Summary
An "engrossing and important book" ( Wall Street Journal ) that brings to life the fateful friendship between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali
In 1962, boxing writers and fans considered Cassius Clay an obnoxious self-promoter, and few believed that he would become the heavyweight champion of the world. But Malcolm X, the most famous minister in the Nation of Islam-a sect many white Americans deemed a hate cult-saw the potential in Clay, not just for boxing greatness, but as a means of spreading the Nation's message. The two became fast friends, keeping their interactions secret from the press for fear of jeopardizing Clay's career. Clay began living a double life-a patriotic "good Negro" in public, and a radical reformer behind the scenes. Soon, however, their friendship would sour, with disastrous and far-reaching consequences.
Based on previously untapped sources, from Malcolm's personal papers to FBI records, Blood Brothers is the first book to offer an in-depth portrait of this complex bond. Acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith reconstruct the worlds that shaped Malcolm and Clay, from the boxing arenas and mosques, to postwar New York and civil rights-era Miami. In an impressively detailed account, they reveal how Malcolm molded Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali, helping him become an international symbol of black pride and black independence. Yet when Malcolm was barred from the Nation for criticizing the philandering of its leader, Elijah Muhammad, Ali turned his back on Malcolm-a choice that tragically contributed to the latter's assassination in February 1965.
Malcolm's death marked the end of a critical phase of the civil rights movement, but the legacy of his friendship with Ali has endured. We inhabit a new era where the roles of entertainer and activist, of sports and politics, are more entwined than ever before. Blood Brothers is the story of how Ali redefined what it means to be a black athlete in America-after Malcolm first enlightened him. An extraordinary narrative of love and deep affection, as well as deceit, betrayal, and violence, this story is a window into the public and private lives of two of our greatest national icons, and the tumultuous period in American history that they helped to shape.
Author Notes
Randy Roberts is the 150th Anniversary distinguished professor of history at Purdue University. He is the award-winning author of many books on the intersection of popular and political history, including A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle (with Johnny Smith). He lives in Lafayette, Indiana.
Johnny Smith is the J. C. "Bud" Shaw professor of sports history and an associate professor of history at Georgia Tech. He is the co-author of Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X (with Randy Roberts). He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this provocative history, sports historians Roberts and Smith examine the relationship between two central figures of the 1960s: Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. The day after Cassius Clay's unlikely upset of Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title, he shook up the world one more time by pledging allegiance to the Nation of Islam. In the eyes of America, Clay's transformation into Muhammad Ali was blamed on the man who had stood at his side over the previous months: the notorious NOI minister Malcolm X. The truth, as Roberts and Smith make pellucid, was far more complex. Ali spurned Malcolm for the Nation, and Ali's meteoric rise makes a disturbing contrast to the persecution and murder of his former mentor and friend. Roberts and Smith map the relationship between the troubled icons in painstaking detail and debunk long-held assumptions about their break. At the same time, they too easily assign motivations and opinions to both men that, while intriguing, seem largely speculative. Malcolm may indeed have seen Ali as his path to reaching a larger audience, but it's hard to believe that the activist was as naive about the boxer as the authors make him out to be. Nevertheless, Roberts and Smith bring a fresh perspective to the story in the civil rights movement, and capture the ferment of the broader era. Christy Fletcher, Fletcher and Co. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
How Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali and then an enemy of his mentor and friend Malcolm X. These two titanic lives intersected for less than two years, with huge consequences for each man. Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam's most visible minister and spokesman, confirmed the young Clay's deep suspicions about the white man and wooed him for the Nation. Malcolm's incendiary rhetoric astonished Clay, who believed God protected him. How else could Malcolm be so bold and remain alive? In the run-up to Clay's historic upset of champion Sonny Liston, Malcolm filled the young boxer with confidence, privately advised him, supplied him with a business adviser, and shared many meals and moments of intimate family time. Malcolm loved Clay and quickly understood his potential cultural impact and the glittering youth's value as a propaganda tool for the sclerotic Nation. When Clay denounced his "slave name" and was anointed as Muhammad Ali, Malcolm understood he'd lost an intense power struggle with the Nation's leader, Elijah Muhammad, and that it was only a matter of time before he'd be killed. Roberts (History/Purdue Univ.; A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game that Rallied a Nation at War, 2011, etc.) and Smith (American History/Georgia Tech; The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty that Changed College Basketball, 2013, etc.) minutely examine the construction and tortured dissolution of this friendship, highlighting the influence of their fathers on their sensitive sons and the varying masks they adopted to navigate their worlds of prizefighting and politics. Backdropping the authors' main tale are incisive looks at Ali's showmanship, his almost single-handed resurrection of boxing, and the befuddlement of sportswriters confronted with his conversion. They sharply detail Malcolm's growing disillusionment with Elijah, his heartbreak at the loss of Ali's allegiance, and the ugly dynamic within the Nation that left the defiant minister murdered. A page-turning tale from the 1960s about politics and sports and two proud, extraordinary men whose legacies endure. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sports historians Roberts (Rising Tide, 2013) and Smith (The Sons of Westwood, 2013) delve deeply into the little-known intricacies and tragic consequences of the close bond between the mentoring Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X and the young boxer Cassius Clay. As the authors tell the gripping personal stories of these two passionate revolutionaries and seekers, they cover with both anecdotal panache and analytical insight Clay's genius for audacious self-promotion and strategic self-concealment, and Malcolm X's dream of resolving his increasingly dire conflict with the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad by bringing Clay and his burgeoning international fame fully into the fold. Vividly set within the coalescing civil rights movement, this incisive anatomy of a fatal friendship turns on the bitter irony that Clay, soon to become Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X became brothers in spirit by virtue of their shared insistence on equality and freedom in a racist society, only to be drawn to the Nation of Islam, which betrayed and terrorized them both, forcing them apart and ultimately murdering Malcolm X. Roberts and Smith portray both of these courageous and controversial, inspired and inspiring men with fresh, stinging clarity, and extend our perception of the interconnectivity of race, religion, sports, and media during this violent and transformative era, which is so very germane today.