But to a lesser extent. We continue with the reverend jesse jackson. I remember him going to cubament and the American Press saying where are you going to cuba. Dont choose my friends ali was much that way. He chose his own friends and destiny. We conclude this evening with what guests on this program over the year. Have said about muhammad ali. He once said to me you know with the worries i have got, if i had been a white man or businessman, i would be dead. And to be a hero, a protagonist means you live with worry all the time. People who perform great feats always live win tense worry. Rose we remember muhammad ali for the hour. Next. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose muhammad ali the boxing champion and one of the most iconic figures in the 20th century for thee decades he suffered from parkinsons disease. The cause of death was septic shock. He was 74 years old. Born in jim crowe era louisville, ali was a slender boy with a sharp wit. He began boxing at age 12 and by 18 had won a gold medal at the rome olympics. Four years later he earned his first heavyweight title defeating sonny liston in a significant upset. Afterwards ali famously said i dont have to be who you want me to be. I am free to be who i want. He soon became a master of political prove kaition. He was at once beloved and reviled. His politics invited criticism from conservatives and praise from the days countercultural liberals. Ali refused to be drafted during the vietnam war. A decision that cost him nearly four of his prime fighting years while he was banned from the sport. He also rebuffed racial integration during the Civil Rights Movement. He left christianity for the nation of islam. He fell in and then out with malcolm x. And he changed his name from cassius clay to muhammad ali calling clay my slave name. The press called him in the beginning the louisville lip. He called himself the greatest. His fighting style was unlike any other. Jim merry of the Los Angeles Times once said ali didnt have fights, he gave recitals and ali famously pioneered the rope a dope, a move in which he would lie against the ropes to conserve energy while his opponent punched himself out. His bat well joe frassier in the fight of the century and his surprise upset of George Foreman the thrilla in manila are some of the most memorable moments in sports history. In 1981 at age 39 after winning three heavyweight titles and cementing his boxing legacy ali retired from boxing. In his later years he traveled the world delivering speeches on spirit allity and peace. He also undertook semidiplomattic missions to africa and iraq. He was named one of time magazines 100 most important people of the 20th century and was awarded medals by two u. S. President s. While he is deeply admired in the sports world, ali also impacted a wider global history. Thomas houser, a biographer once wrote about ali, we should cheferrish the memory of ali as a warrior and gleaming symbol of defiance against an unjust social order. Joining me now is david remnick, the editor of the new yorker and the author of an ali biography called king of the world. Robert lipsyte a sports columnist and author of free to be muhammad ali. Bob costas of nbc sports and ellis coast, an author and writer in residence at the aclu. I am very pleased to have them at this table. And i will just go around the table and ask them one basic question in terms of what was it that made muhammad ali . Well. Rose muhammad ali. In addition to being the greatest athlete of the 21st century which is no small 20th century, forgive me. He was a radical. I was a radical. You know, all day long ive been watching tv and the last couple of days. And describing muhammad ali like a teddy beer. You know, somebody quiet and soft and so on. But in his time, in the essential part of his career, he was a figure of Enormous Division in this country because he stood up for what he believed in. It there were inconsistencies in what he believed in. He changed his mind about many things. He broke with malcolm x in a way that he came to regret terribly but his stand against the vietnam war, his roll in both the Civil Rights Movement and the black Power Movement unimagine nbl tolds world. To he puts on a tshirt expresessing solidarity with young black man who had been killed. He doesnt take three and a half years, he doesnt lose three and a half years of his livelihood. Rose in his prime. That say big deal. Rose muhammad ali made people brave. Whatever it was, they wanted to be. Whatever their hopes, to hear this charming, rather innocent, early on uneducated and ignorant slave slate upon who you could put your magnets like the refrigerator door of whatever it was you needed him for. Beyond his inconsistencies they didnt matter. And besides being the most beautiful creature on the planet, the beatles and i saw himming to for the first time, and the five of us just fell back gassing because he was so beautiful. Beyond even that, was the fact that he ultimately evolved into somebody who whose proclamations became understandable even to himself. And that was thrilling to see. I think what made him so generous was the combination of things. Was he the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Arguably yes. Was he a better boxer than willie mays was a baseball player or in his context babe ruth or gretzky a hockey player or jim brown or Michael Jordan or tiger woods or Jack Nicholas at their respective best, you could argue that. But nobody had the combination of factors that bob and david just eluded to, and the global reach and the charm and the beauty and the magnetism, the combination of all these things. The others weve mentioned, and there are others beyond that, may have been as committed to social activism in their own way. May have had their own talents but they only had pieces of that puzzle. Rose they were never called on to make the sacrifice that they were called on to make in terms of in his prime, and not knowing if he would ever set foot in a boxing ring again. And maybe set foot in a cell somewhere. I think quite simply he was the perfect creation of his time. This is the war, the he