Barriers Begin to Crumble

Integrating Baseball
One of the first barriers to fall was in sports. Professional baseball had long been segregated into the all-white Major Leagues and the Negro League. Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, wanted to break the “color line” and tap into the vast pool of talent in the Negro League.

In 1947, Rickey signed an African American army veteran named Jackie Robinson. Robinson’s first years in the majors were a test of endurance. While some teammates welcomed him, he was ignored by other players and jeered at by fans. Soon, however, his skill and daring on the field won him huge numbers of fans, both white and African American. At the end of his first season, Robinson was named Rookie of the Year. More important, he paved the way for other African American athletes to compete in professional sports.

Zirin’s critical analysis of the film is also very useful as a critique of traditional textbook narratives.

A Review of ‘42’: Jackie Robinson’s Bitter Pill

By Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, host of Edge of Sports, and co-author of The John Carlos Story and more.

This week in Major League Baseball was Jackie Robinson Day. This is when Commissioner Bud Selig honors the man who broke the color line in 1947 and pats MLB on the back for being “a leader in the Civil Rights Movement.” It’s possible to appreciate that Selig honors one of the 20th Century’s great anti-racist heroes. It’s also possible, out of respect for Jackie Robinson, to resent the hell out of it.

Ignored on Jackie Robinson Day are baseball’s decades of racism before Jackie broke the color line. Ignored are Robinson’s own critiques of baseball’s bigoted front office hiring policies. Ignored is the continuance of the racism that surrounds the game in 2013. Ignored is the fact that today in Arizona, Latino players live in fear of being stopped by police for not having their papers in order.

The recent film 42 about Jackie Robinson’s entry into the Major Leagues shares this contradiction. I can certainly understand why many people I respect love this film. I can understand why a teacher I know thinks it’s a great primer for young people who don’t know Jackie’s story. I understand why, given the high production values and loving depictions, Jackie Robinson’s family has been outspoken in their appreciation. But I didn’t like it, and with all respect, I want to make the case that I don’t believe Jackie Robinson would have liked it either.

Early in the film, Jackie Robinson, played by newcomer Chadwick Boseman, says, “I don’t think it matters what I believe. Only what I do.” Unfortunately that quote is like a guiding compass for all that follows. The filmmakers don’t seem to care what Robinson — a deeply political human being — believed either. Instead 42 rests on the classical Hollywood formula of “Heroic individual sees obstacle. Obstacle is overcome. The End.” That works for Die Hard or American Pie. It doesn’t work for a story about an individual deeply immersed and affected by the grand social movements and events of his time. Jackie Robinson’s experience was shaped by the Dixiecrats who ruled his Georgia birthplace, the mass struggles of the 1930s, World War II, the anti-communist witch-hunts and later the Civil Rights and Black Freedom struggles. To tell his tale as one of individual triumph through his singular greatness is to not tell the story at all.

This is particularly ironic since Jackie Robinson spent the last years of his life in a grueling fight against his own mythos. He hated that his tribulations from the 1940s were used to sell a story about an individualistic, Booker T. Washington approach to fighting racism.

As he said in a speech, “All these guys who were saying that we’ve got it made through athletics, it’s just not so. You as an individual can make it, but I think we’ve got to concern ourselves with the masses of the people — not by what happens as an individual, so I merely tell these youngsters when I go out: certainly I’ve had opportunities that they haven’t had, but because I’ve had these opportunities doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten.”

This was a man tortured by the fact that his own experience was used as a cudgel against building a public, fighting movement against racial injustice. He wanted to shift the discussion of his own narrative from one of individual achievement to the stubborn continuance of institutionalized racism in the United States. The film, however, is a celebration of the individual and if you know how that pained Mr. Robinson, that is indeed a bitter pill.

