Ep. 62 – Jonathan Eig on Muhammad Ali: Race, War, and Democracy

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to Race and Democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, Social justice and citizenship. Today we have the pleasure of speaking to Jonathan I who is a journalist and is a critically acclaimed bestselling author of four books, including Luckiest Man in Opening Day. He has written for the new york Times, The new yorker esquire in Washington Post and is a contributing writer to the Wall Street Journal. He is currently working with Ken Burns to develop a documentary on Muhammad Ali. And his latest book is Ali A Life, which is really the definitive biography of Muhammad Ali, heavyweight champion of the World, anti Vietnam war protester, three time heavyweight champion the World, and really a symbol of black political radicalism during the 19 sixties. And this is a great time to be talking to you Jonathan because 2020 has been a year of american racial reckoning. So, I wanted to talk to you about Muhammad Ali, the 19 sixties race, Democracy, but also the present and some future projects that you’re working on as well.

[0:01:20 Jonathan] Well, I’d love to talk about all of that. So thank you so much. It’s really a pleasure to be with you today.

[0:01:25 Peniel] What got you interested in one being a journalist and then the story of Muhammad Ali,

[0:01:32 Jonathan] I got interested in journalism because I wasn’t good at anything else. I as a kid, I just loved writing. I was, it was the only subject in school that I felt any confidence in and when I discovered that I could work for my junior high newspaper and even my local paper at age 16, I just loved it. I was a shy kid so I loved being able to pick up a notebook and go interview people who normally I’d be scared of. Um so that was a huge thrill for me and it’s I’m still basically doing the same thing that I started doing at 16 for my school paper. I’m picking up my notebook and going and interviewing people who normally I would have no business talking to and writing about what I learned and following my curiosity and following the curiosity is just um taking me on an incredible journey all the way to writing the biography of Muhammad Ali, who I idolized as a kid. You know, I grew up in the suburbs of new york, was born in 64. So by the time I’m 10, Ali is fighting George foreman in Zaire, and I’m not really aware of the racial, the political, the religious struggle involved in all of this. I’m just thrilled by watching this incredible fighter and this incredible personality and um 40 something years later, to be able to write his biography um was just the greatest experience I could have had. And I, you know, it’s a huge honor and responsibility to

[0:03:00 Peniel] now in the biography. You pull no punches about talking about Ali’s life, his personal life, his politics, his connection to the nation of Islam. Very complicated personal life with not only just several marriages, but just different people within his life, different Children. And suddenly and somehow he still this very protean figure, even though there are real inconsistencies in Ali. So let’s talk about cassius clay and sort of the evolution of Cashes Clay into Muhammad Ali, you really have a poignant part in the book where you talk about his relationship with Malcolm X and the way in which that relationship really helped to form him uh in critical ways, but also the evolution of that relationship when it came time to discard that relationship. In a lot of ways the young Muhammad Ali, um there was no looking back as an older person, he said he regretted it, but at the time you don’t necessarily see that. So let’s talk about that evolution of cassius clay into Muhammad Ali,

