 The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, supporting inclusive higher education and healthcare, vibrant spiritual communities and a clean environment. The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, investing in our common future. Hi, I'm Ken Burns. I'm thrilled to welcome you to this local event for our newest film, Muhammad Ali. Storytelling is at the heart of public media, and this story brings to life one of the best known and indelible figures of the 20th century. A man who insisted on being himself unconditionally, becoming an inspiration to people everywhere. We appreciate the support of your local public television station, which makes it possible for us to tell complicated and in-depth stories like this one. Thank you for being here today. Good evening, and thank you for joining us this evening for an enlightening and, we hope, thought-provoking conversation about Muhammad Ali. My name is Dr. J. Michael Butler, and I'm the Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at Flagler College, where I've taught since 2008. My area of focus is modern cultural history, with an emphasis on the civil rights movement. And I teach a number of classes on the topics, and have published in a few videos as well, but enough about me. I'm honored to serve as the moderator for this event, and would like to introduce you to our distinguished panel for the evening's conversation. First, Dr. Parvez Ahmed is Professor of Finance from UNF. Dr. Ahmed, welcome. Our next panelist is Ismail Reed. Mr. Reed is a prolific author of novels, a Meredith awardee. Dr. Mr. Reed is one of a handful of authors nominated for two national book awards in the same year, received the Otto and Othello Co. Awards for Theater, and was featured in the Best American Poetry 2019. He is the author of The Complete Muhammad Ali, which includes material and photographs not seen in most of the hundreds of other books written about the champion. Mr. Reed, thank you for joining us. A few notes before we start. First, a word regarding our program schedule. We're going to spend the first part of the event watching clips from Muhammad Ali, the coming documentary on Dex and O PBS, and then we will talk about Muhammad Ali. Then we would like to get to your questions. So please submit your questions in the chat as we go, and be sure to let us know where you're joining us from. Second, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor for this evening's event, the author, Vining Davis Foundation. So now, touch gloves, go to our respective corners, and watch a clip from the new documentary, Muhammad Ali. Do you want some breakfast? Do you want some breakfast? I want some food, too. Can I have some of you? I don't want none. I won't take none. I won't take none. I won't eat none if you don't want none. Oh, look at that pretty horse there. Oh, look at that white horse. See, he's putting on a stand-up look over there. Stand-up, you got to stand up over that field. See the big one right here? Yeah. My earliest memories that I can think of as a child with my father are walking through airports and being in crowds and feeling in my vibrations of people's clapping and shouts in my chest and just looking at my dad, you know, like, who is this person? All the time, anywhere we went, you're the greatest. We love you and the clapping and Mohammed. I'll do my game. I'll do my game. I loved feeling all the energy and the love that he felt. We now think of Muhammad Ali as this vulnerable guy lighting the torch in Atlanta. And everybody on the globe loves him. Black people like him, white people. He's a universal hero, like, but almost in a religious way, like the Buddha. But when he was in the midst of his career and not just in the early bit, he was incredibly divisive. Boom, yell, scream, throw peanuts. But whatever you do, pay to get in. People hated him, whether it was along racial lines, class lines, Vietnam lines, political lines, religious lines, where they just couldn't stand him. And people, of course, had the opposite. And this was, I loved him. Loved him. But you had an opinion about him. Hey, man, give a shot, man. You can look at me. I'm one of these people. I can't see these. I'm in a 180. I'm too suspect to fight because I'm pretty. Look how pretty I am. I'm a tramp laid with a beautiful arms on pretty nose and mouth. I know I'm a pretty man. I know I'm pretty. You don't have to tell me I'm pretty. I'm cocky. I'm proud. You never talk about who's going to stop me. Well, ain't nobody going to stop me. I said, I'm going to stop you. He was a pioneer, he was a revolutionary, he was a ground breaker, a guy known simply as the greatest. I am the greatest. I wrestle with alligators, I've tussled with the whale, I done handcuffed lightning and put thunder in jail, you know I'm bad. I can drown to drink a water and kill a dead tree. This will be no contest. Wait till you see Mohammed Ali. To have that clip spun, and to be a black man in America, it was just, it was outlandish. Mohammed means worthy of all praises and Ali means no tax. You know I just don't think I should go 10,000 miles in here and shoot some black people. It never caught me. I just can't shoot it. I always wonder why Miss America was always white. Santa Claus was white, white swan soap, king white soap, white cloud tissue paper and everything bad was black. Black cat was the bad luck and if I threaten you I'm going to blackmail you. It's a mama or a hunter called a white male, they lie too. I love being around, I love being around Mohammed Ali. He will float like a butterfly in the same light as me. Ah, rubber, young man rubber. Ah, the price of freedom comes high. I have paid but I am free. Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom. He called himself the greatest and then proved it to the entire world. He was a master at what is called the sweet science. The brutal and sometimes beautiful art of boxing. Heavyweight champion of just 22 years old, he wrote his own rules in the ring and in his life infuriating his critics, baffling his opponents and riveting millions of fans. At the height of the civil rights movement, he joined a separatist religious sect whose leader would for a time dominate both his personal life and his boxing career. He spoke his mind and stood on principle even when it cost him his livelihood. He redefined black manhood, yet belittled his greatest rival using the racist language of the Jim Crow South in which he had been raised. Banished for his beliefs, he returned to boxing and underdog, reclaimed his title twice and became the most famous man on earth. He craved adulation his whole life, seeking crowds on street corners, in hotel lobbies, on airport tarmacs, everywhere he went, and reveled in the uninhibited joy he brought each adoring fan. He earned a massive fortune, spent it freely, and gave generously to family, friends, even strangers, anyone in need. Service to others, he often said, is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. Even after his body began to betray him, and his brain had absorbed too many blows, he fought on, unable to go without the attention and drama that accompanied each bout. Later, slowed and silenced by a cruel and crippling disease, he found refuge in his faith, becoming a symbol of peace and hope on every continent. Muhammad Ali was the novelist Norman Naylorode, the very spirit of the 20th century. I'm always going to be one black one who got big on your white televisions, on your white newspapers, on your satellites, million dollar chance, and still look you in your face and tell you the truth, and 100% stay with and represent my people, and not leave them and sell them out because I'm rich, and stay with them, that's my purpose. I'm here and I'm sure in the world that you can be here and feel free and stay yourself and get respect in the world. From my perspective, any time Muhammad Ali is mentioned, there are a number of different opinions that are given, whether it's students, whether it's parents, whether it's people who watch him, or people who have never signified at all. My question for the panel is