The film’s original sin was to set the action entirely in 1946 and 1947. Imagine if Spike Lee had chosen to tell the story of Malcolm X by only focusing on 1959-1960 when he was a leader in the Nation of Islam, with no mention of his troubled past or the way his own politics changed later in life. Malcolm X without an “arc” isn’t Malcolm X. Jackie Robinson without an “arc” is just Frodo Baggins in a baseball uniform. The absence of an arc means we don’t get the labor marches in the 1930s to integrate baseball. We don’t get his court martial while in the army (alluded to in the film without detail). We don’t get Jackie Robinson’s testimony in 1949 at the House Un-American Activities Committee against Paul Robeson. We don’t get his later anguish over what he did to Robeson. We don’t get his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement when he was a barnstorming speaker across the South. We don’t get his public feud with Malcolm X, where Malcolm derided him as a “White man’s hero” and he gave it right back saying, “Malcolm is very militant on Harlem street corners where militancy is not that dangerous. I don’t see him in Birmingham.” We don’t get his daring, loving obituary to Malcolm after his 1965 assassination at a time when the press — black and white — was throwing dirt on his grave. We don’t get his support of the 1968 Olympic boycotters. We don’t get the way his wife Rachel became an educated political figure who cared deeply about Africa, as well as racial and gender justice in America. We don’t get the Jackie Robinson who died at 52, looking 20 years older, broken by the weight of his own myth. We don’t get Raging Bull. We get Rocky III.

But if the focus of 42 is only going to be on 1946 and 1947, then there is still a lot to cover: namely Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson and their relationship to the Negro Leagues. Rickey — with Robinson’s support — established a pattern followed by other owners (with the notable exception of Bill Veeck), of refusing to compensate them for their players. On the day Robinson signed with the Dodgers, Rickey said, “There is no Negro League as such as far as I’m concerned. [They] are not leagues and have no right to expect organized baseball to respect them.” This led to the destruction of the largest national black owned business in the United States.

You would never know this from 42. Instead, the film chooses to affix a halo to Branch Rickey’s head. Instead, under a prosthetic mask, Harrison Ford plays Rickey as a great white savior, and not even Han Solo can make that go down smoothly. Fairing better than Ford is the terrific performance of Chadwick Boseman as Robinson. Jackie Robinson could be sensitive about his voice, which was clipped and somewhat high-pitched. Boseman’s voice is so smoky it could cure a ham, and his eyes and manner give hints of an internal life the film otherwise ignores.

There is no doubt in my mind that Jackie Robinson, if alive, would call on Bud Selig and Major League Baseball to stop using his history as an excuse to do nothing about the racial issues that currently plague the game. But there is also no doubt in my mind that Jackie Robinson, ever the pragmatist, also would support this film publicly. He was an honorable person who would have been humbled by the effort made to make him look like a hero. He would have seen the value in being a role model of pride and perseverance for the young. But at home, alone, he would have thought about it. And he would have seethed.

Reprinted from The Nation by permission of the author, © Dave Zirin, April 17, 2013.

The post A Review of ‘42’: Jackie Robinson’s Bitter Pill appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

As Zirin explains in the closing lines of the book:  “Our collective destiny is tied up with every eviction, every surveillance camera, and every cracked skull on the road to the World Cup and Olympics.” [Description by Rethinking Schools.]

ISBN: 9781608465897 | Haymarket Books

Clip from D.C. Book Event

Zirin explains the motivations for and the title of the book, “Brazil’s Dance with the Devil.”

View full book event online at C-SPAN website

Reviews

“People think speaking truth to power is easy, but if it was easy everyone would do it. This book does it. . . It speaks truth to the powers that be, from Brazil to the US to FIFA to the IOC. It hits you like an uppercut that rattles your brain and sets it straight. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” —John Carlos, 1968 Olympic medalist

“Dave Zirin has long stood on the edge of the sports writing world, exploding topics many of his colleagues are scared to approach. With Brazil’s Dance with the Devil, he puts to bed any notion that the IOC and FIFA have the best interests of their host countries at heart. Brazil is a special country and Dave Zirin honors its people and history while mercilessly going after those who would undermine its people. This book is a remarkable mix of investigative sports journalism and insightful social history.” —Glenn Greenwald, author, No Place to Hide

