The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page K5

THE PAGE5A SPECIAL SECTION I got no quarrel with them he says to reporters who call him at home in Miami. He later explains Vietcong ever called me Ali asks to be reclassified a conscientious objector to military service. A judge sides with him, but the draft board keeps him 1-A, armed with a U.S. Justice Department opinion that objections to military service are political, not religious. Ali splits with the Louisville Sponsoring Group and chooses a new manager, Herbert Muhammad, a son of Elijah.

1967 On April 28, Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army in Houston. He says he is a minister of the Nation of Islam. Almost immediately, the New York State Athletic Commission strips Ali of his title. Other states follow suit.

Ten days later, Ali is indicted. took away his livelihood because he failed the test of political and social sportscaster Howard Cosell said. said a damn word about the professional football players who dodged the draft, but Ali was different: He was black, and he was On June 20, a jury deliberates 20 minutes before convicting Ali of refusing induction into the Army. He receives the maximum sentence: five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He is freed on bail pending appeal.

On Aug.17, Ali marries Belinda Boyd, a teenageChicago waitress with plans to go to secretarial school. 1968 Belinda and Muhammad have the first of their four children, Maryum. Unable to fight, Ali earns money through a series of speaking engagements on college campuses. Many Americans vilify Ali as a coward unwilling to fight for his country. Others agree with civil-rights leader Martin Luther King view: is giving up millions of dollars to do what his conscience tells him is In December, Ali is jailed for a week in Miami for driving with an invalid license.

1970 As his appeals work their way through the courts, Ali finds a way to fight: Georgia, which has no state boxing commission, is willing to let him box. On Oct.26 in Atlanta, he inflicts a third-round technical knockout on Jerry Quarry, running his record to 30-0. Ali, at the Selective Service local boards, sought conscientious objector status. I can be difficult to measure Muhammad full impact on Louisville when for so much of the time he has been an absentee idol. And although the Ali Center is about to open in his honor a center named for a fighter while dedicated to mediation and world peace there are still many Louisvil- lians who made peace with Ali.

The reasons for that are as complex and conflicting as race and religion or, for that matter, Muhammad Alihim- self. also the Vietnam War still distantly haunting our national conscience almost 40 years after Ali, a gladiator in the ring, refused to fight. As Cassius Clay, he rose from West End streets where he trained as a skinny 15-year-old running along Greenwood Avenue in heavy boots to more than 100 amateur victories including an Olympic gold medal in 1960 while only 18 years old. Boxing was a popular Louisville sport then; many local bouts were featured on After his Olympic victory, Ali was greeted at Standiford Field by Mayor Bruce Hoblitzell, six cheerleaders from Central High School his alma mater and a few hundred friends and fans. There was a 30-car parade to Central in his honor.

This was 1960 in a very segregated city. Ali was an instant hero in part of it; viewed with a more distant sense of Southern pride in the rest.No one had any idea what was coming. The Louisville Chamber of Commerce presented him with a citation on his homecoming, but a later Courier- Journal story said the chamber declined to co-sponsor a dinner. just time right a chamber official said. Other city leaders stepped forward.

In October signed a management contract with what a Courier-Journal sports story almost condescendingly announced was a brain trust of ten outstanding The men all of them white and most from old-line Louisville families each put up $2,800. contract included a $10,000 signing bonus, with payments of $4,000 a year for the next two years, plus other financial guarantees. The group would pay all training expenses, put 15percent of all income in a pension fund, and split earnings 50-50 the first four years 60-40 in favor. Former Courier-Journal sports columnist Billy Reed, who covered Ali for years, said that, at the contract was considered fair and Phil Faversham, whose one of the businessmen, said all the men were wealthy; they formed the group for was people who already had said Phil Faversham, who has been writing a book on the group. was an attempt to try and protect Ali, to keep the mob away, to keep him out of Ali would end the agreement in 1966 and retain Herbert Muhammad as his manager.

