Rising from a relatively unknown amateur fighter to an Olympic champion, a 22 year-old boxer named Cassius Clay shocked the world in 1964 when he defeated Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. Soon after the fight, Clay changed his name to Cassius X, and then later to Muhammad Ali upon converting to Islam and affiliating with the Nation of Islam. The legend of Ali was born.
One of the most iconic images of Ali came from this fight against Liston. He is pictured towering over his vanquished opponent, flexing his muscle and taunting him, “Get up and fight, sucker!” The perfectly composed image captures Ali radiating the strength and poetic brashness that made him the nation’s most beloved and reviled athlete. When I look at this photo, I think of one thing: power.
A common definition of power is the ability to achieve one’s will. When someone with power wants something, they will get it. Sociologically, power is defined as the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. Ali fits into both of these definitions, he showed power in the ring when he dominated his opponents and outside of the ring when he was involved in the Black Power and Antiwar movements.
American sociologist Amos Hawley wrote, “Every social act is an exercise of power, every social relationship is a power equation, and every social group or system is an organization of power.” Positions are resources, and they give the actors who fill them the ability to achieve their will. Ali quickly realized that he could use his success in the boxing ring as a platform to exercise his power, and speak out against injustice and racial inequality. He opposed the Vietnam War long before it was popular to do so. Ali said “My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people – some poor hungry people in the mud – for big powerful America.” His stand jump-started the anti war movement in the 1960’s, and helped encourage Martin Luther King to speak out against the conflict in 1967. Ali’s actions resulted in a three and a half year ban from boxing and five years of imprisonment. The years of his career he sacrificed to make a change in society cost him millions of dollars and set him back to a point where he was fighting long after his career should have been over. During these years he absorbed damaging blows that many believe to have led to the Parkinson’s disease he suffered from during the latter years of his life.
Throughout the late 1960’s Ali became a cultural epitome for black America. He dazzled eager students with lectures on black history, his own political travails, and the need for principled resistance. An entire generation of black athletes, most notably Olympic sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar worshipped Ali as the pinnacle of athletic achievement. As time passed, Ali helped make Black Power into a global political brand. His love for Africa, rage against political inequality, and thirst for social justice made him a human rights ambassador.
There is a famous photo of a man standing on a ledge about to jump off the top of a building in 1981, when Ali was long past his boxing prime. Crowds were calling to him telling him not to jump but he refused to listen, he felt worthless and wanted to take his own life. Ali heard about the man and sped to the scene, before long his head popped out of a window further along the building as he was trying to convince the man that his life was worth living. Twenty minutes later, Ali is bringing the man to safety. All it took for the man to change his mind was the voice and exerted power of Ali. Not only did Ali display his extreme capability to influence others, he took control of the powerless man that wanted to jump and made him change his mind. One can argue that there is no greater power than the ability to save another's life.
This event was an example of Ali’s incredible charismatic authority. According to German sociologist Max Weber, sometimes there is an extraordinary individual in society who gathers around him or her large numbers of people who regard the individual with great awe. Because the individual has personal qualities that are regarded as special, they are granted legitimacy. People obey them because of their attraction to the individual, not because of tradition or law. In this case, the individual is Muhammad Ali.
By going out of his way to save lives and be politically active, Ali chooses to follow the bystander approach. Although Jackson Katz advocates the bystander approach to gender violence and bullying prevention, it can be carried over to many other facets of life. This approach encourages people to get involved in their communities and speak up for what they believe is right. Rather than focusing on the victim or the perpetrator, the bystander approach emphasizes the role witnesses can play in either supporting or challenging violence and ideas. This approach believes that the roots of societal problems lie in the institutional structures and cultural practices of society. Therefore, the approach emphasizes changing social norms as the key to prevention.
Ali took pride in changing social norms his whole life. He changed the sport of boxing as well as the sports world as a whole, and he changed the way African Americans spoke out against civil injustices. Ali challenged the social norms of boxing by being the first to self promote his fights and aggressively trash talk his opponents in the media. Before Ali, no one boasted or predicted the outcome of fights or called opponents names or even chided the media after a victory. He did all that, and he did it smartly, with humor and certainly at times with a mean spirit. He said things like, “To beat me, you have to be greater than great,” and “I’m so fast that if I turn out the light I’m in bed before the room gets dark.” It infuriated fans. People watched his early fights in particular because they wanted to see him lose. Black America overwhelmingly rooted for him because he represented its causes and was not afraid to communicate the frustrations and concerns of the people. His impact on society is still vile today, as modern boxers of all weight classes try (with most of them failing) to hype fights in Ali’s fashion.
Ali challenged the social norms of white America as well. He made whites uncomfortable in doing so. They called him racist because he called them racist, something no boxer had ever done, and has not done since. When he spoke out against injustices he did so with no filter, he didn’t care what people thought of him. He was speaking to make his message clear and he was determined to deliver his message with power. His strength and unwavering commitment to his core values helped to elevate the image of the Black man, whose voice had been muted by racially motivated hate and laws.
As Ali grew older and wiser, he began to see the world differently, less radically, just as Malcolm X had. That was ironic because Ali admired Malcolm X, but turned his back on him when the charismatic leader broke from the Nation of Islam. Ali later said he regretted doing so and wish he had apologized to Malcolm X. Although Ali tempered his approach, he did not change his message. He remained an advocate for Blacks, in America and Africa, but he also preached world peace. Parkinson’s disease slowed Ali and eventually took away his speaking ability. But when he shakily lit the Olympic torch in 1996 in Atlanta, the whole world cheered and cried, for Ali represented courage, strength and perseverance. Parkinson’s had a face, and because it was Ali’s, research and awareness have increased one million-fold.