“In a sports journalism landscape where it sometimes seems there are only those who fawn and those who pander, where curiosity about the world at large is in short supply, Zirin is an altogether different kind of presence. He does care, until it hurts, and consistently delivers unique takes on the nexus of sports and race, globalization, politics and human rights. In Brazil’s Dance with the Devil, Zirin’s at his best, on familiar and fertile ground. Like so much of his work, it’s incisive, heartbreaking, important and even funny.” —Jeremy Schaap, ESPN, author of New York Times bestseller Cinderella Man

“Brazil’s Dance With the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics and the Fight for Democracy, is a powerful and haunting look at what’s happening behind the scenes (oft-tragically) in a nation hosting both the World Cup and the Olympics. It’s strong work.” —Jeff Pearlman, author of Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty

“For years, FIFA and the Brazilian government have failed to understand the complexity of the Brazilian populace, that it’s possible both to love soccer and to be outraged over the organization of the World Cup at the expense of the people. Dave Zirin, one of our great chroniclers of sports and society, spent time on the ground in Brazil interviewing those most affected by the Brazilian World Cup and Olympics, and he comes away with the truth of it all: That the brutal expense of these Mega-events isn’t worth the investment of so much public money and historical memory. Everyone who watches the World Cup should read this book.”—Grant Wahl, senior writer, Sports Illustrated

“A vision from abroad about our Brazil from inside. It’s a vision at once critical, smart, truthful, and free of prejudices, and not sparing any criticisms of his own country, the United States. Additionally it’s a generous vision that uplifts the great Brazilian people. Enthusiastically recommended!”—Juca Kfouri, columnist, UOL Esporte

“Dave Zirin offers a great, fast-paced primer for those who want to get up to speed with what is happening on the ground in Brazil as it prepares for the World Cup and Olympics. Zirin brings the reader through years of history in order to contextualize the tumult on the streets during the 2013 Confederations’ Cup and offers perspective on what the world can expect during the World Cup and Olympics. Brazil’s Dance with the Devil gives insight into the linkages between corruption, massive public spending and the folly of mega-event planning in a country with huge wealth inequalities and major infrastructure challenges. Zirin has done his homework and fieldwork, consulting the classics and experts to bring together a fast-paced, focused read for an international audience.”—Juliana Barbassa, Former Rio de Janeiro correspondent, Associated Press

“Dave Zirin fans, of which I count myself as one, will relish his new book, Brazil’s Dance with the Devil. With his unique sports-politics lens and artful story-telling, this book focuses on Rio’s upcoming World Cup and Olympics. Readers will never again allow their love of sports to blind them to the re-purposed political ends of big, international sporting events.” —Nancy Hogshead-Makar, civil rights attorney, senior director of advocacy Womens Sports Foundation, Olympic Gold medalist

“Dave Zirin does it again. In only the way he knows, he takes the political and makes it extremely personal and inserts us all into the heart of soccer in Brazil. You don’t have to have ever watched a soccer to be caught up in this epic story. Sports needs Dave Zirin more than it even knows. Although after this book he probably won’t be invited to carry The Olympic Torch anytime soon.” —W. Kamau Bell, comedian

“Like everything Dave Zirin writes, this book is impassioned, deeply informed and very readable. It’s also a necessary book, because Brazil is a poorly understood country entering a crucial period. Zirin backs up his opinions with good, honest reporting. Brazil has a good friend in him.” —Simon Kuper, author, Soccernomics

The post Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Portrait of Dave Zirin by Robert Shetterly, Americans Who Tell the Truth.

Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for the Nation Magazine — their first sports writer in 150 years of existence. He also co-hosts a radio show with Etan Thomas called “The Collision: Sports and Politics” on Pacifica radio. Additionally, Dave Zirin is a professor in the Humanities Department at Montgomery College where he teaches a course on the history of sports.

Dave Zirin has also authored and co-authored numerous books, including The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World with John Carlos. Written for grade 7 and up, this account details the events leading up to the 1968 Olympics when Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in the air, and what happened afterward.

Zirin’s book Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining The Games We Love humorously details how sports franchise owners successfully squeeze every last penny out of their fan bases. Acclaimed Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein claims that “not since Hunter S. Thompson has a sportswriter shown the right snarl for the job.”

Glenn Greenwald called Zirin’s Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy “A remarkable mix of investigative sports journalism and insightful social history.”