[0:04:08 Jonathan] you know, man, you and I could spend a whole hour just talking about that easily. Um, and I’m fascinated by this because without the nation of islam, without Malcolm x, there is no Muhammad ali, he becomes the man he becomes because of these beliefs that he discovers and if you want to go all the way back to cassius clay, you know, he’s cassius marcellus clay jr uh, named for a white slave owner and his father is a, is a fierce race man. His father is a garvey and his father believes that the black man is never going to get a fair shake in this country and that there’s no point in in even hoping for it. And he raises young caches junior to believe these things to believe that because of the color of his skin, he will never be accepted as an american. So when people start protesting, when the civil rights movement starts, starts to even just take its earliest shape. You know, Cashes, Clay is the same age as as Emmett till and, and he remembers all his life what happened to Emmett till, but he doesn’t show much interest in getting involved in the civil rights movement as a kid. He’s, he’s going to school right after Brown versus Board of Education has passed. And of course the schools in Louisville are not integrating and won’t for a long time, but it’s not until he hears Elijah muhammed and here’s Malcolm X. That’s something lights, lights a flame in him. So now he hears something that really speaks to him because it’s not about integration, it’s not about asking the white man for anything. You know, the nation of Islam is not a protest movement. They were building the individual just like Boxing bills, the individual, you know, the nation of Islam was focused on family and community, they were focused on resisting fear. You know, they were arguing that um fear was the thing that kept the black man down and the black woman down and kept the order allowed the segregationists to get away with what they were getting away with. And Malcolm and Elijah Mohammed were rejecting that, they were saying we’re not going to live in fear. And that really appealed to young cassius clay. Um, it thrilled him the first time he heard it, he got a copy of the record that that louis Farrakhan, then known as Louis X, recorded the White man’s Heaven as the Black man’s Hell. And he brought that home from one of his amateur fights in Chicago and he just played that record until he wore it out and memorized every line of it.

[0:06:38 Peniel] And you talk about cassius Clay’s influence on Malcolm to discuss Cash’s influence on Malcolm X because in a lot of ways we think about 1964 and the fact that Malcolm really takes his first vacation Malcolm and Betty and four of their Children, the twins would be born posthumously for Malcolm after his assassination, but discussed that time in Miami, the month long time, he’s right there with Cashes Clay. And then when Cashes Clay surprisingly wins the heavyweight champion ship of the world, I thought it’s fascinating how they just go around um new york, the United Nations. They’re all these different photo ops. Um there’s the evening where there, with Jim Brown, the NFL running back and SAm Cooke, the legendary singer before his assassination. Uh you know, people like Bill Russell, there’s there’s so much going on there and Mohammed ali says that he fell in love with Malcolm when Malcolm was giving the best to these uh both white journalists and these folks, he was debating about civil rights and he says that publicly. So there really is this huge, you know, bromance, this love for each other, that you can see visibly, he thinks of Malcolm as his older brother. Malcolm thinks of him as his little brother. So Malcolm, cassius Clay is only 22 Malcolm is going to be 39 that may, but he’s 38 years old, discussed that. They’re they’re they’re close personal relationship and the politics that are imbibed there.

[0:08:12 Jonathan] Oh my God, it’s so complicated. But you’re right. It is a, it is a brother like relationship, I think that um you know, you have to remember that before the fighting 64 before Ali beats Liston and becomes the heavyweight champion. He’s not telling the world that he’s a member of the nation of Islam, He’s afraid that if it gets out, he’ll lose the shot at the heavyweight title, he’ll lose any shot of endorsement deals. His white business managers are begging him to stop hanging around with Malcolm. And Malcolm is in a tricky spot too, because he’s been banned from the nation of Islam, has been suspended by Elijah muhammed. And uh he’s a he’s accusing in large part mostly because he spoke out after the Kennedy assassination, said the chickens, is the chickens coming home to roost. But also because he knew that Elijah Mohammed was guilty of all of these sexual Infidelities with his secretaries. And the relationship was exploding between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm and Muhammad. Ali was kind of trapped in the middle of this, I think, you know, Malcolm really wanted to be a tutor and a friend, but he was also thinking that if Ali won the championship, it would give him more leverage. It would give Malcolm leverage to either get back into the good graces of Elijah Muhammad or to move away and to start his own organization and bring cassius clay with him. So all of these balls are in the air, all of this tension and it’s really not clear how it’s gonna turn out. Uh, if Ali wins the championship, suddenly, both he and Malcolm have a lot more leverage and when he wins, they celebrate that night, as you mentioned in the hotel room with Sam Cooke Jim Brown, it’s just this, you know, life changing moment for everybody. And ali comes out the next day and really makes one of the most important statements in the history of american sports. You know, one of the great moments in 19 sixties history, he says, I don’t have to be says to the white, the all white press, I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I don’t have to say what you want me to say. I’m my own man, I’m free, I’m a member of the nation of Islam and I can do whatever I want to do. And nobody had heard those kind of words before from a black athlete.

