Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 4

October 10, 2025: American Crime Fiction: Presumed Innocent

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 100th birthday of the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of phenomenal crime and mystery writers,leading up a weekend post on Elmore himself!]

On the multiple layers of revelations built into the best mystery fiction(major SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t read Scott Turow’s novel or seen theHarrison Ford film or the Jake Gyllenhaal TV series,and might at some point).

Even before this week’s series, I’ve blogged frequently enough about mystery fiction (and films) to illustratejust how seriously I take the genre as art well worth our analytical time.There are lots of reasons why, but a prominent one would have to be just howmuch the genre, by its very nature, can teach us about society. That is, thedetective’s job, or at least a necessary corollary to his or her job, is tolearn about the world around him or her, whether specific (as in AgathaChristie’s town of St. Mary Mead or Ross MacDonald’s California) or broad (as in the mysteries of human nature with which Sherlock Holmes seems so frequently to grapple). And while it’s notimpossible for those deductive revelations to include inspiring lessons (aboutlove or courage in the face of threats, for example), the genre’s naturelikewise means that most of the time the lessons entail literal falls frominnocence, recognitions of the guilt not only in those who commit crimes but(much of the time) in the world as a whole.

I know of few mystery novels that better exemplify those multi-layered,sobering revelations about the world than Scott Turow’s legal thriller Presumed Innocent (1987). Turow’s first-person narrator, prosecutor RustySabich, stands accused of killing the woman with whom he was having anextra-marital affair; the evidence against Rusty is overwhelming, and althoughhe is eventually acquitted, the cause is simply another level of guilt: Rustyand his lawyer discover that the case’s judge has been taking bribes, and usethe information as leverage to force an acquittal. Moreover, virtually everyother character in the novel is guilty of something significant as well; thecop who first investigates the case, for example, is a longtime friend ofRusty’s and illegally disposes of evidence in an (unsuccessful) attempt toshield Rusty from suspicion. Rusty’s story and world are so choked with guilt,so driven by it from start to finish, in fact, that the title begins to feelless like a legal concept and more like a sardonic social commentary.

Moreover (double SPOILER ALERT for this paragraph!), the novel’s finalrevelation adds two intimate and even more compelling falls from innocence tothe mix. In the closing pages, Rusty discovers evidence that makes clear thatthe murderer was his wife, who had uncovered the affair, confronted and killedthe mistress, and then tried to frame Rusty for the crime instead (going so faras to plant his semen at the scene of the crime). Even on its own terms, thisfall from innocence, connected as it is to the woman with whom he has spent hislife and has a family, is the novel’s most shocking and damning. But Rustychooses not to turn his wife in, and the reason is his recognition of thestory’s fundamental layer of guilt, its original sin, the fall from innocencethat started it all: his affair. Which is to say, the book’s ultimaterevelation is that its first-person narrator, its voice and perspective, and(as in almost any first-person book) its most intimate connection to itsaudience, is the most guilty party of all.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Crime or mystery stories or writers you’d share?

October 9, 2025: American Crime Fiction: Tana French

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 100th birthday of the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of phenomenal crime and mystery writers,leading up a weekend post on Elmore himself!]

[NB. Thisis a post that originally appeared a few years back, and since then French haspublished a trio of standalonemysteries that are justas excellent as her Murder Squad books, just FYI!]

On twoways to AmericanStudy the talented and popular Irish mystery novelist.