By then some members of the Louisville group were more than uncomfortable with name change, his conversion to the Black Muslim movement and his choice of companions. lot of them know what a Muslim was, to be honest with Faversham said. was greater than Ali in the ring, but he brought a lot of It just the white community that criticized Ali for his connection to the separa- tist Black Muslims a connection Ali would later disavow. Three prominent African- American men wrote an article in the Feb.28, 1964, Courier-Journal to criticize Black Muslim connection: the Rev. D.

E. King, pastor of Zion Baptist Church, the largest black church in Kentucky; Lyman T. Johnson, president of the Louisville chapter of the NAACP; and Louisville attor- neyHarry McAlpin, a member of the state board of education. of said McAlpin in a statement, a right in our democratic society to be a Black Muslim or a blue goose. He has a right to speak and say whatever he may choose.

It is regrettable, however, that he has chosen to speak as a wise man on a subject in which he shows great Still ahead were court battles with the Selective Service draft board the great refusal on religious grounds to fight in Vietnam. Worldwide he had already become one of the most compelling figures in sports love-him-or-hate him who would give up millions of dollars and the best fight years of his life for what he believed. His identity was set as a loud, black and brash icon. For all his polarizing ways, closed-circuit fights always sold well in Louisville Freedom Hall would fill with chants of Ali, Ali, Ali Yet he would never and perhaps pointedly hold a live championship fight in his hometown, and Freedom Hall was as big as most national venues. He would slip in and out of town to see his mother, Odessa.

He would whisper praise of her at her funeral, saying: thinks their mother is the In 1978 a Jefferson County Public School committee considered but refused to rename Central High School in his honor. Later that year after long and bitter debate the Louisville Board of Aldermen voted 6-5 to rename Walnut Street to Muhammad Ali Boulevard. The city put up 70 street signs and 12 were stolen within a week. In time perhaps because his disease has stilled his voice but still left us with his remarkable presence popularity increased. He could turn a Derby Day gathering of five-star Millionaires Row celebrities into gawking children.

He would repeat his over and over, tell racial jokes no one else could get away with, raise his fists in mock anger, look at you through the playful eyes of a man-child the eyes that had once stared down Sonny Liston. He could be at least in the 1970s and incredibly accessible for someone called most famous man in the He traveled the globe meeting kings and queens, but would sign autographs forever on Louisville streets, happily pose with wide-eyed children and their mesmerized mothers, create an instant human parade at any stop he made. Anewspaper columnist could even knock unannounced on the door of his home just hoping to meet him and then spend two hours talking to him. Ali stepped grandly back on stage in Atlanta in the1996 Olympics; who can forget his halting steps to light the Olympic flame as the whole world watched in breathless surprise. Idolized, revered or despised, he never spent a lot of time in his hometown.

Now in a softer more gentle voice the Ali Center must do it for him. Its working mantra is Greatest is yet to Bob column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. You can reach him at (502) 582-4646 or email him at nal.com. You can also read his columns at www.courier-journal.com. Courier-Journal file photos Cassius Clay signed a contract with 10 Louisville businessmen in 1960.

The contract included a $10,000 signing bonus, with payments of $4,000 a year for the next two years, plus other financial guarantees. The group would pay all training expenses, put 15percent of all income in a pension fund, and split earnings 50-50 the first four years then 60-40 in favor. Former Courier-Journal sports columnist Billy Reed, who covered Ali for years, said that, at the time, contract was considered fair and Ali stirs conflicting emotions in hometown REFLECTIONS OF A CHAMP Clay showed off a new pink Cadillac to his mother. Cassius Clay, a Central High School alumnus, came back from the 1960 Rome Olympics a gold medalist. He was only 18 years old.

Cassius and his brother, Rudy, right, took their great-grandmother, Betsy Jane Greathouse, for a walk in Louisville in July 1963, when Greathouse was 99. Bob Hill.