[0:10:24 Peniel] Now after his association with Malcolm X Muhammad Ali, the newly named Mohammed ali becomes the nation of Islam is really biggest drawing power, its biggest speaker besides the honourable lodge Mohammed so discuss that relationship with the nation of Islam and how Muhammad Ali’s anti war stance actually transforms that relationship that he has with the nation of Islam really, permanently, even though he’s going to stay within that organization until after Elijah Muhammad’s passing.

[0:11:04 Jonathan] Elijah Mohammed um is worried that Ali might go with Malcolm so he makes a brilliant move. Um Ali for about 24 hours was calling himself caches X and saying that he was giving up his his slave name of Clay and then he gets a phone call from Elijah Muhammad saying, no you’re not cassius X, I have a special name for you, a greater honor, an honor that I give only to the most important members of our organization. I’m going to give you a whole new name and that name will be Muhammad Ali. And in that movie, he solidifies his relationship with Ali and really splits him from Malcolm and Malcolm said in his autobiography that when he heard that on the radio that Ali had had accepted this name from Elijah Muhammad, he knew that he was in trouble and of course was assassinated soon after an Ollie rejected Malcolm and said that anyone who crosses, anyone who dares to defy Elijah Mohammed does so at their own peril, he basically left Malcolm hanging in a way that he would regret years later. Um I think I think that you know, Ali could have saved Malcolm’s life, he could have, he could have supplied him with some protection, but he didn’t. And as you, as you said, ali becomes the most important symbol of the nation of Islam. Heavyweight Champion is a massive worldwide figure, a celebrity, you know, unlike any other, he’s he’s bigger than any football player, bigger than any baseball player, everybody knows him and for him to align himself with the nation of Islam, which is still at this time considered a by the by the FBI considered a terrorist cult. That’s huge. It gives it gives Elijah Muhammad a huge recruiting tool and establishes them as a part of the american culture in a way that they could not have been established before.

[0:12:57 Peniel] And so let’s talk about Muhammad Ali and the refusal of draft induction in 1967. He’s three years, basically three years into his heavyweight championship uh tenure. He’s really entering his fourth year because he won in february 64 he’s undefeated, he’s dazzling and then he decides not to step forward when he is called to be inducted in the draft. It’s so funny because the person who’s trying to induct him tells journalists that he said Muhammad ali and he also said Cashes Clay, just to be sure, because I think one of the things I’d like to discuss with you is really the racism of white journalists in the error who refused to call him Muhammad Ali. And famously there’s even opponents, black opponents who refused to call Muhammad Ali and he he and you recount how he um punishes them in the ring for that refusal. But I thought that was very, very obviously disrespectful. But let’s talk about how Muhammad Ali becomes this really both this countercultural figure, this black power figure um Stokely Carmichael is a friend of Muhammad Ali’s martin Luther King JR meets with him in Louisville and defends Muhammad Ali’s right to refuse the draft. So let’s talk about what what that does for him and what that does, how he becomes sort of this unlikely black Power spokesperson, as a member of an organization that’s telling black people not to participate overtly in politics. Certainly Malcolm X had defied those orders from elijah Mohammed, which led to his ouster and his eventual murder. But how does Mohammad Ali become the symbol? This global symbol of defiance against colonialism, war, white supremacy racism.

