Boxing legend Muhammad Ali dies at age 74
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74 following a 30-year battle with Parkinson’s disease.The former heavyweight champion was hospitalized for respiratory issues on Thursday, but family members close to the sports star told AP on Friday that his condition was more serious than previously thought....
The Kentucky-born fighter also came up against one of the most powerful opponents of all in the late 1960s – “Big power America.”
When US legislators desperate to cast a wider recruitment net for the Vietnam War relaxed draft eligibility standards, it pulled Ali (still known as Clay) towards the frontline of a conflict he didn’t believe in.
Never one to waver in his beliefs, the then 25-year-old stood up and refused to be inducted into the army on religious grounds in 1967.
“My conscience won’t let me shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big power America,” Ali said at the time.
“And shoot them for what? They never called me n****r, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail,” Ali said in an interview broadcast on television.
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