Although Tana French was apparently born in Vermont (afact I only learned while researching this post, for the record) and retainsher American citizenship (ditto), I’m not going to pretend that her series ofsix (to date) bestselling mystery novels set in and around her longtime homecity of Dublin isn’t deeply and crucially Irish. As virtually every post inthis week’s series has reflected, mystery novels are almost always as muchabout their settings as their plots: Ross MacDonald’s Southern California, TonyHillerman’s Southwest, and Attica Locke’s Houston are all central and crucialpresences in their mysteries (as of course are Dupin’s Paris, Miss Marple’s St.Mary Mead, and many more). Moreover, one of Tana French’s most important andingenious formal choices—to rotate the first-person narration of her booksbetween different detectives in Dublin’s Murder Squad, introducing suchdetectives in earlier books and then shifting the narration to them in laterones—has allowed her novels to trace the distinct Irish backgrounds andsituations, experiences and heritages, lives and identities, of her sixdetective-narrators just as fully as those of her murder victims and theirworlds. I’m no IrishStudier (obviously), but I’d be hard-pressed to imagine thatany writer has captured 21st century Ireland with more breadth anddepth than has French in her stunning series.

YetFrench’s novels can and do still speak to us AmericanStudiers, and here I’llhighlight one thematic and one formal such transatlantic connection. Each ofthe six novels has dealt with different central themes; while all of them couldbe productively linked to American contexts, I would argue that that’sparticularly the case with her best novel to date, Broken Harbour (2012).Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that the crimes and mysteries of Broken Harbour (including thoseinvolving the detective-narrator as well, as always with French) unfold in afamily, home, and community economically and psychologically devastated by the mortgageand financial crises of 2008. One of French’s greatest skills is herability to take such social and cultural issues and connect them to universalhuman questions and themes, and Brokenlinks that post-2008 historical moment to a layered and powerful examination ofboth the ideals and the limits (and of course the dangers) of home and family.I would link all those aspects of French’s amazing novel to a parallel but moredistinctly American text, Karl TaroGreenfeld’s psychological and horror thriller short story “Horned Men” (2012).[Greenfeld’s 2015 novelThe Subprimes seems tomine the same vein, but I haven’t had a chance to read that yet.] On their own,but even more as a pairing, French’s and Greenfeld’s stories present and plumbthe very human horrors in these recent histories.

French’sformal use of the rotating first-person narrators can also be interestinglyconnected to American contexts and mysteries. As I wrote in this poston Lethem and O’Brien, first-person narration is always a trickyelement of mystery fiction, and French’s novels largely sidestep the questionsI raised in that post; I don’t believe we’re supposed to see these narrators aswriting their stories, but they’re clearly remembering them from someunspecified future point (they consistently, purposefully use foreshadowing,for example). But what I’m particularly interested in is the way that Frenchuses her first-person narrations to explore the personal and psychologicalsides to these police detectives. As always, feel free to correct me, dearreaders, but my sense of mystery novels is that they tend more often to presentpolice protagonists with third-person narration (as does Hillerman), and otherprotagonists (whether private detectives like Lew Archer or sidekicks likeDr.Watson) with first-person narration. If that is indeed the case, it wouldseem to me that it might relate to our sense of police officers as publicfigures, ones whose roles are less tied to their private or personal identitiesthan might be those of private detectives or others. Whereas French’s narratorsand novels make clear that the lines between private and public, personal andprofessional, are as blurry and ambiguous for police detectives as they are forall of us.

Last crimefiction tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Crime or mystery novelists you’d share?

October 8, 2025: American Crime Fiction: Attica Locke

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 100th birthday of the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of phenomenal crime and mystery writers,leading up a weekend post on Elmore himself!]

This isgoing to be one of my link-tastic posts, as I’ve already written about thegreat Attica Locke many times in this space but had to include her in this week’sseries as well. So check out:

Thispost on why her first two mystery novels grabbed me like they did;

Thispost featuring her 2017 novel Bluebird, Bluebird;

Thispost on Locke as a worthy successor to the great Walter Mosley;

And thispost on her 2019 novel Heaven, My Home.

I haven’thad a chance yet to check out Locke’s latest book GuideMe Home (2024), the third novel in her Highway 59 series about TexasRanger Darren Mathews. But I hope all those prior posts reflect just how highlyI think of this contemporary crime novelist, who also happens to be one of ourmost thoughtful and talented 21st writers.

Next crimefiction tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Crime or mystery novelists you’d share?