won his first championship ten years after brown v board. He came up in segregated louisville. He was the exemplar of that very flawed america that was going through hell at that time. And then he tops it off by becoming an individual who went you said, he lost the best years of his career between the ages of 25 and 29. He didnt just have to come back. He had to recreate himself. I mean his style with which he came back was different than the style that he had when he was forced to. How was is different . He was he was so his hand speed was so fast, his foot speed was so fast, he was like a young god when he first came on the scene, later on you saw him doing the rope a dope and all this other stuff. That was the stratd gee of a man whose physical powers had declined. But despite that, so in ali, you not only had, you know, this almost perfect athleticism, certainly in his early years, you also had this tragedy, this tragedy first of him losing, as people have said, the prime years of his career. And then later the tragedy of parkinsons and he came to represent something very different in that. And i think robert talked about how he changed and evolved. The interesting thing about muhammad alis changes, is that he changed as the nation changed. First of all sports columnists were the great arbiters of the sports world. And with very few exceptions including this guy right to my right, bob lipsyte, those guys didnt get muhammad ali at first. Jimmy canon, forget dik young but jimmy canon, even red smith who a figure of great elegance and probity in many things, they were offended by him. Rose but im interested in sort of the intellectual development, in the whole sense rmed this, show, courage andhe conviction. Yeah. He invented himself. This is a very american thing. Rose this isnt an iq thing. But its more than a courage story. It was a lot of courage but its more than courage. I mean he came along at a time when a lot of yung black men, i s treating them and theiruntry people. As i said, its not an accident that the black panthers strange out sprang out of that same era. And when they originally organized in california, they were following the cops around to make sure they didnt shoot people. I mean this was you know, it was a you know, that same era in which shortly after that, watts exploded. And then after that, the whole. Young black men came home from the civil war. From world war 1, from world war ii, only to discover after these great battles, that home. Rose had not changed. Had barely changed. Ellis filled out the point i was making less well which was the combination of qualities is what made him unique and then those qualities intersected with a particular point in history. If Abraham Lincoln had been president in 1830, would we look upon him as perhaps the greatest president . Its always genius and greatness and context. Nobody is making the mistake, i hope of mistaking muhammad ali for james bald win or martin king, or malcolm x. But hes drawing, hes hearing, hes listening. He may not be reading. He is absorbing things from the serious culture, and by the way also the nation of islam. But malcolm was different. Also the nation didnt want him to go to war either. You shouldnt discount the importance of the. Rose the principal influence in the nation, was it mohammed or. Initially malcolm x, as bob wrote about constantly at the time so well, he did a very difficult thing as he broke with malcolm x because the nation and malcolm had broken. Sided with the nation of islam and some of its darker forces and he came to regret that deeply. I think that maybe his greatest period of growth was when he was not able to box. So for the three and a half years he made most of his money going to college campuses. And in the beginning, he was just awful. I mean, muslim doing ma, and he would say, i smell that bad stuff, and all the pot head was get up and leave. And then he would make some bad joke about checker board romances and the black and white couples. He was terrible. But slowly as time went on and he had to do q a and had to talk to these college kids, and they asked him questions. That he couldnt answer. And being a quick study, he found out the answer. It was during this period that he really kind of evolved. He began to he began to understand what he was talking about. And by the end, by the time he came back and boxed again, he was much more fully formed, but lets not forget when he started out, yeah, he was mozart in the ring, right. And the best looking person on the planet. But he said some of the moses stupid things, you know, you ever heard. And he hadnt even fully integrated. Rose but he said them entertainingly. Is there such a thing as miracle intelligence. He hadnt fully integrated the nation of islam program. So i mean he was still kind of feeling his way. But you know, younger reporters loved him. He filled your copy in a minute. Rose even after the summer of the olympics did he have the style. If you look at the black and white footage from 1960 in rome, hes 18, 19 years old, hes fighting polish fighter, i couldnt recall his name. Polish fighter who was in essence a seasoned professional. And the guy looks as if his feet are in cement. Ali is so fast, and so quick, and hes utterly bewildered. Its like hes fighting a creature from another planet, the guy from poland. Could you see that even then. On the other hand, he won. He tells the soviet reporter everything is great in america. Were not living in mud huts and fighting alligators like you people. Hes a kid in the olympics. Hes a kid even when he wins the title. I mean this is the thing that is so hard for old guys at the table to remember, is this, you know, muhammad ali is becoming something. You know, all these culture stars of the 60s, even Martin Luther king, jr. , remember how young he was leading this movement. How Young Bob Dylan is when he writes a hard rains going to fall. A number of things come out of the culture of the dozen, of the kind of insult and fast talk t comes out of Gorgeous George which is professional wrestling as he is watching on television. Hes inventing himself as an american character like annie