Photo by Jack Gordon at dedication of Zinn Room, 9/2011.

Zirin is also the author of  A People’s History of Sports in the United States, part of Howard Zinn’s People’s History series for the New Press. As former Yankee and Ball Four author Jim Bouton said of this work, “Finally, the long-awaited prequel to all the sports books you’ve ever read. Put this first in the line of sports books on your shelf. It will help make sense of all the others.”

Zirin has brought his blend of sports and politics to multiple television programs including ESPN’s Outside the Lines, MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, ESPN Classic, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CNN’s The Campbell Brown Show, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Comcast Sports Network’s Washington Post Live, Al-Jazeera’s The Riz Khan Show, C-SPAN’s BookTV, and Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, New York Newsday, the Baltimore Sun, the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Pittsburgh Courier, The Source, and numerous other publications.

He loves the Mets, Jets, and Wizards. [Bio from Edge of Sports website.]

The post Dave Zirin appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Muhammad Ali leaves the Federal Court Building after being convicted of refusing to be inducted into the military, June 20, 1967. Source: AP

In an era defined by endless war, we should recognize a day in history that won’t be celebrated on Capitol Hill or in the White House. On June 20, 1967, the great Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston for refusing induction in the U.S. armed forces.

Ali saw the war in Vietnam as an exercise in genocide. He also used his platform as boxing champion to connect the war abroad with the war at home, saying, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?”

For these statements, as much as the act itself, Judge Joe Ingraham handed down the maximum sentence to Cassius Clay (as they insisted upon calling him in court): five-years in a federal penitentiary and a $10,000 fine. The next day, this was the top-flap story for The New York Times with the headline, “Clay Guilty in Draft Case; Gets Five Years in Prison.”

The sentence was unusually harsh and deeply tied to a Beltway, bipartisan consensus to crush Ali and ensure that he not develop into a symbol of anti-war resistance. The day of Ali’s conviction the U.S. Congress voted 337-29 to extend the draft four more years. They also voted 385-19 to make it a federal crime to desecrate the flag. Their fears of a rising movement against the war were well-founded.

The summer of 1967 marked a tipping point for public support of the Vietnam “police action.” While the Tet Offensive, which exposed the lie that the United States was winning the war, was still six months away, the news out of Southeast Asia was increasingly grim. At the time of Ali’s conviction, 1,000 Vietnamese noncombatants were being killed each week by U.S. forces. One hundred U.S. soldiers were dying every day, and the war was costing $2 billion a month.

Anti-war sentiment was growing and it was thought that a stern rebuke of Ali would help put out the fire. In fact, the opposite took place. Ali’s brave stance fanned the flames.

As Julian Bond said,

[It] reverberated through the whole society… [Y]ou could hear people talking about it on street corners. It was on everyone’s lips. People who had never thought about the war before began to think it through because of Ali. The ripples were enormous.

Ali himself vowed to appeal the conviction, saying,

I strongly object to the fact that so many newspapers have given the American public and the world the impression that I have only two alternatives in this stand — either I go to jail or go to the Army. There is another alternative, and that alternative is justice. If justice prevails, if my constitutional rights are upheld, I will be forced to go neither to the Army nor jail. In the end, I am confident that justice will come my way, for the truth must eventually prevail.

Already, by this point, Ali’s heavyweight title had been stripped, beginning a three-and-a-half-year exile. Already Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam had begun to distance themselves from their most famous member. Already, Ali had become a punching bag for almost every reporter with a working pen.

On June 4, 1967, Black athletes met in Cleveland to discuss their support for Ali. Click photo to read more about this event.

But with his conviction came a new global constituency. In Guyana, protests against his sentence took place in front of the U.S. embassy. In Karachi, Pakistan, a hunger strike began in front of the U.S. consulate. In Cairo, demonstrators took to the streets. In Ghana, editorials decried his conviction. In London, an Irish boxing fan named Paddy Monaghan began a long and lonely picket of the U.S. Embassy.

Over the next three years, he would collect more than 20,000 signatures on a petition calling for the restoration of Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight title.