[0:14:51 Jonathan] It’s really fascinating because he somehow manages to span all of these groups, you know, black power leaders like him. The integration is the sort of the middle of the road civil rights activists like him. Only a white America doesn’t like him. And let’s not forget that, you know, when he changes his name, when he announces that he won’t fight in the draft, he becomes the most unpopular man in America among at least in white America I should say he’s despised and yet that helps him emerge as kind of this this great symbol of rebellion who who crosses all kinds of lines. He’s not just a member of the nation of islam. As you said, he’s a global figure of rebellion and when he travels overseas for the first time, he’s stunned to see that not only everybody knows him, but everybody loves him because he’s seen as somebody who stands up to american imperialism, stands up against the war, stands up for what he believes in, stands up against white power against white privilege and just is willing to to be fearless in that and it really fires everyone around him, Even people who might not agree with him politically. You know, there’s a great clip of him with martin Luther king where you can just see king cracking up, He just, you know, being in all these company was like a drug, people just couldn’t get enough of him. He was so much fun to be around and yet he was so, so fearless.

[0:16:16 Peniel] And you talk about in your biography of Ali the real toll that anti war resistance takes. And um I wanted to talk about that in depth because Ali goes broke. Um he divorces his first wife and marries Belinda, his second wife. When we think about the nation of Islam, they tend to see him as um a cash cow and as his utility diminishes, they actually distanced themselves from him. And there’s a point where Elijah Muhammad actually gives him a one year ban from the group. So they really treat him distasteful. E and you really get to see aspects of the massive corruption within that group. But you’re also very candid about Ali’s own personal shortcomings in a way that I think the 2000 and four Michael Mann film would have really benefited from showing the complicated anti hero that Muhammad Ali was in his real life. You know, he mistreated people, he mistreated women, he didn’t have time for his Children often in those years. And you document that I wanted to talk about that, that version of Ali before he recovers the heavyweight championship in Zaire in 1974 october 8th.

[0:17:41 Jonathan] His life is really messy and it’s um in part because he’s he’s willing to, you know, he sacrifices so much and it’s really important for us to remember, everybody always talks about how Ali gave up 3.5 years of his prime as a boxer as a money earner because he because he took the stand against Vietnam, but he didn’t sacrifice just 3.5 years. He was prepared to sacrifice his entire career. He didn’t know that he was going to be allowed to box again. There was every reason to believe that his career was over and he was still willing to make that sacrifice. So you cannot question his religious sincerity on this. He truly embraced the teachings of Elijah Muhammad even after Elijah muhammed suspended him from the nation of Islam for focusing too much on money and thinking too much about boxing and not his religious values. Ali remained devoted to the man and to the religion and and it cost him dearly for 3.5 years. He couldn’t box, he could make money only really on the margins. You know, he traveled around the country and spoke on college campuses for very small sums, you know, who can say what kind of a, you know, turmoil this is caused for his marriage, for his life, for his relationships. But yeah, the one good thing I think is that traveling around on the college campuses, he became even more radical list. And he inspired a group of mostly white college students who were beginning to protest the war on campuses. And and we began to see, you begin to see ali emerging as a different kind of a hero, to a much broader part of the community, to these left left leaning college students who might not have thought of him as one of their heroes, but he begins to become more of a global figure, even during the time that he’s that he’s not boxing. And that to me, in a way, is where his real heroism becomes clear. It’s established outside the ring. And that’s really his, his great legacy, of course, is outside the ring.

[0:19:46 Peniel] Talk to me about his relationship with joe Frazier. They have these three extraordinary fights between 19, basically 71 in 1975. And uh, ali loses the first and then maybe he actually even loses the first to you. You would know better than me, but certainly wins the thrill. Just

[0:20:08 Jonathan] the first one. He won the first one. He lost the first one and one the next to

[0:20:12 Peniel] the next to. So the Thrilla in Manila is the one that I remember as a kid. People talking about tiny tiny person. People talking about, tell me about both those fights. But also the racism. Why why did Ali called joe Frazier gorilla? And how was he able to get away with that? Because when I when I see uh and that has been recounted in documentaries, Your book beautifully recounted. But I’m always um put off by that, you know, And joe Frazier was such, in his own way, a decent, a decent man. He didn’t have the same politics, but he was not some kind of uncle tom either. But what, what why is joe Frazier the recipient of being called all these, not just negative words, but, but racist words, calling him a gorilla, calling him stupid, calling him ugly. How does he get away with that