starting with Dr. Ahmed, what do you think makes Muhammad Ali such a compelling figure? Left boxing. Although during his boxing career, he was bigger than almost any athlete that lived during his time. I'll give you just one quick example of what he meant to people who had never seen him box. And that would be me, actually. The first time I saw him box was in 1978, when he was getting ready for his rematch with Leon Spinks, when he won back the title for the third and final time. The reason I had never seen him box before that, because in India where I was born and raised, there was no television that was broadcasting his fights before that time. Even in 1978, there was no live broadcast of Ali's fight. It was being broadcast in Bangladesh. And my city of Calcutta, for Kolkata now, is just a few hundred miles away from Dhaka, and one of my dad's friends, he had jigged his antenna, so he could essentially steal the feed from Bangladesh TV, and we huddled around his TV in grainy pictures, mesmerized, watching Ali fight. And that was the first time. And yet he had occupied an outsized life inside my own brain and in my own heart, only just by reading about his fights. So just the description of his fights, the what he said during the fights or before the fight or after the fight, had already become legend in parts of the world that had never seen a single fight of Ali. And I think that's the remarkable testament of a sports figure, because when we think about sports, it is all about watching the live action, and being mesmerized by Tom Brady or LeBron James or whoever, messy. But to grow up idealizing somebody, having never watched them actually put on a display of their sporting prowess, is a remarkable testimony to an athlete that I don't think so the world has ever seen before, or will ever see again. What do you think, like Muhammad Ali, such a compelling figure? The script was not balanced, it seemed to idealize the champion. And I wonder who wrote the script. Number two, I think that Ali mastered the showbiz techniques of a wrestler named Gorgeous George Gorgeous George was a wrestler during the 1950s. And he played the villain, he played the heavy. And he was he boasted a lot, you know, in appearance. And that was a box office draw. And I think that Muhammad Ali learned how to manipulate the the box office television. He was one of the first television boxes, except in the 1940s, a Gillette used to sponsor fights every night on television. But he's the one who mastered the medium. Now, as far as being his own man, Ali followed orders. When he was under the guidance of Minister Elijah Muhammad, he followed his orders. And then when he became a member of Elijah Muhammad's successor Wallace Muhammad, he followed those orders. So in terms of being his own man, that's very questionable. And I think the crucial point, as far as his having his own autonomy, was when Malcolm X broke from Minister Elijah Muhammad, he went with Elijah Muhammad, who was sort of like a father figure for him. So I think, first of all, I think the script was not balanced. It sounds like it was written by I'm sorry, a groupie. And it's sort of like a race is all the warts and applause in the champion's life. And I don't think that at the very beginning, there was time to get into a lot of the complexities that makes him this interesting figure that I believe he is historically. There was a quote that I thought was really poignant. The playwright Norman Mailer, the novelist Norman Mailer gave the interesting line quote that Muhammad Ali was the quote, very spirit of the 20th century. What do you think he means by that? Well, the question is, what do you think he meant by that? And how could it be perceived that he was the spirit of the 20th century or maybe not? Dr. Ahmed. In my view, he was an embodiment of the 20th century partly because he was a man of contradictions. As my fellow panelists, Mr. Reed just pointed out, he lived with contradiction and the 20th century was full of contradictions. On one hand, there was a yearning for democracy. The democracy did spread far and wide throughout the 20th century. Many countries got out of the yoke of colonialism and were able to become free nations. And yet the quest for justice was incomplete, including in our own country. And Ali embodied that. I remember a time when Ali actually visited my birth city of Kolkata, India. And he was interviewed by one of the local boxing referees. And he mentioned to him when the referee brought up that, you know, who was the greatest of all time? And Ali responded by saying, only God is the greatest. Although his own self description that I am the greatest is what defines him, defines his legacy. And yet in his later life, he was much more circumspect, much more humble in understanding that from, let's say from an Islamic perspective, when we say the greatest, the greatest is only ascribed to God. And so Ali lived with those contradictions, a man of deep spirituality and faith. And yet he ascribed to himself a title that would be blasphemous within Islamic traditions. And yet he was beloved by Muslims. Because Muslims and he himself understood it. And Muslims around the world understood him that he was not claiming to be God. He was simply using that as a way to rebel against a system that was not living up to its ideals. The America of 1960s and Ali's childhood and youth was certainly not living up to his ideals. Even today America is not living up to its ideals. So it's in a constant perpetual motion to move towards the more perfect union. And that journey still continues. So I do agree with the description that Norman Mailer set out that he embodied 20th century because 20th century was full of contradictions. Although probably Norman meant it in a slightly different way than I'm thinking about it. Mr. Reed, I'll turn the question to you. How, what would make Mr. Mailer reach the conclusion, whether you agree with it or not, that this is a man who does represent the very spirit of the 20th century? A couple of sticks of marijuana. I mean, Norman Mailer, I call him Mr. Incoherent, who says a lot of over-the-top things and indulges in hyperbole. And sometimes it's hard to dissect the point that he's making. Now, in terms of Ali representing democracy, he had novel dictators, Mobutu of the Convo or Zaire, Marcos of the Philippines. Although I did interview Emil Guillermo, who's a Filipino journalist who said that it was the Ali Fraser fight that brought the Philippines into the 20th century. And in terms of being beloved by Muslims all over the world, in the beginning the orthodox Muslims rejected the nation of Islam. And members of the nation of Islam whom I interviewed don't share that affection for Ali, as a matter of fact, they called him a hypocrite when he got into that dispute with Elijah Muhammad. Yes, I believe that the contradictions that we've all touched upon and what he represented to a variety of different people at different times in his life sort of represents the complexities of America in the 21st century, the 20th century going into the 21st century. So I think representing the spirit of something much greater than yourself and all of the contradictions that that entails, that that can absolutely represent a figure that was so universally recognized. Wow, I'm looking forward to the next batch of conversations. This is going to be an interesting evening. But for now, let's watch another clip from episodes two and three of Muhammad Ali. Two weeks later, an all-white Houston jury found Ali guilty of refusing the draft. The judge, ignoring the more lenient recommendation of the prosecutor, sentenced him to the maximum five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. And he would have to surrender his passport. Ali's lawyers immediately filed an appeal prepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, a process that could take years. Ali remained free, but without his title or a license to box. He fully expected that he would one day go to jail for his beliefs. We who are followers of the Honorable Islam and the religion of Islam, we believe in