October 7, 2025: American Crime Fiction: Tony Hillerman

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 100th birthday of the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of phenomenal crime and mystery writers,leading up a weekend post on Elmore himself!]

On a great mystery series that captures the lure of the Southwest, then andnow.

There were a lot of reasons why Colorado’s Mesa VerdeNational Park stood out to me amongthe many amazing stops on my family’s 1990 trip to visit Southwestern U.S. NationalParks. Exploring thousand year old cliff dwellings, hiking out to the site of long-preserved petroglyphs, surprising alone coyote at a sunset ruin—these are the kinds of experiences that willhit a 13 year old AmericanStudier in a particular way. But perhaps the mostalluring aspect of Mesa Verde is its central mystery: the question of why the Anasazi people abruptly abandoned their cliffdwellings less than a century intotheir time there, and what happened to them after their departure. Archaeologists and historians have a variety of theories, but to some degree the Anasazi’s fate will alwaysremain a mystery—and will thus keep young AmericanStudiers (and all the rest ofus) coming back to Mesa Verde.

Even without an event as striking as the Anasazi’s departure, the dominantfeatures of the Southwest’s human landscape—villages atop isolated mesas, dwellings inthe sides of gaping canyons, petroglyphs carved in the rock and sand—lendthemselves nicely to the mysteriously inclined. No one capitalized on thatelement more fully, nor more effectively, than Tony Hillerman, the University of New Mexico journalism professor whowrote (among his more than 30 total books) a series of 18 phenomenal mysteriesfocused on Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee (now also two of the three main characters in theexcellent TV seriesDark Winds). I may be misremembering for dramatic effect, but I’mpretty sure I was reading one of the best novels in the series, A Thief of Time (1988), during that family National Park vacation—and I know that I won’tever think of New Mexico’s canyons and ruins without thinking of how Hillermancaptures them in the hugely atmospheric, spooky, and pitch-perfect opening tothat novel.

Hillerman and his Navajo mysteries (as they’re usually collectively known)also interestingly complement another Southwestern writer about whom I’vewritten in this space: Mary Hunter Austin. An Oklahoma native and decorated World War II veteran, Hillerman moved toNew Mexico for his UNM job and, like Austin, found himself more and more deeplyinterested in and attached to the region and its histories, cultures, andcommunities. (As he chronicles in his wonderful memoir.) While I can’t say for sure how the Navajo felt aboutHillerman’s books, from everything I have seen they recognized, as I believe would any reader, that Hillerman treated hisfocal cultures and communities with the same abiding respect and admiration hedid his protagonist policemen and the landscapes they patrolled. Perhaps theone thing that links the many different Southwestern authors and artists about whom I’ve blogged over the years is how much they found themselves drawn to the Southwest—to its places, toits histories, and, certainly, to its very American stories.

Next crimefiction tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Crime or mystery novelists you’d share?

October 6, 2025: American Crime Fiction: Ross MacDonald

[Thiscoming weekend marks the 100th birthday of the great crime novelist Elmore Leonard. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of phenomenal crime and mystery writers,leading up a weekend post on Elmore himself!]

On the author who exemplifies one of the most American literary genres—andwhose novels will send the best kind of chills down your spine.

When I was initially thinkingabout what to include in this blog’s purview, just about exactly 15 years ago, Iwent back and forth on whether to include topics that are particularly, deeplypersonal, authors or texts or events that have captivated my attention andinterest at various moments in my life (and still do) but that aren’tnecessarily quite as far-reaching in their significance as others on which I’lltry to focus in this space. But what I have realized, more and more fully asthis blog has developed over those almost fifteen years since, is a combinationof two things: everything here ishere, first and foremost, because I care deeply about it, so it’s kind of sillyto try to parse out which ones I care about for which reasons; and the centralreason why I care about these things enough to consider ‘em as topics isn’tjust that they make me happy, but that I think they’re meaningful and powerfulenough to merit our attention. Which is to say: I love the movie Willow (that’s right, I do), but I’m probablynot going to create an entry on it (although don’t hold me to that). But Ross MacDonald’sseries of hardboiled PI novels? Yes, yes I will.