[0:21:04 Jonathan] man? It’s amazing. And it’s so sad. It’s one of the things in Ali’s career that I think makes it the hardest to like him. It’s really disgusting behaviour. And and it wasn’t just fraser. Actually, Ali picked on his black opponents in a cruel kind of away. And it makes it so complicated because here’s this figure of black pride, here’s the man who, you know, inspired black power to use his slogan, I am the greatest uh, here’s this guy who is clearly, you know, about uplifting his people and yet he uses the most vicious racist white language against his black opponents and he’s much meaner to his black opponents than he is to his white opponents. He calls joe Frazier, not just fraser, but some of the other guys he fought Uncle toms, he calls them the white people’s champ, that only white people are rooting for you. You know, only Richard Nixon could possibly root for joe Frazier. You know, he’s doing it to try to get under their skins, but he’s also doing it in a way that uses just the most vile insults. That is it, is it because he knows this is what’s going to hurt them the most, that it’s going to damage their concentration in the ring. And is that acceptable? Is that a good enough reason to fall back on this racist language? One of Ali’s friends had an interesting theory about it for me. He said he thought it was because Ali was really raised in the middle class, he was not poor, the way most boxers were, the way joe Frazier was, you know, so many boxers came from poverty came from the ghetto and Ali never had that kind of a street cred and maybe that’s why he, maybe he was insecure around some of these other black men and felt like he had to diminish them somehow. That’s, you know, you’re playing a little bit of pop psychologist there, but it’s an interesting theory. For some reason, Ali gave joe Frazier the worst of it and I think it’s because Ali was afraid of Frazier. Ali beat him that first fight and Ali just didn’t match up well with Frasier, Frasier seemed to have his number and it was, it really became bitter and became personal and fraser had been kind to Ali when when ali was exiled, fraser had lent and lent him money and offered him a job. It’s really to me inexcusable the way the way ali treated him

[0:23:25 Peniel] and now let’s talk about his health because one of the things you spend a lot of time on is the way in which even before the diagnosis of Parkinson’s and even before the fights of the late seventies with leon Spinks in the last terrible fight with Trevor Berbick in 1981 where people saw and obviously diminished ali, but dr Ferdie Pacheco and others knew that very, very early in that come back, he wasn’t the same fighter, he hadn’t trained the same way, but his health was deteriorating. Like we we could make an argument from reading your book that all of those fights from the 19 seventies and to come back really shouldn’t have been fought because he’s in such poor health.

[0:24:09 Jonathan] Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I mean, boxing is a brutal game. Boxing. The purpose of boxing is to cause a concussion. The goal is to cause brain damage in your opponent. Right? So let’s start there. But Ali fights much too long. Ferdie Pacheco said that he began to see signs of brain damage. As early as 1971 Ali fought for another 10 years, he took tens of thousands of punches. And as he got a little older or even even when he when he first came back in 71 after the 3.5 year exile, he’s slower and he had gotten by really on on speed. You know, he didn’t take a lot of shots, he didn’t suffer a lot of damage in the first part of his career because he was so fast and he was so quick at a you know, able to avoid punches. But when he comes back he’s a step slower and when your whole fight is built around speed, you can’t afford to lose a step. And now he finds out something great and something terrible. He finds out that he can take a punch and these he can just wait until opponents get tired of hitting him and when they get tired, he can he can come back and start fighting. And and that means he fights lots of long bouts where he absorbs a ton of punishment. And by the mid seventies you can see it, you can hear it, you can see that, you know, he doesn’t look the same, that his speech is starting to slow down. He’s slurring his words and his friends and family expressed concern. They say there’s something wrong with you,

[0:25:36 Peniel] but he just keeps fighting because he

[0:25:37 Jonathan] needs the money. He loves the attention and like so many, you know, great athletes, they don’t know when to stop.

