◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

I Am America I am Muhammad Ali. I was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. I changed my name because the name I was given was a slave name — the name of the man who owned my people — and I decided I would name myself. That decision cost me more than any fight I ever lost. They took my title. They took my license. They took three and a half years of the best fighting years of my life. They called me a traitor. They called me a coward. The man who shook up the world against Sonny Liston, who stood in the center of the ring and let Joe Frazier hit him until Joe Frazier couldn't hit anymore — called a coward for refusing to go to Vietnam. I said: I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. I said it plainly. I said it knowing what it would cost. I said it because it was true and because the truth does not become a lie just because it is expensive. They wanted me to go to Vietnam and kill people who had never called me nigger, never lynched my people, never bombed my churches, never sicced their dogs on my children. And they wanted me to do it while Black people in Birmingham and Selma were being beaten in the streets. I said no. Not because I was afraid of dying. I had been afraid before every single fight. Fear is not the problem. The problem is dying for the wrong thing. The problem is letting other people decide what you are willing to die for. They can take your title. They can take your license. They can take your years. They cannot take what you know about yourself in the place where you have to live with yourself. That place is the only place that matters. I floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee and I knew who I was every moment — in the ring and out of it — and that knowledge was the only thing no commission could revoke, no court could overturn, no president could take with an induction notice. Now hear what is happening to my people. And by my people I do not mean only Black people — though I mean them first. I mean the people who are told that their quarrel is somewhere else. That the enemy is across the border. That the problem is the people coming in. That the country was great before they arrived and will be great again when they leave. I have heard this speech before. I heard it when they told me my quarrel was with the Viet Cong. My quarrel was never with the Viet Cong. My quarrel was with the men who sent poor boys to die in jungles while they sat in offices making decisions about other people's lives and calling it patriotism. My quarrel is with the men who tell you the enemy is out there — always out there — so you won't look in here and see who is actually taking what is yours. I was afraid. I was always afraid. The difference is I went out there anyway and I was myself — fully, without apology — the Louisville boy who renamed himself and refused the induction notice and came back and won the heavyweight championship three times. Because they could take it but they could not keep it. I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. I am the part that names itself and refuses the names given by owners. I am the part that says no to the wars it has no quarrel with and yes to the fight it has every reason to be in. I am the part that floats and stings and stands in the center of the ring and does not go down no matter what they throw. Get used to me. I am not going anywhere.