obeying the laws of the land. We are taught to obey the laws of the land as long as it don't conflict with our religious beliefs. Will you go into service as such? This would be a thousand percent against the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the religion of Islam, and the Holy Quran, the Holy Book that we believe in. This will all be denouncing and defying everything that I stand for. This would mean, of course, that you stand the chance of going to jail as a result of not going into service. Well, whatever the punishment, whatever the persecution is for standing up for my religious beliefs, even if it means facing a machine gun for that day, I will face it before denouncing Elijah Muhammad and the religion of Islam. I'm ready to die. When I think about him saying, if they want to put me before a firing squad, tomorrow I'm ready to die before I abandon my religion. That's it. You can't teach that kind of thing in lectures and books. That kind of thing has to be modeled. And models turn into traditions. And traditions provide people with the mechanical memory to do the right thing. That's what Muhammad Ali represented in that moment. Anybody now faced with a major decision in which the right way is clear and the wrong way is clear, but the consequences are dire, now they have a model that they can fall back on psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. That's what Muhammad Ali represented in that moment. And that, to me, that moment will live on forever. And the next set of comments will be in direct reflection to what we just saw regarding Muhammad Ali. Is there a feedback coming? The next question that I wanted to ask was about the conscientious objector status that Muhammad Ali received or used in his decision to refuse induction into the United States Army. How did that decision resonate then? And why is it still a topic that many fans, observer, and scholars go back to forming their opinion of who Muhammad Ali was? Mr. Reed, let's start with you this time. Who was the one who brought Muhammad Ali into the nation of Islam in Florida? Muhammad Ali had seen Abdul Rahman selling Muhammad's feats. And he began to question Rahman about the philosophy of Islam, the nation of Islam. They were in a home where the sisters were cooking for them. The press was outside and he asked Abdul Rahman what he should tell the press. And Abdul Rahman said, go out and tell him that famous statement, no Vietnamese ever called me to the N word. And that's what he did. Now, what's not mentioned in this documentary is Elijah Muhammad's experience with the draft. Elijah Muhammad was considered so pro-Japanese that they tried to enforce addition. And when that didn't work, they got him for draft dodging. He spent four years on an agricultural farm where he acquainted himself with the techniques of farming. Not many people know. There were more black people who were members of Japanese, pro-Japanese fronts and communist fronts. And that's because when the Japanese defeated the Russian Navy in 1905, that was considered a heroic act by black people like W. Du Bois and others, George Scholar. And it came so that the FBI wanted to charge them with sedition, the black newspapers. There's a book called The Question of Sedition. So it was Elijah Muhammad who made that the precedent. And the Nation of Islam members, followers, followed that Muhammad Ali being one of them. Now, in terms of facing guns and physical threats, it was Joe Lewis, Sugar E. Robinson, Jackie Robinson, and Sonny Liston who faced white men with guns and bought them with their fists, yet they're considered uncle times. I think that there is a clarification that we need to make because we have had discussions about Muhammad Ali, the student of Islam, and Muhammad Ali, the member of the Nation of Islam. Those are very different things. So Mr. Reed, from a non-expert's perspective, how would you explain in layman's terms what the Nation of Islam was and when Muhammad Ali broke with that sect? I don't know if your color is set. The Nation of Islam was probably what one might consider the workers cooperative, that they pool their money and invested in property like farms. As a matter of fact, their advisor, the person who was an expert on farming and agriculture, was a Harvard graduate. A lot of people stereotype the members of the Nation of Islam as being members of the working class, but they had scientists and scholars who were members. Now, Elijah Muhammad broke with the Ya'aqub legend, the idea that a black scientist created white people for evil in 1974. And a pivotal moment came with the assassination of JFK. That's when Malcolm X broke with the Nation, Elijah Muhammad's Nation, because he made a remark about that and mocked it, the chickens come home to roost. He said of JFK's death. He was reprimanded and suspended by Elijah Muhammad because Elijah Muhammad, this is essentially a commercial group, didn't want to bring the heat of the government on them. So, after Elijah Muhammad died, he was seen by his son, Wallace Muhammad, and Muhammad Ali merely followed Wallace. Thank you for that. Dr. Ahmad, one of the things that I wanted to ask is along the same lines about Muhammad Ali's refusal when he was in the Nation of Islam to be inducted into the United States military at the height of the Vietnam War. Is this part of his reputation that you knew about growing up in India, or was it something that you learned about later, and how did that influence the way that you viewed Muhammad Ali from when you were a child and first learned about it? No, we knew about that. That part of his life was very well known. And it was a conscientious objection that was very highly regarded and respected. There is a tradition within the Islamic faith. When one is confronted with a challenge to their beliefs, how should they respond to that? And the tradition comes from a story about Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him, that when he was in the early stages of propagating his faith in his early stages of his ministry, the elites of Mecca who were the establishment of Mecca, the power establishment of Mecca, they came to Prophet Muhammad and asked him to renounce his faith, renounce the new faith that he was preaching, and they sent his uncle, who was one of the nobles of that time, to him to persuade him to give up his faith. And Prophet Muhammad responded that if they put the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left hand, I will not give up this faith. So it is a tradition that many Muslims are very intimately aware of on how they should respond to when somebody challenges their most sacredly health belief. Now, whether joining an army, whether joining a nation's army is part of a, or when one should join and when one should be a conscientious objection, that is not really clear in the religious sense. The religion itself would say that if your country is in a war and asks you to join that war, then you should join. Although it leaves room open for interpretation that there would be situations where conscientious objection would be the right thing to do. In terms of how this was perceived outside, I think it was perceived in that, in that manner that while it is understood that a person should join their nation's army when that army is in a battle, when their country is in a battle, but it also leaves open a room for conscientious objection. But again, here is another contradiction in Ali's life. What would be considered treason or unpatriotic by not joining the army? On the flip side, when Ali later in his life would visit many Muslim majority country, he would speak glowingly about America and his American-ness, despite being discriminated, despite losing the ability to fight at the peak of his career, perhaps losing hundreds of millions of dollars in that process, he never was bitter about his country. He always spoke glowingly about his American-ness and what it meant to be an American. And he kind of played the bridge-builder role while he was talking about, in his own country, talking to his fellow countrymen on how they should understand