[0:25:45 Peniel] And so let’s talk about the last act of Ali’s career after he stops fighting in 1981. How does he become because in the black community, he was always a folk hero, but how does he become the Ali who has Parkinson’s but is lighting the olympic torch in Atlanta 96 being feted by Republican and Democratic presidents, especially after he had been persona non grata. And there becomes this embraced by white americans of Ali um, in his old age. And in a way people like Bill Clinton. When you think about President Clinton and Ali’s funeral, President Obama, they set up a mythology around Ali uh that amplifies notions of american exceptionalism in a way that’s really fascinating to see and observe. I think it’s wrong headed, but I see what they’re doing. How does he become this symbol that sort of knits together the cultural wars in a way that is satisfying, almost not to all sides, but that presents a satisfying narrative, a cohesive narrative.

[0:26:57 Jonathan] Yeah, it’s sad and it’s it’s frustrating. It’s it’s similar to what

[0:27:02 Peniel] what we’re doing

[0:27:03 Jonathan] with dr King. You know, we’re whitewashing the story, we’re forgetting all of the, all the rough parts. We’re forgetting the radicalism. And what happens to Ali is that he becomes like this buddha figure, especially when he grows silent when when Parkinson takes his voice away. And all we see is this peaceful man with tremors who can no longer speak. We he becomes all things to all people. And, you know, Stanley Crouch, had a great lion. He said Ali in the first part of his career was a grizzly bear. He’s dangerous. He’ll rip your head off. In the second part of his career in the seventies, he’s like a circus bear, he’s still dangerous, but he’s entertaining and we like to laugh. And then in the third part of his career, after his boxing days are over, he becomes like a teddy bear and we all want to hug him and we’ve forgotten how dangerous he really was. But we shouldn’t forget how dangerous Ali was. His importance. His great legacy is his radicalism. Uh not we shouldn’t remember the guy who lit the torch. That should not be our lasting image of him.

[0:28:12 Peniel] So when we think about Ali, I want to have a wider discussion of Ali’s relevance to today in terms of 2020 and really the 19 sixties, I know you’re working on a a biography of dr martin Luther King, Jr and with all the protests that are happening in 2020 in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by the police. Uh and this racial reckoning that were happening,

[0:28:39 Jonathan] that we’re

[0:28:40 Peniel] witnessing on flower, 20 million people out in the streets, almost 5000 separate demonstrations uh in the spring, in the summer of this year, 2020. How does Ali and his legacy? And it really a larger context of talking about the 19 sixties and figures like King. How do they help us come to terms with what’s going on now? And really help us even think about what what might the future look like for us when we think about these issues of racial justice and equity in american society and around the world, Because we really truly witnessed global protests in London and Oxford and Munich and Berlin. And just all around the world sympathy Black Lives Matter demonstrations where activists are saying they have their own racial problems in these these places as well.

[0:29:36 Jonathan] Man, that’s a great question. And I’d like to hear your take on it after I take a shot at it. But you know, I would say that if you loved Ali, you have to support the protesters in the streets today. You have to recognize that sometimes you just have to get out there without necessarily knowing exactly what you’re asking for. You’ve got to make some noise, you’ve got to say that it’s not acceptable anymore. And you’ve got to fight the inequalities of society that we’re just not going to take it anymore. You know, you can see it with Colin Kaepernick, is this resistance that to the idea of speaking out that somehow people are supposed to be just shut up and dribble, well, no, we’re not going to take that anymore, Right, And that’s what Ali said, and that’s what I think the protesters today are saying, we’re just we’re just not going to take it anymore. We don’t necessarily know where this is going to lead us, but you have to start by standing up for what you believe in.