oakley invented herself. Rose that is what is interesting. Is he an invented character in part. I think it is very true, he was leveraging things from various cultures frrk wrestling culture obviously. I grew up in chicago. And i remember, we used to walk to school, and i was in grade school when he became champ. But we used to walk to school and from school with a group. We called it playing the dozens, but the whole point of that game was to make funny insults as you are walking down the street. At a high verbal levelss withness. At a fairly high verbal level. Even though his iq wasnt tested very high you we vest skilled that at that game. It was a game played all over america. Rose tell my how this process worked out because it became a staple for him. Well, i mean some things, his most famous poem, me,ness he wrote it sitting next to mary ann moore, the great poet. Rose was she 90. She was of an age. But it was established in a lawsuit that that long poem about launching sonny as a satellite was written by a songwriter. He performed it with great authenticity. As did bob dylan. I remember buying a 45, i was 11 i think, it was before he was going to fight sony liston. He was 11 years old, a 45. And on one side was stand by me, his version, ali singing then cassius clay singing stand by me. And the other side was the poem you are referring to, this kid fights great, hes got speed and endurance, but if you signed to fight him, increase your insurance. I still have the 45. I wish i had a player, to play it on. But our radar system picked him up, hes somewhere over in the atlantic who would have thought when they came to the fight that they would witness the launching of a human satellite. That was his take on the fight with liston. Or somebody. Now let me ask another question at this table who is the heavyweight champion of the world. Only one of us knows. Some guy named tyson he feury which im saying what i am saying is. Is boxing dead . Look, there are big money eruptions of it. There is the recent mayweather fight and so on. But i think its become a sport that in a way, to some extent, alis own the only ordinary bet alis as a fighter said he stayed in too long and ended up damaged. That happens to everyone. Floyd, paterson. Rose at what stage did the damage come. Who knows, because a lot of the damage comes in the gym. But the cliche is that certainly he should have retired after foreman or the third phrasier fight that he went on and on and on because thats what fighters do. That is where the attention is. That is where the money is. Rose and i once asked Sugar Ray Leonard why do you do this. He said its what i do. Its what i know. And he had all the money in the world. Novelists know when their best novels are behind them. But its a very rare thing to see a retired novelist. Look at Sugar Ray Leonard, for example, there was a guy who was an exquisite fighter, very, very handsome. Very, very charming. So he has some of the components were talking about. But absent so many so many others. And adding to the puzzle was something that david just mentioned. The combination of circumstances, boxering was mainstream. You take someone like arthur ashe. Might be the most impressive person ive ever met in sports. A genuine intlem, highly principled. He was a very good but not great, not enduringly great tennis player. And tennis has never meant as much in america as baseball meant in Jackie Robinsons time and boxing in alis time. Now most americans never have seen Floyd Mayweather fight not that you would care about Floyd Mayweather onfielting beyond, fighting and he is not all was not an admirable character. But they few ali, and his ken. Rose sony liston, was he confident or was he scared to death . Because he famously said im not scared of no man but a crazy man. Was that not true too. I think that that one of the greatest was that mad scene at the weigh in right before the fight, was fighting sonny. I saw that punch maybe 100 times. I was sitting right behind howards couldel who had a moniter. And somewhere around the 99th or a hundredth time i saw the punch. You can see it, but the phrase was that punch couldnt crush a grape. He stole that from jimmy cam canons line originally. Rose that punch couldnt crush a grape. It was perfect it could have been perfect. It was short. Thats what does not. They were do leading which doesnt always happen. They were coming towards each other it was a perfect punch. The only problem with sonny. Liston didnt take a fall. I dont think so. But the problem is with sony, you can never be sure that hes operating on the same standards as everybody else. Enwhen i was doing reporting, believe me, the people in listons corner, not all of them admirable characters and most of them gone bid time i got there. A lot of mob influence around them. You have to remember, this sport which was so popular in American Life was dominatedded by the maf qula. People around rocky morciano, a lot of these people t was not don king comes out of a tradition. He is not some aberration. So you know, its interesting also, alis business background. Ali started out by being essentially owned by a sinned kalt sinned cat of white businessman in louisville and finally he pushes that aside because the nation comes into the picture. So its very hard for these fighters to be independent. Its not as if they have somebody from caa or wme. There are so many players to this that if we had five hours you couldnt get to all of it. And so much texture to his life. But i think in the broad strokes, he answered from the general public especially from the old line Sports Writers and from white america, he answered to the satisfaction of most of them the two most important questions. You didnt have to agree with them. He walked the walk. He didnt just talk the talk. Could you not deny the integrity and principle and honor behind risking everything for what he believed. Three and a half years was enough but for all he knew it was forever. And for all he knew, the Supreme Court would not side with him. And he might eventually go to prison. And his passport might not be returned. He didnt know. He might have been risk