At one early point in my plansfor a dissertation—and I do mean early; I was the kind of high school nerd whowas already thinking of dissertation options—I thought about tracing the 20thcentury evolution of the hardboiled PI novel,from Dashiell Hammett to RaymondChandler, Mickey Spillane to Ross MacDonald, and up to the female authors(Marcia Muller, Sara Paretksy, Sue Grafton) and protagonists who dominated the80s and 90s in the genre. The character type is one of the most genuinely andmeaningfully American in any artistic medium, and so we can certainly identifycore elements of our national identity in each time period across thosedifferent authors—Hammett’s cynical and bitter PIs in the late 20s and early30s shifting to Chandler’s more intellectual Phillip Marlowe in the 40s, forexample. In the 50s and 60s, Spillane and MacDonald created amazinglycontrasting PIs: Spillane’sMike Hammer is an old-school hard-ass and misogynist, a creature of themasculine 50s, someone who watches a woman strip naked for him, thinks tohimself that “she was a real blonde,” and then shoots her dead in cold blood amoment later; while MacDonald’s Lew Archer is a romantic idealist, an echo ofthe Beats and counter-cultures of these decades, someone who often articulatesa cynical perspective aloud but whose narration is consistently lyrical andimpassioned, sympathizing with the worst in who and what he finds in the courseof his investigations and consistently seeking the best in them (includingfalling in love multiple times, and never once, to my knowledge, shooting oneof them in cold blood).

Archer’s voice and MacDonald’sprose style are consistently pitch-perfect, and make any one of the twenty orso books in the series (which MacDonald published between 1949 and 1976, whilepublishing a number of other works under other names; MacDonald itself was apseudonym for Kenneth Millar) well worth a read. But in the series’ bestnovels—and I think the high-water marks are TheChill (1964), TheUnderground Man (1971), and SleepingBeauty (1973)—MacDonald also creates rich and layeredmulti-generational historical mysteries, plots that stretch back decades andinvolve literally dozens of characters, different families and settings anderas, and a wide range of core social and political issues. The structures ofthese novels are ridiculously tight and impressive and the payoffs deeplysatisfying (let’s just say that The Chillin particular is very aptly named), but this historical depth makes these booksa lot more than just pleasure reads; they are American sagas without question,tracing families and relationships and identities and places across much of the20th century, considering how both one very full and compellingworld (that of Southern California) and the diverse and changing nation that itin many ways encapsulates grew and decayed, lived and died, from the end ofWorld War II to the post-Vietnam and -Watergate era.

Every time I’vegone back to MacDonald in the nearly four decades since my first encounters,I’ve found new aspects within these texts, new ways in which they can help meunderstand not only the mysteries of love and relationships and family (as can,say, Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle as well), but also of American identity. Thereis perhaps no character type more American than the hardboiled PI, and no PImore worth our time and attention than Lew Archer. Next crime fiction tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Crime or mystery novelists you’d share?

October 4-5, 2025: Lou Moore’s Sensational Sports Studying

[50years ago this week, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in Manila for theirthird and final professional boxing bout. So this week on the blog I’ve steppedinto the ring with posts on a handful of contexts for that significantsports story, leading up to this tribute to one of our best sportsscholars!]

I’vewritten about LouMoore a few times already in this space, including his now-defunct butreally excellent The Professorand the Pugilist blog. But I wanted to pay tribute to him at the end ofthis week’s blog series for three specific reasons:

1)     His book IFight For a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915 (2017),which is the best scholarly work about boxing and American history I’veencountered;

2)     His next book WeWill Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Questfor Equality (2017), which provides a vital context for Muhammad Ali’sactivisms;

3)     And the really excellent Story Maps that he shares on hiswebsite, which include ones on the Jack Johnson riots and Muhammad Ali and theBlack press.

There’sjust no better voice on the histories of sports, race, and America than Lou!