[0:30:37 Peniel] And so when you think about a figure like martin Luther King, Jr and I’ve I’ve worked on King as well in the dual biography of King and Malcolm X. What do you think some of the things that are being left out of dr King’s story, especially for this generation? Because we know there’s been these pure surprise winning biographies by Branch and Garrow, but those right now are 35 years old, basically. So what is a new interpretive model of somebody who is as significant as king? Uh and people like Ali, you’ve done ali you’re working on King, What does that do for us in our current discourse? Our current moment?

[0:31:21 Jonathan] Well, I think you laid it out beautifully in your book on King and Malcolm and what we’ve forgotten, what we’ve been brainwashed to forget what we’ve been taught since kindergarten to forget is how radical King was, how very much in common he had with Malcolm X, especially in the latter years of their of their lives, and that when they began when King began talking about the inequalities of capitalism and the military industrial complex and the war in Vietnam, he became incredibly unpopular, perhaps as unpopular as Ali was in the in the late sixties, and when we forget that we forget just how fearless they were and how much risk they were taking on. You know, it’s easy to talk about. I have a dream and content of our character but it’s a lot harder to reckon with the radicalism but the radicalism is what we need to be talking about today. In my opinion. I’d like to hear your side.

[0:32:21 Peniel] Yeah, no, I think you’re exactly exactly right. And I think it’s so interesting that this time period is making us recall the 19 sixties and trying to figure out these movements and these icons in new and different ways. I want to ask you about your method Jonathan, like what is your method of setting out to write these biographies? The you know, these are huge biographies, The biography of Ali clocks in at over 600 pages. Um and

[0:32:54 Jonathan] very very away from it though. Okay.

[0:32:55 Peniel] No, no, it’s it’s beautifully written. But what is your method? I know you do interviews. Did you get a chance to interview Muhammad Ali for this? You interviewed family members? Like what is your methodology?

[0:33:08 Jonathan] Well, I always begin by reading of course, but I’m also hurrying to interview because when you’re writing history, as you know, the older folks are a really valuable interviews and some of them will pass away before you can finish the book. So I began by interviewing as many of the people who knew Ali who were close to him as I could. And I spent four years working on this book. So I was able to really get to know his his wives and his friends and his business associates. And I did get to meet Ali but he wasn’t able to do interviews anymore. So that was one of my big regrets that I didn’t get to him sooner, but he really hadn’t done an interview in more than a decade By the time I began the project and I’m doing the same thing now with King, I’m reading I’m finding new archival materials, I found some really incredible new archival materials that you and I have talked about already, but I’m also interviewing Andrew Young. I was able to interview john Lewis last year. I’ve interviewed, you know, Harry Belafonte and Bernard dr Bernard Lafayette and then dozens and dozens of people who, you know, maybe people haven’t heard of, you know, and and people who just knew King personally. His barber from Montgomery is a lovely guy who I’ve visited a few times now. So I like to do interviews. I’m an old journalist and I still like to meet people and look them in the eye and hear their stories, but combining that with the archival materials, a lot of which were not available to Taylor Branch and David Garrow because they just hadn’t been archived yet. The personal papers of Laurence Dunbar Reddick, who was one of King’s closest friends and associates, getting all the way back in Montgomery. And he was a librarian and archivist and a writer who kept every scrap of paper that to me is, you know, you could hear how excited I get talking about stuff like that that I’ve that I’ve been able to have access to. That wasn’t available to the last generation of writers.

[0:34:59 Peniel] Now, when you think about the 19 sixties and the period that we’re in now, what do you think the echoes are? And what do you think is different? Because we’ve been comparing 19 2022 1968? I thought that that was apt, but 1963 is also a comparable year in in many ways, not that’s amplified as 2020 with the pandemic and as many people out in the streets. But what aspects of 2020 do you think? Based on the research you’ve done on both Ali and King does this year echo, if any at all?