Islam and Muslims better, particularly after 9-11. He was visiting other countries and asking them to understand America better. And he played the role of a bridge-builder and the contradiction that was innate to him is also part of America's cultural tradition, America's foreign policy tradition. And that contradiction is something that we always struggle to reconcile. Who Ali the person was. Mr. Reed, yes. You're right. He endorsed Ronald Reagan. And we're still suffering from that regime. We're still living in the age of neoliberalism and selfishness, the sort of followers of I and Ron were still in that period. And that was begun by Ronald Reagan, yet Muhammad Ali endorsed Ronald Reagan. And he accepted an award from George Bush, who was afflicting a great deal of damage in the Middle East and causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. And he was criticized for that. So, yes, I think that the nation of Islam and those successors of Elijah Muhammad are probably considered conservative. And as a matter of fact, the FBI said that they were nothing to worry about. It was Martin Luther King who was causing the trouble. And I think if there's anybody who embodies the spirit of the 20th century, it's Martin Luther King, because he was a physical danger every day he was life, while his critics weren't. Oh, I totally agree with that. From my perspective as a historian, from a cultural historian's perspective, I think that his objection to the Vietnam War was more in line of him living the creed that I am not who you want me to be. And to understand that you have to understand that this was a young man who came to age in the Jim Crow South. An age in which blacks were in all areas made subordinate to white by law, by custom, by practice, and by violence. I think that everything that we've mentioned thus far is a rebellion against that notion of second class citizenship that Ali and millions of other black Southerners had to live under. The idea that as a black person who is public, you are to be seen and not heard. What did Muhammad Ali do? He made McGorgeous George. He said to draw heat, to draw negative attention. I'm pretty. I'm pretty. I'm beautiful. Black people did not boast. They did not brag in a Jim Crow world. They knew their place. They acted accordingly, especially in Louisville, Kentucky, when you have white benefactors who are supporting you on the way up. Every step along the way, from the fact that he bucked Jim Crow defiantly by saying I am the greatest, I'm pretty. I shook up the world all the way to his entering the nation of Islam. When many other African Americans said you're letting us down, you're leading us down the wrong path, the nation of Islam was viewed by most of the nation at the time as a black hate group, not the case. But there were many African Americans who believed that as well. He bucked that trend. When it came time to declare himself a conscientious objector, there were many, including Joe Lewis, who basically said no, your first duty is to your country. And he said no, my first obligation is to Allah. You know, I think Mr. Reed brings up a great point that's worth considering. And that is, can you be a person who is your own man and can you be a person simultaneously who takes orders from what you perceive as true moral authority? And I think these contradictions, which are rooted in the socio and cultural atmosphere of the Jim Crow South is a link that we can see shape Muhammad Ali throughout his life. Again, touching on our themes of religion and race and history and complexity and conservatism and liberalness, the conversation will continue. But first we need to watch a final clip from episode four of Muhammad Ali, his devotion to Islam increasingly shaped his daily routine. He prayed five times each day facing Mecca called friends to discuss the differences between religions and distributed autographed pamphlets that he hoped would help correct common misperceptions about his faith. When he traveled in the Muslim world, massive crowds greeted him as Muhammad Ali clay to distinguish their hero from thousands of faithful Muslims also named Muhammad Ali. During a Goodwill visit to Pakistan in 1987, Muhammad and Lani visited schools, hospitals and mosques. They delivered canned milk to an Afghan refugee camp along the border and encouraged guerrilla fighters there in their long struggle to evict the occupying Soviet army from Afghanistan. He needed love like he needed air to breathe. So the people did probably more for him than he did for them, if not at least equal. You know, so he was so grateful for the love they gave, he was so grateful for that. In 1989, he was on the road more than at home visiting England, Senegal, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. In April, he and Lani made a pilgrimage to Mecca during the holy month of Ramadan. Ali had visited Mecca before in 1972, but now admitted that he hadn't fully appreciated its significance and acknowledged that his commitment to his religion had long been imperfect. I fit my religion to do whatever I wanted. I did things that were wrong and chased women all the time. Everything I do now, I do to please Allah. One of my father's favorite sayings was rivers, lakes and streams all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, but they all contain truth? He always taught me that there's only one true religion and that's the religion of the heart, he would say. And as long as you do right and you treat people right, you know, I believe you go to heaven no matter what you call your religion. Ali, late in life, talked about this tallying angel. He called it that there was an angel up there who counted all the good things you did in life and all the bad things you did in life. And if you had more bad things than good things, you were going to hell and he had a very vivid impression of what hell meant. And he acknowledged that he had a lot of negative marks that the tallying angel was not going to be happy with the way he had treated women in particular. 30 years after Ali first faced Joe Frazier, a reporter asked him about their long-running feud. I called him a lot of names that I shouldn't have called him, Ali admitted. I apologize for that. I liked Joe Frazier. Me and him was a good show. Frazier never forgave Ali. Later, he expressed sorrow at having abandoned Malcolm X. Turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life, he wrote. I wished I'd been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry that he was right about so many things. Daddy evolved. He became better. And Daddy said that I'm bigger than boxing. That meant boxing was this much. His evolution into the person he is today is way bigger than him just boxing. And I think he knew that. And he carried it with him, his love. And he gave it to every single person he met. And I think that's beautiful. As the 20th century came to an end, Newsweek, Time and Sports Illustrated all named him athlete of the century. In the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, American Muslims were the victims of hate crimes simply because of their faith. I am a Muslim. I am an American, Ali responded. If the culprits are Muslim, they have twisted the teachings of Islam. Whoever performed the terrorist attacks does not represent Islam. God is not behind the sassans. What I hope is that Muhammad Ali will be a constant reminder to America of just how thoroughly American and believing, practicing sincerely committed Muslim can be. Whatever one's background is, Ali belongs to America, all of us. And I think that he belongs to all of us because he affected all of us. And I hope that that's part of the legacy that he will leave, that America won't forget Ali as this American Muslim with equal emphasis on American Muslim. On November 9th, 2005, President George W. Bush presented Ali with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. That same year, the Muhammad Ali Center, a museum dedicated to his life and legacy, opened in Louisville. Muhammad Ali was an activist who fought to reach us a certain way and to move America in a certain