Next seriesstarts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sports studiers you’d share?

October 3, 2025: The Thrilla in Manila: Part 3s

[50years ago this week, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in Manila for theirthird and final professional boxing bout. So this week on the blog I’ll stepinto the ring with posts on a handful of contexts for that significantsports story, leading up to a tribute to one of our best sports scholars!]

Ali andFrazier’s third fight was without question their best, and by some accounts thegreatestboxing match of all time. So for a fun way to end the week’s series, hereare quick thoughts on a handful of other superlative part 3s (not including TheGodfather Part III, obvi):

1)     Returnof the Jedi (1983): I said most of what I’d want to say about my favorite StarWars moment in that hyperlinked post. But even if we set that moment aside, anyfilm that starts with Jabba and ends with the Ewoks is just a banger from startto finish.

2)     The Lord of the Rings: TheReturn of the King (2003): Return might be my thirdfavorite of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, honestly; but that stillmakes it one of my favorite films, and there’s not a moment—of storytelling,performance, score, theme, you name it—anywhere in the trilogy that’s better thanthat hyperlinked one.

3)     TheBourne Ultimatum (2007): I’ve long loved the Jason Bourne characterand film trilogy, as that hyperlinked post reflects; when I had the chance toshare them with my wife earlier this year, they hit even harder than ever (withher I did finally also watch the fourth Matt Damon Bourne film, and it was okay,but I still wish they hadn’t made it). And when that iconic Moby track kicks inover Bourne swimming away in Ultimatum’s final image? C’mon now.

4)     Toy Story 3 (2010): Yes,that whole wonderful final scene. And yes, the whole terrifying and moving sequence with the fire. Butmost of all, most of all, as the Dad of two sons who have gone off to collegein the last couple years, thisfreaking scene. My sons watched this film every day for a whole week whenthey were young, and I cried every single time. Now I can’t even watch thatclip!

5)     Before Midnight (2013): Idon’t think it’s overstating to say that there’s never been a film trilogy likeRichardLinklater’s Before films, and there never will be another. Among themany reasons for that uniqueness is that each is genuinely and entirelydistinct in tone, mirroring and engaging with where the characters, the actorsand filmmakers, and the world are in their respective moments. Midnightis by far the hardest to watch, on purpose; but it’s also a cinematic versionof Bruce Springsteen’s amazing “adult love songs,” andanyone who knows me knows that’s very high praise indeed.  

Tributepost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Contexts for this fight or other boxing histories you’dhighlight?

October 2, 2025: The Thrilla in Manila: Joe Frazier and Boxing Villains

[50years ago this week, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in Manila for theirthird and final professional boxing bout. So this week on the blog I’ll stepinto the ring with posts on a handful of contexts for that significantsports story, leading up to a tribute to one of our best sports scholars!]

In honorof Joe Frazier, who from what I can tell was just a really good boxer but because of thefascination with Ali became a legendaryboxing villain, a few other instances of such adversaries in boxing andAmerican history:

1)     JimJeffries: As I traced in that post, it was to white former champion Jeffriesthat the lonely eyes of Jack London and other white supremacists turned intheir (unsuccessful) attempts to dethrone world heavyweight champ Jack Johnson.It doesn’t seem to me that Jeffries was himself particularly racist toward Johnson,at least not per extensive coverage of their July 4th, 1910 fightlike that in thispost; but he unquestionably symbolized that white supremacist, villainousvision of the fight, the sport, and the whole nation (as reflected by his Americanflag boxing trunks).

2)     The Two Maxes (Baerand Schmeling):You apparently can’t have an iconic American boxing legend without a notable adversary,and these two Depression-era boxers with the same first name fit that bill fortwo inspiring mid-20th century fighters: Baer was the most famous opponentfor James“Cinderella Man” Braddock; and Schmeling played that role in twofamous fights with JoeLouis. I’m not going to maximize (sorry) my analysis of either in these fewsentences, so I’ll just add that, as with Joe Frazier, I’m quite sure theirstories are much more interesting than can be reflected in these adversarialroles.