Ali at this point was beginning to see himself as someone who had a greater responsibility to an international groundswell that saw him as more than an athlete.

Boxing is nothing, just satisfying to some bloodthirsty people. I’m no longer a Cassius Clay, a Negro from Kentucky. I belong to the world, the Black world. I’ll always have a home in Pakistan, in Algeria, in Ethiopia. This is more than money.

Eventually justice did prevail and the Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction in 1971. They did so only after the consensus on the war had changed profoundly. Ali had been proven right by history, although a generation of people in [Southeast] Asia and the United States paid a terrible price along the way.

Years later, upon reflection, Ali said he had no regrets.

Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free. And I made a stand all people, not just Black people, should have thought about making, because it wasn’t just Black people being drafted. The government had a system where the rich man’s son went to college, and the poor man’s son went to war. Then, after the rich man’s son got out of college, he did other things to keep him out of the Army until he was too old to be drafted.

As we remain mired in a period of permanent war, take a moment and consider the risk, sacrifice, and principle necessary to dismantle the war machine. We all can’t be boxing champions, but moving forward, all who oppose war can rightfully claim Ali’s brave history as our own.

Dave Zirin is the author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, A People’s History of Sports in the United States, and the documentary Not Just a Game. Read more by Dave Zirin at www.edgeofsports.com.

Reprinted from The Rag Blog by permission of the author.

The post June 20, 1967: Muhammad Ali Convicted for Refusing the Vietnam Draft appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

This is one of many stories from the 1960s of campus activists trying to connect with student athletes. These groups were traditionally rivals, but the black freedom struggle and the fight against the Vietnam War had created a common generational cause. These struggles also inspired many players to take actions of their own.

This largely forgotten history has taken on a new urgency following the Missouri Tigers football strike against racism, which ended after University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe resigned. Some commentators have called these actions unprecedented, but they’re not. In addition to recent examples of restive college football players, which includes the recent union battle at Northwestern and the 2013 players strike at Grambling, there is also an extensive history of student-athlete activism from the late 1960s. It’s a history worth knowing, one that could tell us something about our own future.

Some examples:

• In 1967, 35 black players on the University of California, Berkeley, football team boycotted spring practice until more black coaches were hired. John Erby was soon named as the first black assistant coach at UCB.
• In 1968, players at Michigan State delivered a list of demands to athletic director Biggie Munn Biggie Munn. They refused to play unless a search was conducted for a black coaches, trainers, and cheerleaders. Munn refused to even take their demands to the school president. Twenty four players walked out of spring practice and two more were purposefully disrupted and cancelled. They won.
• At the University of Washington, athletes won a study of racism in the athletic department after accusing the football trainer of making racial slurs and providing inadequate treatment for injuries.
• In 1972, the Huskies refused to take the field for the second half of a game on homecoming weekend, unless a statement was read by the stadium sound system against the war in Vietnam.
• In May 1969, athletes and coaches at Howard University threatened to quit unless athletic director Samuel Barnes was removed. They also wanted “better food, more medical attention, streamlined means of transportation, more equipment, better living conditions and a full-time sports information director.” Student assembly president Ewart Brown Jr., a member of the track team burned his Howard varsity sweatshirt. As it went up in ashes, football player Harold Orr said, “This is what we think of the athletic program. [We need a] cremation of the old system.”
• At Syracuse, nine black players, the “Syracuse Nine,” walked out of spring practice because their coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, reneged on a promise to hire a black coach. The school president ordered Schwartzwalder to hire one black coach and he did, but the coach also kicked all the players off the team. By the 1970 season, Syracuse had a black coach, and no black players.

Up until this era, sports were used to differentiate the “disgusting hippies” from the “All-American” majority. As then congressman — and former football star — Gerald Ford said: “Personally, I’m glad that thousands of fine Americans can spend this Saturday afternoon ‘knocking each other down’ in a spirit of clean sportsmanship and keen competition instead of assaulting Pentagon soldiers or policemen with ‘peace’ placards and filthy words.”

But soon the line between “the clean” and “the filthy” was not so clear.

Flyer calling people to wear black armbands to show support of the Black 14. Image: Irene Schubert Black 14 Collection at U-Wyoming.