way, to move individuals in a certain way. I'm going to take this path. I believe that I'm right. And even if I'm not right, I'm still me. And to be able to follow that and to know that there was going to be an enormous price to pay for that and to have that be generational, to have that live on beyond you is extremely valuable. Everything that he did couldn't be undone. Welcome back for our final round of questions before we open it up to you, the audience, for one of my favorite parts of these roundtable discussions, and that is the Q&A session. We have used a lot of words to describe Muhammad Ali in this very brief conversation. I wrote a few down hyperbole, misconceptions, complexity, faith, identity, religion, and not once have we used the term boxer. Muhammad Ali was first and foremost an athlete. It's probably one of the three things that drew the most attention to him, at least initially. So with that in mind, I have sort of a softball personal question and then a much more reflective question before we open it up to our Q&A. The first question is, is there a fight, a rivalry, a series of matches that are your favorite in the Muhammad Ali canon and why is that the case? Mr. Reed, let's start with you. Well, I saw him boxing Madison Square Garden in the early 60s and he lost the fight. He fought Doug Jones and Doug Jones beat him. But I thought that the promoters who have ruined boxing, I think television has ruined boxing. They saw this personality and this telegenic personality who could draw crowds and so they gave him that one. That was a gift. I agree with Emmanuel Stewart, whom I interviewed for my book. The great trainer said he should have quit after the deployment fight. I thought that was his greatest triumph. And in that fight, you could see that people talk about the rope-a-dope. Well, I think he no longer had the ability to dance around and use other techniques. That's the reason for the rope-a-dope. And then after that, his skills began to deteriorate. I talked to Mark Gibson, a black sportswriter, who said that when he fought Larry Holmes, he didn't even train. And so he just began to deteriorate and get hit a lot. So after that three-year layoff, it slowed down. Just like Roy Jones, when Roy Jones slowed down and lost his speed, he got knocked out. So I just think he's a person who stayed in the ring too long and suffered from the effects. I don't think there was Parkinson's disease. I think that was dementia brought about by too many blows in the air. And kind of Ali in Africa and Muhammad Ali of Maximus being a holy man. But in the end, Muhammad Ali became a holy man. He's sort of like had universal religious acceptance, not only by Muslims, but by Buddhists and members of other religions. And in terms of being an ambassador, you know, George, excuse me, Jimmy Carter, made him an ambassador to Africa, so like a roving ambassador to Africa. And the African leaders saw that as an insult that they would choose a boxer to be an ambassador to their countries. Right. So from that, I'll take it that the George Foreman fight is your favorite Muhammad Ali fight for the reasons that you sort of explained. It was, it was. And when we look historically at the people who Muhammad Ali faced in vanquished, it was some of the biggest, baddest men of the time, right? They were their generations, Mike Tyson, the Sonny Listens, the George Foreman. Dr. Ahmed, I'll ask you the same question. Is there a fight? Is there a series of fights or is there an athletic event that you proposed about Muhammad Ali? And it's so why? Of course, the athletic event that he will be forever remembered is the one where he did not perform as an athlete, which was when he lit the Olympic flame at the Los Angeles Olympics. But I'm not a boxing connoisseur, so I cannot give you the details, the nuances of which particular fight was the most technically sound and stuff like that. But in terms of my understanding of his fights, they were all in retrospect because after I came to America as a student, graduate student, being the idol that Muhammad Ali was in my life, even before I came to the US, I went to blockbuster videos at that time on VHS tape and rented his old fights. And that's how I started watching his old fights. To me, of course, the Foreman fight, you know, because of the location and the pageantry surrounding it and the politics surrounding it will forever remain one of the most iconic fights. But in terms of what I took, what remained my favorite fight was actually his very first fight, which was for this first major fight, which was even before he was Muhammad Ali, which was the fight against Sonny Alistin, because that's where it all started. His bravado and not only the fight shaped who he was, but he then immediately began to reshape boxing and began to reshape sports. So that the genesis of Muhammad Ali in that list and fight was always a favorite of mine. Yeah, and the reaction to that fight is something that I'll always remember, as being one of my first introductions to Ali the athlete, you know, growing up in different regions at different times as all of our panelists have. What was often said about Muhammad Ali from a working class white Southern background was not very complimentary. Yet the first athletic footage I remember seeing him in were in commercials in which he was bragging, I shook up the world, I'm pretty, I'm a bad man, and that magnetism drew you to it and I got more and more into the boxing catalog. I'm with Dr. Ahmed and I'm with Mr. Reed. I think both of those fights are defining moments and that's one of the things about Ali's public career is that there are so many defining moments. The Ernie Torrell fight 1967 for me is one of the more interesting and it adds to the complexity and the misunderstanding of Ali and his opponents. Torrell called him Cassius Clay. They were friends. They had been roommates once upon a time. Muhammad Ali was at the height of being criticized for joining the nation of Islam and said that's not my name. My name is Muhammad Ali. Ernie Torrell began to go to him because anything that he could use to get under Muhammad Ali's skin he did so he called him Cassius Clay. It was a pretty brutal fight and by the eighth round you can see Ali hitting the jab, step back and say what's my name, calling him an Uncle Tom between rounds. That on many levels is an introduction to Muhammad Ali the athlete, Muhammad Ali the servant of Allah, Muhammad Ali the self-assertive black man in a segregated society. So to understand Muhammad Ali I think the 1967 fight with Ernie Torrell is a good place for people to start. Now for my final question before we open it up for the Q&A I said I was going to toss this outfall and one that I think would require a little bit of thought. One of my favorite quotes about Muhammad Ali comes from the former Cleveland Brown grade Jim Brown. What Jim Brown said is Muhammad Ali did not become America's most beloved athlete until he lost the ability to speak. With that in mind I want to ask about your reflections on how Muhammad Ali revolutionized or defined the role of the athlete as social commentator in the United States of America. Dr. Ahmed I'll start with you and move to Mr. Reed. Well Muhammad Ali defined so many things, Reed defined so many things you know. His I was reading a Rolling Stones article where it was suggested that he was hip hop before hip hop. You know his Louisville lip moniker was and his ability to rhyme and create poetry out of almost in one of the most brutal sports known to mankind was mesmerizing. But I think his today when we look at people like Colin Kaepernick for example. The price he has paid for standing up for social justice. Well Ali was the precursor to that and one of the things that I think one of the persons that was a sports commentator I think I heard him say and it resonated with me that Ali did all of these things that he did so that today's athletes don't have to do them. So he was you know he was willing to pay the price and he did pay the price in ways that I cannot think of anybody else. Any modern modern day athlete that has