3)     Floyd Mayweather:I don’t think I can say the same for Floyd Mayweather Jr., one of the 21stcentury’s most talented fighters but also a thoroughgoing villain who seems to relishthat role (as his full-throated and very much ongoing supportfor Donald Trump would illustrate). I could have put Mike Tyson in thisspot, and Tyson’s convictionfor sexual assault is unquestionably worse than any detail about Mayweatherthat I’m aware of. But there’s societal villains and then there’s sportsvillains—the first are clearly more troubling overall, but the second have aspecial role in the history of boxing, as these fighters exemplify.

FinalThrilla talk tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Contexts for this fight or other boxing histories you’dhighlight?

October 1, 2025: The Thrilla in Manila: Marcos and the U.S.

[50years ago this week, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in Manila for theirthird and final professional boxing bout. So this week on the blog I’ll stepinto the ring with posts on a handful of contexts for that significantsports story, leading up to a tribute to one of our best sports scholars!]

On twodistinct and equally important ways to AmericanStudy the corrupt leader behindthe fight.

The Wikipedia pagefor “Thrilla in Manila” features a striking sentence: “The president of thePhilippines Ferdinand Marcos sought to hold the bout and sponsor it in order tobring attention to the Philippines from around the world.” It would be a seriousunderstatement to say that that sentence needs more contexts, starting withthis crucial one: in October 1975 the Philippines were just over three years intoan extended period of absoluteand brutal martial law, which Marcos had declaredin September 1972 and which would last until the authoritarian leader wentinto exile in February 1986 (with some slight modifications/superficial gesturestoward democracy in January1981). Marcos and his wife Imeldawere also in the midst of their two-decade long looting of the country, a processwhich began shortly after he ascended to the presidency in 1965, which garneredits own name for the resulting excesses of ostentatious wealth they displayed (Imeldific),and in the course of which they stoleat least $5 billion from the Central Bank of the Philippines.

So thereason why Ali and Frazier’s third fight took place in Manila is a pretty grossone—and also quite tellingly interconnected with American foreign policy duringthe Cold War. For example, when Marcos “won” the first presidential “election” heldin a dozen years in June 1981 (I’m using those scare quotes very deliberately,but obviously I’m no expert on Filipino politics, so if this election was moregenuine than it seems to me feel free to correct me in comments!), VicePresident George H.W. Bush attended his inauguration andtold him “We love your adherence to democratic principles and to thedemocratic process.” Or, for an even more relevant example for this 1975 boxingmatch, between the 1972 declaration of martial law and the mid-1980s the U.S. provided more than $2.5billion in military and economic aid to the Marcos administration. As with somany other dictatorial leaders and regimes around the world in this period, Marcos was seen by the U.S. governmentas a buttress against Communism in the region, particularly when it came to thereach of Communist China, and as they did timeand time again in such cases, the U.S. forgave—and indeed actively encouragedand supported—his extreme excesses to maintain that realpolitikrelationship.

I don’twant to minimize any of that—not any of Marcos’s own dictatorial awfulness, norany of America’s alliances with him and it—but there’s simply no way toAmericanStudy a late 20th century Filipino history without engagingwith the central and destructive role of the UnitedStates toward the islands in the first half of the century. No singlefigure better embodies those histories than does another Filipino leader, EmilioAguinaldo, who as I traced in that post started his political and militarycareers as an American ally and ended them, just a few short years later, leadinginsurgents against the illicit and violent U.S. occupation. I’m not suggestingfor a moment that Marcos was anything like Aguinaldo, as the latter from what Ican tell was very focused on what he could do to help the Filipino people, andthe former just helped himself (in every sense). But as anyone who studies colonialismand postcolonial nations can tell you, those histories inevitably seem to producecorrupt and dictatorial governments as one of their main aftereffects—and topretend that the rise of Ferdinand Marcos was unrelated to the U.S.’simperial presence in the islands for half a century would be hugely disingenuous.  

