This week I saw Bill Siegel's documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali, which was playing in a limited run at the California Theater in Berkeley. I used to live within walking distance of the California, one of the five movie theaters I could walk to from my Berkeley apartment. This time I traveled there in my good ol' Prius, which still has a Berkeley parking sticker that is now years out of date.
The documentary offers an overview of Ali's career from his beginnings as a medal winning Olympian in 1960, up to present day discussions with his adult children. Born Cassius Clay, he became Muhammad Ali after becoming a convert of the Nation of Islam and refusing to call himself by a "white man's name." The movie features extensive interviews with members of the Nation of Islam who brought Ali into the fold, reminding me of the schism between Malcolm X and Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad that likely led to Malcolm's murder. One Nation member denies that the Nation murdered Malcolm but indicates this would have been fine if Elijah Muhammad had ordered it. Scary.
But the heart of the film focuses on Ali's declaration that he will not fight in Viet Nam. Why should he travel 10,000 miles to kill another poor people, at the behest of a white man who still thinks he's a nigger? Ali is eloquent, defiant, and enduring...and all of this when he is in his mid 20's. The government prosecutes him for draft evasion and his case winds up at the Supremew Court.
I vaguely knew all of this history, but not how it ended. In Ali's case Justice Thurgood Marshall, the only African-American justice, recused himself. Ali's defense included the NAACP, and Marshall had once headed its legal defense fund. This meant only 8 justices were on the case, leading to the possibility of a split 4-4 decision. In that event Ali's lower court conviction for draft evasion would be upheld, and he would go to jail.
A 4-4 decision came down, at least at first. But while drafting the opinion Justice John Marshall Harlan learned from his law clerk that the government had granted conscientious objector status to Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore had no legal right to refuse the same to members of the Nation of Islam. Harlan changed his vote, and now Ali had 5 votes in favor.
With that change, Justice Potter Stewart looked more closely at the full legal history of Ali's case. When charges were first brought against Ali, prosecutors alleged he was insincere in his moral objections to war. At the Supreme Court, though, prosecutors had no doubt regarding Ali's sincerity. This was a double standard, a denial of due process. With that fact established, the justices ultimately voted 8-0 in Ali's favor.
I'm not a person who believes that just because something is the law it is just; often the exact opposite is true. (See the Supreme Court's 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore, for example.) This is where civil disobedience comes in, of the Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King variety. But that makes it especially gratifying when a legal ruling does actually reinforce the underlying moral claims. Hats off to Muhammad Ali, who did indeed float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
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