paid the price like he paid. Colin Kaepernick in two in my mind comes closest because he lost the ability to play. Lost didn't lose his ability to play. He has simply been ostracized by the NFL for speaking for standing up for the truth. But he has not faced jail time. He has not faced that kind of vitriol that Ali drew towards himself. So in that sense he has redefined and although he was not the first athlete to stand up against oppression and tyranny you know but he was certainly the one that galvanized a lot of people. Certainly the one that drew the most attention and I think athletics and sports is better off today. There is a new level of social consciousness and a social awakening that you see not only among modern day players but also to some extent among the leagues also. Not to the extent that we would like them to be but certainly better than where they were even a few years ago. And I think all of that journey owes a lot of gratitude to Muhammad Ali, his life, his legacy and the bold stances he stood for over and over again. Thank you for that. Mr. Reed, same question to you. Did Muhammad Ali revolutionize the idea of the athlete-activist? Well you know there are a lot of athletes before him. Arthur Ash and Jack Johnson, Joe Lewis, Joe Lewis is very outspoken. If you read my book I uncovered some quotations and some speeches that Joe Lewis made which were activists and he may be on forces about a situation for Black soldiers. I mentioned this incident where Joe Lewis got into a fight with the military police in a segregated bus station and the MP as we used to call them, the military police, jabbed the night stick into Joe Lewis' side until they move on that this was a segregated bus station and Joe Lewis said, I'm a soldier just like you. And so before you knew it, Jerry Robinson had one of the MPs on the floor punching them out and Joe Lewis is punching the other guy. These are armed races. These are armed races. These are no threats. And so the fight stopped when somebody said that's Joe Lewis. Joe Lewis called White House and complained and he made he made this situation for Black people. There are millions for part of World War II, millions of Black people for part of World War II. He made it probably make it easier for them. So there were Jack Johnson was outstanding and suffered a great deal of vitriol and death threats because of his lifestyle. So he was the first I think he was probably one of the first who had a big audience because of television. I would say that it was his wife, Yolanda. I think she ought to be featured more because he never knew how to handle his finances. So the guy, Buffer, who makes the announcement, let's get ready to rumble. He's made more money than Ali doing his vaccine career and he borrowed the idea of let's get ready to rumble from Muhammad Ali. He used to say, you know, young man rumble. He used to have that routine. So he's exploited. So even to the end where one promoter was short of $999,000 and paying him for that purse for the so he sent Yolanda, his wife to business school. She manages the pairs and she got him that $50 million contract for the use of his name, the same company that uses Elvis Presley's name. So once in a while, you'll see Muhammad Ali in a commercial or you'll hear the audio Muhammad Ali in a commercial. So he did manage his affairs very well. Now back to that Tarrel fight. Tarrel was organized crime spider and Muhammad Ali was the nation of Islam's fighter. The nation of Islam improved the situation of black boxes because they went into the business of boxing. And it showed on another show that one came with George the George Shabala fight in Canada where organized crimes threatened Ali and said if he won the fight, he found himself at the bottom of Lake Michigan and the nation of Islam struck back. So they were among those who challenged the nation of Islam challenge a book or it's called main boss challenge organized crimes rain over boxing. Well, that's a lot of information to digest. A truly complicated figure. I'm glad that you did mention Jack Johnson. The man act was actually used against him to break him personally, financially. And yes, what I do think makes Ali historically unique is that several years of his prime was taken from him, not lost. It was taken from him by the United States government. And he was facing five years in prison, the maximum sentence, even though the jury that convicted him recommended leniency. The judge in Houston Tech gave him the simplest penalty possible. And when he was asked, when they learned of the Supreme Court's verdict, unanimous that the case against Muhammad Ali was dismissed. Was it the proudest moment in his life or does the system correct itself? You know, something where you expect someone to sort of cal tau and say, yes, the system works. Muhammad Ali, in his typical boastful way, non existent said, I can't say if the justice system works because I don't know who's going to be assassinated tonight. Meaning, whatever I face, people who look like me are going to have to face a lot worse in the coming days, months and years. And I think that no matter who we are or who we idolize or expect to be spokesmen of the generation, whether it's LeBron James in the age of Sheldon Ribble, or whether it's Colin Kaepernick, who has been blackballed, collusion is absolutely evident that no one will have risked what Muhammad Ali did at the time in American history when he risked it. So you know, with that in mind, this has been a wonderful discussion. I've enjoyed getting to know our panelists a little better and hopefully providing a little bit of context to a really, really deep conversation. But it's time to take some questions from you, the audience. Thank you for bearing with us for this long. And I do believe that we have a list. First, Thomas asks, please reflect on Ali throwing the Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River when he was still so young and still caches clay. Mr. Reed, would you like to comment on that? Well, that story has been disputed, but I take Muhammad Ali's word for it. After the Rome Olympics, right? Yes, he did. He did. But yeah, it was a re-frustration over being denied service in a segregated restaurant in Louisville, if I'm not mistaken. And that was part of the, he did express regret, but you know, when we live long enough, we get to rewrite our own mythology. So Mr. Reed's point, whether or not, you know, you believe that story or not, he did say that it happened. And he was given a replacement medal, I believe in 1996 as part of his becoming a global citizen, a citizen of the world. And as Dr. Ahmed reminded us, one of his most outstanding feats did not occur in the boxing ring, but it was at the 96 Olympics when he lit the torch. Black intellectuals and fans of Ali about that. They said, well, the American public, his mainstream public, accepted him because he was no longer the Louisville lip. He, you know, he was no longer the agitator and was feeble. And that's why they accepted that moment, the American public. We have next a comment for the panel to react to. Byron makes an interesting comment about Ali being an American hero by people who hated him during his prime. I think this is a good comment for Dr. Ahmed to respond to as being someone who may have perceived now the hero's treatment of Muhammad Ali balanced with the historical reality that he was the most hated man in America in 1966 and 67. Dr. Ahmed, what are your insights on that? Level not very different from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At his time, he was controversial. And now the people that do everything against his ideals also quote him. And this is, you know, this there is an element of a pop culture element to the way we recall our historical figures. And I think Muhammad Ali and Dr. King, but they both embody that. So the people today who may put Muhammad Ali up on a pedestal for whatever reason or idolizing or quote him or channel some of his thoughts still do not fully grasp his struggles. And mostly that fail to grasp what Muhammad Ali meant to people who were