Friday Fire 2: What is the Most Significant Black Athlete Moment?
Throwback Thursday will return next week with another profile that I’m sure you will enjoy.
Today I would like to pose this question to our readers. Of the many great sports moments involving Black Athletes, which one is the most significant to you?
Personally, it would be Cassius Clay winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964. The victory would make Clay the youngest titleholder ever but it would also usher in the era of a new Black Man – one that White America was not eager to embrace. This would be the dawning of athletes that would not take a back seat to any racial or gender bias. Ali was willing to champion the cause; would someone other than Ali been able to make such a bold move given the racial climate of that day? I don’t think so.
Clay would come to be known as Muhammad Ali as well as a follower of Nation of Islam leader The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Ali would speak out on socio-economical issues that the Black families in America faced. He spoke about Black pride and how we as people need to become educated and drop the slave mentality that had held us back for so many years. Ali would refuse to enter the Viet Nam conflict, thus rendering his Heavyweight title for three years. This decision won Ali many fans on a worldwide scale, but in the United States he drew the ire of politicians as well as the common man.
The ripple effect from Clay’s victory has been felt since that day in many of our outspoken athletes, from Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refusing to stand during the National Anthem to Charles Barkley calling the U.S. Government on the carpet for it’s lack of concern outside of the French Quarter three years after Hurricane Katrina.
Whether you want to realize it or not that knockout in Miami, Florida that night put a battery in the back of the Black Athlete.
Now if we can only find someone to recharge it…
The Rematch…Check the boos in the intro…