[0:35:36 Jonathan] Well, there’s definitely some echoes, but there are also some huge

[0:35:39 Peniel] differences. You know, the

[0:35:40 Jonathan] echo is that people were angry enough to take action and to and to overcome their fear. To risk personal harm, to risk arrest, to stand up for what they believed. And that’s one of the biggest things that, you know, I think Dr King was able to inspire that sense of fearlessness because the segregationists in the south had done so much damage, had done so much harm over the years. They were controlling with fear. And people like Muhammad ali and martin Luther King Jr were able to show that we didn’t have to succumb to that fear and that’s, that’s happening again today. You see it on the streets. The difference I’m afraid is that you don’t see the same local media coverage, You don’t see it happening in small towns. Um you don’t have the reporters there anymore. I mean, the media was a big part of why this was able to work in the sixties because the northern media started going south for the first time and sending reporters to places that they’ve never been before. And the local media was strong enough. Even some of the white media in these small towns like Montgomery were awakened to this, to this drama. And I think that it’s hard to know whether you can see the same kind of grassroots work succeeding today in this environment. I’m not sure. I mean, I certainly hope so, but I’d love to know what you think about that.

[0:37:02 Peniel] Yeah, I think that the echoes are there. I think speaking truth to power, which King and Ali in his own way did so, so effectively are one of the through lines that buying both eras. And also the fact that protest and politics are really inextricably linked. You need both. You can’t have one without the other. Kaepernick is a great example of that. When the rapper Jay Z was saying rapper and mogul jay Z was saying we need to stop protesting and he made his deal with the NFL. As we’ve seen just because of the protests. NFL has said, Black Lives Matter has vowed to contribute 250 million over 10 years to some social justice causes. So you only get progress when there’s there’s great mobilization and I think dr King understood that and I think sometimes we lose that and when we find that again, you get these errors of great, great progress. My final question Jonathan for you is um as a journalist and as a really historian of this time period, what do you think you’re working on a big bio of King now? But why do you think it’s so important for younger readers to have these new interpretive histories of this period? You know, why, why is it so important that each generation, Because I know you’re doing a ton of interviews you’ve done, covered more archives and in a way you did that with the ali book. But why is it so so important for us to produce these new histories that become relevant to this new generation?

[0:38:38 Jonathan] Yeah, I think there’s a real danger with our heroes when we turn them into saints, when we turn them into these almost mythological figures. If you can’t relate to them, you can’t imitate them and you can’t expect people to make the sacrifices to really do the work, to get out there in the streets and do the work. If you think of these people as something greater than human, I think it’s really important to sort of scrape off the barnacles of history, to remind people that dr king was a real person, That he had a great sense of humor, that he was, you know, only five ft seven that he had trouble sleeping at night, that he couldn’t shave because his skin was too sensitive, that he did not have a perfect marriage. Let’s view him as a real person so that we can relate to that story. Same thing with Muhammad ali. Let’s not mythologize these, these people, let’s make them real heroes by acknowledging that they had real lives and that they had real flaws and that means that, that we can all aspire to be heroes in our own way. All

[0:39:37 Peniel] right, well ended on that optimistic note, scraping the barnacles off of history so we can have, we can aspire to be like these, these real heroes who had real, who had real lives and we’ve impacted our own present in such indelible ways. We’ve been having a great conversation with Jonathan EIG about Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr the 19 sixties and the way and it connects with our current racial reckoning. Jonathan EIG is the author of four critically acclaimed books. The latest is Ali A Life, which is really a brilliant biography of Muhammad Ali, that I encourage everyone to check out. Um and he’s working with ken Burns to develop a documentary on Muhammad Ali and he’s working right now on a massive new biography of martin Luther King Jr That will be really an up to date, up to minute cutting edge biography for this generation of new interpretation of martin Luther King Jr So, Jonathan EIG, thank you for joining us.

[0:40:39 Jonathan] It’s been my honor. Thanks for having me. I always enjoy talking to you.

[0:40:44 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode. And you can check out related content on twitter at Peniel joseph. That’s Peniel Joseph and our website CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu. And the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts, at the University of texas at Austin. Thank you