oppressed, people who are fighting for justice. What does that, what does that bond mean? And that and that the fight for justice, the fight for equity is still a monumental struggle in this country is is missed in many of the in I personally think we miss it on most MLK days. When we celebrate that one day, but then the remainder of the year, we don't live up to MLK ideals. And the people who's come to these celebrations are not casting in your spursions in any particular. But in general, people do a lot of performative lip service. And I think there is an element of that. Also, when people remember Muhammad Ali or they want to talk about Muhammad Ali or channel Muhammad Ali, the example that you know, to me that it's it's a reflection that I come to every year, particularly during Dr. Martin Luther King Day is that is that the remainder of 365 days of the year, we forget about his ideals. We actually in many ways, our system works against the ideals. And yet we celebrate his birthday as a holiday. It's just like it's it's it's again one of those contradictions. At one level, we can be we can think about this contradiction as the richness of America, or at another level, we can think of this as one of those things that make you go really excellent, excellent point. I believe that one of the reasons historically speaking that so many people embrace Muhammad Ali today who would have hated him, sometimes the same people from the same families who despised him, now acknowledge he was on the right side of history. Whatever they think about him as a person, the fact that they actually embrace Ali, the mythologized figure means that they acknowledge he was right. And they were wrong, even though they may not admit it. Information something along the lines that you just made, because we just went past the 20th anniversary of 9 11. And it there is an element of that. The reckoning that I think America goes through quite often. You know, if you remember during the lead up to the Iraq war, the 2003 Iraq invasion, 70% of American public supported the war. A decade later, most of the public were against the war. Same thing with the war in Afghanistan. At the time of the US invasion of Afghanistan, there was overwhelming support. Very few people dared to speak out voices like us who were who are suggesting caution, and who are saying that, you know, the war in terror cannot really be terrorism cannot really be fought with a war. Military intervention alone cannot overcome terrorism in and people who were agitating for peace were brushed aside. But 20 years later, the people who were not on the side of these wars have been vindicated over and over again, in a way that has extracted enormous cost in blood and treasure, not only on us as Americans, but also so many people around the world. And it is a moment of reflection that we all can use to grow out of it. And we hope that we never make these kind of mistakes again. But something the cynic within me tells me that, you know, a decade later, we will be discussing another war at another time against another enemy that we very, very, very little understand of. I don't think that's pessimistic. I think that's probably realistic. We learn from the past. Often that we learn nothing from the past. So unfortunately, in my field, history, there is a phenomenon that's really, really popular now called historical memory. And I think this comes to the point that we've all kind of touched on very at various points in our conversation. And it's not just history, but it's how has history been remembered and commemorated by subsequent generations, right? So the historical figure and the historical memory around the figure can be totally different. Now, I brought that up because I wanted to segue into the next insight and question. Steve remarks that Mr. Reed is obviously not a fan. I'll take it in another direction and say he did use the term fanboy to describe a lot of the adulation around Muhammad Ali. With that in mind, the question's twofold. Mr. Reed, why do you think Muhammad Ali has such a quote unquote fanboy following and to Steve's question, what do you believe Ali's legacy is or maybe should be? You know, I think this is like that Ken Burns is doing this story is sort of like typical of the way publishing and television and the media work. Other people tell our stories. George Bernard Shaw said that when other people tell you, if you don't tell your own stories, other people will tell you, tell them for you and they will degrade you. So you know, white authors and a white producer like Ken Burns has a better opportunity to tell a black story than a black person. I had to go to Montreal to get my book published, The Complete Muhammad Ali, because it didn't go along with this wave of adulation. And so that's a typical thing. What I've done in order to rectify this is to learn other languages. I wrote a book, a novel called Japanese by Spring, which earned me two trips to Japan and to Chinese universities. I wrote a book called Conjugating Hindi, in which I talked about the conflict between conservative Indian intellectuals and black American intellectuals. I had to mention this in mind. So I think that I would recommend some of the viewers to read The Greatest, Richard Durham's book, a black writer who wrote a book about Ali, had access to Ali, which mostly white writers have had access to Ali towards death and get another point of view about Ali. Now in terms of his legacy, Abdul Rahman I think was right, but he said that nobody would ever have heard of Muhammad Ali had it not been for Elijah Muhammad. And in terms of the Supreme Court decision even, Justice Harlan changed his mind and voted to vindicate Ali because he read Message to the Black Man by Elijah Muhammad and the autobiography of Malcolm X, which is brought to his attention by his clerks. So I think that when you mention Ali, don't mention the history and the backstory that there would never have been a Muhammad Ali had it not been for the nation of Islam, despite their flaws. I talked about criminal elements in the nation of Islam because they recruited in prisons. I've seen people change their lives because he was introduced to the nation of Islam. So I'm not a religious person myself, but I believe that thousands of people enter the middle class because of organizations like the nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party. But Ali did leave the nation of Islam and he left the nation of Islam in large part because of disenchantment with Elijah Muhammad, just like Malcolm X did. And that leads us to the next question. Exactly. He was more of an Orthodox teacher. Had Muhammad Ali followed him now. Elijah Muhammad, I asked him, so why use all this stuff about Muhammad being Allah, spaceships, and all this kind of stuff. And I was told that that was a way to recruit the masses. You could not recruit the masses of people with the Koran. Now, Gordon Parks spent an afternoon with Muhammad Ali. It was all about popular culture, movies, television, you know, all that kind of stuff. So they said this was a recruiting tool. There's the late Sam Hamoud, who's in this book by Les Payne, the Kepa National Bacore, and also was a friend of mine. He said that Elijah Muhammad told his father and Sam Hamoud claims that his father was assassinated because the government appeared a coalition between overseas Muslims and next to Islam. But he said that Elijah Muhammad said, well, teach my sons Orthodox Islam because he knew that what he was doing was a popular version of it. And so when Wallace came of maturity and succeeded his father, Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali was a boxer. He was not intellectual. I mean, he did what he was told. And, you know, when he actually, there is an opinion that he appeared the draft board, he appeared the nation of Islam more than he appeared the draft board because these are orders that everybody take that position. Again, though, the historical fact is he split and eventually converted to Sunni Islam. So, I mean, that's the historical fact. Next question, this asked by Joy. And that is, what