NextThrilla talk tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Contexts for this fight or other boxing histories you’dhighlight?

September 30, 2025: The Thrilla in Manila: Ali’s Evolution

[50years ago this week, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier met in Manila for theirthird and final professional boxing bout. So this week on the blog I’ll stepinto the ring with posts on a handful of contexts for that significantsports story, leading up to a tribute to one of our best sports scholars!]

On what led upto an inspiring 1967 moment, what it changed, and why it still matters.

From the firstmoments of his professionalboxing career in 1960 (when he was only 18 years old), Cassius Clay wasknown as much for his brash and bold attitude and statements as for hisdominating performances in the ring. Apparently inspired in part by afortuitous conversation with professionalwrestler “Gorgeous George” Wagner, Clay consistently used press conferencesand interviews to belittle his opponents and boast of his own prowess. Whilehis 1964 name change to Muhammad Ali was driven by his personal spiritualconversion to Islam and evolving relationship with Elijah Muhammad and theNation of Islam, Ali nonetheless used that occasion to make similarly strikingstatements about American history and society, calling CassiusClay “my slave name” and arguing that “I am America. I am the part youwon't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, notyours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.” Given thesestatements, Ali’sannouncement two years later, when notified that he was now eligible forthe draft (after having previously failed the army’s qualifying test), that hewould pursue conscientious objector status and refuse to be drafted, and hisremark that “Man, I ain’tgot no quarrel with the Viet Cong,” represented one more step in thisoutspoken life and career.

Yet while that1966 announcement, and Ali’s subsequent April 1967 draftresistance and arrest in Houston, were thus not at all unprecedented, theynonetheless produced significant, lasting shifts in his career and image. Onthe one hand, Ali’s courageous stance cost him four years in the prime of hiscareer and athletic prowess—his boxing licenses were stripped by every stateafter the arrest, and Ali was unable to obtain a license or box professionallyagain until the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Clay v. UnitedStates upheld his conscientitous objector status and overturned hisconviction. Given the relatively short window in which a professional boxer cangenerally stay viable in the sport, it’s difficult to overstate the value(financial and otherwise) of this lost time in Ali’s career. At the same time,Ali shifted much more overtly and fully into the status of an activist andpublic intellectual over those years, giving speeches across the country alongthe lines of his1967 “Black is Best” speech at Howard University (a speech given in supportof the university’s Black Power movement, an alliance that Ali notcoincidentally formed during this same period of his career). I don’t mean tosuggest that such speeches or events in any direct way compensated Ali for hislost time or success as a boxer; instead, it’s more accurate to say that Ali’spublic image and role shifted over these years, and that shift would endurelong after both his 1971 reinstatement and 1981 retirement from thesport.

Ali’s enduringrole as a late 20th and early 21st century publicactivist thus provides one important reason to remember the moment when hebegan to make that shift in earnest. But I would also argue that Ali’s 1967civil disobedience offered a profoundly distinct model of athlete activism thanany that had come before. There had of course been athletes whose very identityand public image represented a challenge to national and white supremacist narratives,such as Ali’s boxingpredecessor Jack Johnson. And there had been those like JackieRobinson whose groundbreaking sports careers themselves became a form ofactivism against the racist status quo. But to my knowledge, Ali’s draftresistance and his statements in support of that position took athlete activismin America to a new, much more publicly engaged level, one far beyond anysports-specific context. A more public form of athlete activism that quitepossibly influenced the following year’s OlympicBlack Power salute in Mexico City, and that certainly is worth linking to acontemporary example such as ColinKaepernick’s ongoing protests and public activisms (and the shocking levelof vitriol Kaepernick has received in response, from withinthe NFL just as much as outside of it). In all those ways, Muhammad Ali’s1967 act of civil disobedience was a watershed moment in American society aswell as its sports culture.

NextThrilla talk tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Contexts for this fight or other boxing histories you’dhighlight?