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THERE IS TODAY a thriving industry of hagiography on Muhammad Ali. It is, however, not easy to explain how the Louisville Lip morphed from a blarney-filled boxer into a global symbol of racial pride and self-respect. According to Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith in "Blood Brothers," the chrysalis was Ali's intense but tragic friendship with Malcolm X. As early as his high school years, Cassius Clay had been intrigued by the Nation of Islam. In 1962, the heavyweight contender traveled to Detroit to listen to the Nation's "Supreme Minister," Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X. For African-Americans, the Nation represented a militant alternative to picket lines, fire hoses and attack dogs. Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm sneered at Martin Luther King's strategy of nonviolence, supported segregation and declared that the white man was the Devil. How did this hostile-to-paranoid worldview attract the people-loving boxer who was bankrolled by a lily-white investment group? One of the signal contributions of "Blood Brothers" - a rigorously researched book that gracefully pivots between the world of the ring and the racial politics of the early '60s - is its excavation of Cassius Clay Sr.'s impact in shaping his son's views on race, and thereby enhancing the appeal of the Nation of Islam. Roberts and Smith, historians who have written sports books, explain: "Cassius Clay Sr. told parables that taught young Cassius ... about the world. All the stories had the same general theme: Black men die after seemingly harmless encounters with white men." At their first meeting, Malcolm X didn't know who Clay was. But from the start, "Malcolm had magnetized Clay, drawing him toward the inner circle of the Nation." Within months, the fighter and the minister who was famous for the line "by any means necessary" were orbiting each other. Though Clay's boxing brain trust feared that an association with the Nation and Malcolm would deck his chances at a title shot, the fighter was spellbound. At every opportunity, he traveled to sit at Malcolm's feet and imbibe the stirring and frequently violent rhetoric. The more time he spent with the minister, the more "Clay began thinking of himself as divine, graced by the power of Allah." When the press asked him about his influences, Clay üked to say, "Who made me is me." But in many ways, Malcolm X formed the man whom all the world would come to know. Like Ali, Malcolm was a charismatic person with ardent ambitions. An ex-convict, he was devoted to Elijah Muhammad, at least until he learned that Elijah had had multiple affairs and numerous children out of wedlock, and had used the Nation's treasury as his personal checking account. Malcolm confronted Elijah and later went public about the sins of his spiritual father. Once believed to be the heir apparent, he was soon deemed a traitor. Nation members, Ali included, were forbidden to associate with him. Malcolm, who "had seen gruesome images of black men bludgeoned at the hands of Muhammad's avengers," understood that "no one survived Muhammad's wrath." By 1964, he was a dead man walking. Desperately, Malcolm tried to use his friendship with Ali as leverage to bring himself back within the fold. But fearlessness in boxing does not always translate into fearlessness in life. Ali slammed the door on his mentor. The authors conclude, "When Ali cut Malcolm out of his life, he revealed a new side of himself, ... an angrier, crueler side that would develop more and more in the coming years." In February 1965, Malcolm - no longer a racial separatist - was gunned down. Decades later, Ali said: "I wish I'd been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry, that he was right about so many things. ... If I could go back and do it over again, I would never have turned my back on him." GORDON MARINO is a boxing writer, a professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and the editor of "The Quotable Kierkegaard."
Choice Review
The tragic feud between Elijah Muhammad (a messenger of Allah and leader of the Nation of Islam) and Malcolm X is critically important in the black freedom struggle in the 1960s. Historians Roberts (Purdue) and Smith (Georgia Tech) offer a fresh perspective on the friendship between Malcolm X and Cassius Clay and Malcolm's role in Clay's embrace of the Nation of Islam. They chronicle the tug of war between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X for the loyalty of the boxer who became Muhammad Ali (the name given to him by Elijah Muhammad) in March 1964. Some readers may be uncomfortable with the elements of conjecture and speculation about the motives of the principals in this story and the dark side of the feud between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, with Muhammad Ali caught in the middle and forced to choose sides. Nevertheless, the book offers a plausible, sobering account and shines a light on the complex relationship between Malcolm and Ali. The authors ask probing questions about Malcolm's assassination and the possibility that the FBI had an informant and collaborator very high up in the inner circle of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. A great companion with Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (CH, Sep'11, 49-0485), by Manning Marable. Indispensable reading. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Wayne C. Glasker, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden
Library Journal Review
Shortly before becoming heavyweight champion of the world in 1964, Cassius Clay Jr. (b. 1942) became involved with the black supremacist sect, the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X (1925-65), a fiery though thoughtful minister within the sect, formed a symbiotic relationship with Clay. Malcolm helped Clay develop as a worldwide figure, and having Clay as a protégé served the ambitious Malcolm. Over time, Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali, had to choose between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, the aging and less charismatic leader of the Nation of Islam. Coauthors Roberts (history, Purdue Univ.) and Smith (history, Georgia Tech Univ.) argue that in losing Ali, Malcolm lost the centerpiece of his ascendance and then his protective cover; within months Malcolm was assassinated by his former cohorts. VERDICT This book offers a significant contribution to serious studies of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and the Nation of Islam.-Jim Burns, -formerly with Jacksonville P.L. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.