impact did Muhammad Ali have on Malcolm X when he turned his back on him in favor of Elijah Muhammad? What effect, if any, did this have on his eventual assassination? Joy, it sealed it. There is a great book titled Blood Brothers, which is about the friendship between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. And one of the things that I will agree on with Mr. Read on is that sometimes Muhammad Ali wasn't acting according to his own principles that he was being manipulated and used. And Elijah Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, actively pointed him in Muhammad Ali. They gave him money. I interviewed his second wife and he said her father gave him money when he was broke. So, I think that's something that should be explored. And we should, Kim Burns should get more from the point of view of the nation of Islam. The turning away from Malcolm X to the nation of Islam sealed Malcolm X's fate. That's historically irrefutable. One night in Miami, the members of the nation of Islam, who are rarely interviewed because the white authors dismiss them as a bunch of lunatics and fanatics. Their point of view is that Malcolm X was a hypocrite. When he brought up this idea about Elijah Muhammad exploiting these women, he knew that. There was no discovery for him. When he went to Mecca and said that he saw white Muslims, he knew there were white Muslims because he attended the United Nations every week. So, I'm just telling you what they say. I think one of the things that we can draw from the conversation, both about Kim Burns' story and the nation of Islam perspective, is that it is not the story, it is a story. The whole story requires the sum of all the parts, not the perspectives of one person or one group. And that brings us to the final question, I believe. Kay asks, if the panelists have seen One Night in Miami, and what do they think of the portrayal of Ali in the movie? Dr. Ahmed, I saw you nod your head. Have you happened to see One Night in Miami? I did. Again, I'm not a historian, so I cannot give a historical perspective on these issues, but it was one of my favorite movies that I have watched in recent time. It showed a very complicated man, and I think that's part of Ali's legacy. And for anyone to expect anything different than Ali being a complicated person is not fair because he was born in a very complicated time, and lived under one of the most brutal circumstances imaginable in modern American history. So for him to develop viewpoints, whether he joined the nation as an act of rebellion, some of it could be definitely be attributed to that, but is also leaving the nation and embracing Orthodox Islam or Sunni Islam as his way of life had his own evolution in the way he approached religion also. The story that I mentioned that when he was in Calcutta in 1990, he was visiting Calcutta, and when the local person brought up the story or brought up the question to him that who is the greatest? Who is the greatest? And his reply was, it was the 1960s Ali, he would have said me, but the 1990s Ali says that God is the greatest as an Orthodox Muslim, as a Sunni Muslim, as an Orthodox Muslim, Sunni or Shia doesn't matter would say that God is the greatest. So it is without a doubt that traditional Islam, Orthodox Islam played a huge role in shaping who he was in the latter part of his life. And to that extent, I agree with Mr. Reed that he at some level was a rebel, but at some level he was also a conformist because he took whatever the teaching that he was most attracted to, whether it was the nation's teaching when he was with Elijah Muhammad, or whether it is the teaching of Orthodox Islam, when he moved in a different direction with his faith, he took those teaching and shaped his social life, shaped his cultural outlook towards his life, particularly after 9 11. When he talked about being a cultural ambassador, a bridge to to bridge the misunderstanding that most Americans had about Islam and Muslims. And when he talked about as his daughter in the in the in the documentary was talking about that he talked about faiths being rivers and lakes, but they all contain water, they all contain the truth. That is also part of a very Orthodox teaching of Islam, where one of the verses of the Quran says that God says that I made you into nations and tribes so that you may know each other, not despise each other. So the idea that we are all different in colors, in languages, in religions is part of a divine design and and Ali internalized that as he understood the teachings of Islam better as he progressed through life, which is part of the journey. You know we should leave the earth a better person than we started our journey. And without a doubt one has to say that whatever the journey that brought Muhammad Ali to his end, by the end of his life, he was not only a remarkable figure with a remarkable imprint on on on the thinking of so many, but he left the world a much better person. And his own journey, his own evolution in faith that brought him to that end point is also very much rooted in Islamic spirituality, which he embraced. He was not just somebody who practiced the pillars of Islam. He was not just somebody who was immersed in the rituals of Islam. He did that, but he did more than that. He tried to understand, he tried to embody the spirit of Islam to the best of his ability, including repenting on many of his behaviors that would be considered outside the pale of Orthodox Islamic teachings. I went to the opening of the Ali Center and I noticed that liquor companies played a big role in financing that center and being the paid liquor companies that got the program. So how does that square with Islamic teaching? If you could tell me how that squares with the Islamic teacher. Well, I will say that commercially compromises are made often. I know that we in St. Augustine have monuments to Dr. Martin Luther King that are sponsored by Northrop Grumman. He's not a Muslim, but he was anti-war. And my point is here that sometimes our these sponsored by liquor companies have to do with Islamic teaching. A point about compromises that our families make for the sake of preserving legacies. That's the compromise. Yeah, modern day athletes, you know, their people may have sponsorship on their jerseys by companies whose values they may not be supportive of. It is one of those challenges of modern day living that more often than not we live in the gray zone than in the black and white zone. You know, I think a good way to end this would be for each of our panelists to summarize the legacy of Muhammad Ali in one word as challenging as it is. I challenge the audience to do it as well. One word that comes to mind when you think of Muhammad Ali is what, Mr. Reed? The excerpts I've seen from the Ken Burns movie, I think is an improvement over the civil wars, which is narrated by historian named Shelby Foote, who said that the Ku Klux Klan was like the French resistance. So I look forward to seeing this and participating in it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Dr. Ahmed, one word to wrap up the legacy of Muhammad Ali. I would say human, but I will qualify it by saying fully human. My word was American and all the complexities that that entails. As we bring to the close this great conversation, I would like to let you know that we have a special giveaway for our audience. WJCT public media truly values your input. In about 30 minutes, everyone will receive an email with the link to a short survey. Please click on the link and find out where the survey is and enter for your chance to win a special prize related to Muhammad Ali. Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Reed, thank you so much for sharing your insight. Our third Vining Davis Foundation. More importantly, thank you, the audience, for joining us for Ali race and religion. Be sure to tune in to Jack's PBS WJCT on Sunday, September 19th at 8 p.m. for the first round of the new documentary, Fun Intended. Muhammad Ali by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. Coming to your PBS affiliate. Thank you and good night.