The cascade of protest continued. Brigham Young — the school Mizzou will play against this weekend — became a particular lightning rod for controversy. BYU was affiliated with the Mormon Church, which denied leadership positions to people of African descent, claiming that their dark skin was “the mark of the curse of Ham.” Fourteen African-American players were dismissed from the Wyoming football team on October 14, 1969, for wearing black armbands the evening before the team was scheduled to play BYU. They called themselves the Black 14. Less than two weeks later, BYU played against San Jose State. The entire San Jose State football squad wore black armbands to support the 14. After similar rumblings rose at Stanford University, President Kenneth Pitzer announced in November of 1969 that he would honor what he called an athlete’s “right of conscience.” It would allow athletes to boycott schools or event that he or she deemed “personally repugnant.” It made a serious impact.

Oklahoma State and US Olympic basketball coach Hank “Mo” Iba told Sports Illustrated in the summer of 1969: “We are facing the greatest crisis in sports history. In the next eight months we could see sports virtually destroyed. Nobody seems to realize how critical the situation is.” Chop this quote from Hank Iba down to 140 characters and it would sound like just one of many hysterical tweets from the past week, after the Missouri Tigers went on strike and helped topple a school president.

Mark Twain is often quoted as having said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” In college sports, 2015 resembles 1969 about as much as an SUV resembles a ten-speed bike. NCAA football is now a multibillion-dollar business. The campus lives of players are unrecognizable by comparison. In the effort to compete for the best high-school talent, schools today invest heavily in separate dorms, separate cafeterias, separate study halls, and, superficially, a separate, superior existence. But unlike in 1969, student athletes also have to travel more, study playbooks more, and sacrifice classes they might actually want to take. And as players get bigger, stronger, and faster, they face a greater risk for injuries that could saddle them with healthcare costs or even brain damage for the rest of their lives. Today’s players are also more likely to be black, to come from a tough economic background, and to therefore have a set of life experiences that alienates them from their classmates and distinguishes them from the student athletes of 50 years ago.

But the lessons of the 1960s still rhyme. You cannot wait for the athletes to lead the struggle. But if you build a clear, united, and cacophonous movement off the field, as the Black Lives Matter movement has done, it can breach the walls that separate the jocks from the rest of the campus.

Right now, campus activists should be strategizing about how to connect with these so called “student athletes,” how to tell them about the issues that plague their campus, and most importantly to listen to the grievances of the student athletes, to try to create common cause.

The current neoliberal, for-profit higher-education model has sunk fortunes into football as a (largely ineffective) way to drag the entire university system out of financial crisis. School presidents need football to be a hub of economic, social, and even psychological life on campus. Their addiction to cable television money has given these so-called student athletes a remarkable amount of social power, far more than the previous generation. If they flex that power in concert with the demands of a broader student body, if they refuse to work unless their fellow students are heard, then campus politics — not to mention sports — will never be the same.

Reprinted from The Nation by permission of the author.

Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation magazine, a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN and Democracy Now!, and hosts the Edge of Sports podcast. 

Zirin’s books include What’s My Name Fool? (Haymarket Books), Welcome to the Terrordome (Haymarket Books), A People’s History of Sports in the United States (New Press), Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love (Scribner), co-author of The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World (Haymarket Books), and Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy (Haymarket Books). He wrote the script for the film Not Just a Game: Power, Politics & American Sports. Learn more at www.edgeofsports.com.

The post The Missouri Tigers and the Hidden History of Black College Football Activists appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

With never-before-seen footage and behind-the-scenes interviews, When We Were Kings provides a rare glimpse into this famous and historic boxing match.  The documentary captures Muhammad Ali’s charisma and charm as he shares his famous poems and sayings with the press and the people of Zaire.  Also there are interviews with other key boxing figures like Don King, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton.

Preceding the “Rumble in the Jungle” was a three day concert with James Brown, B.B. King, and other soul music greats that also adds insight into the “event” status of this historic fight. [Description from BlackClassicMovies.com]

Trailer

The post When We Were Kings appeared first on Zinn Education Project.