Frenemies in the Nation of Islam

BLOOD BROTHERS
The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X
Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
Basic Books
362 pages; $28.99

There is today a thriving industry of hagiography on Muhammad Ali. It is, however, not easy to explain how the Louis­ville Lip morphed from a blarney-filled boxer into a global symbol of racial pride and self-respect. According to Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith in Blood Brothers, the chrysalis was Mr Ali's intense but tragic friendship with Malcolm X.

As early as his high school years, Cassius Clay had been intrigued by the Nation of Islam. In 1962, the heavyweight contender travelled to Detroit to listen to the Nation's "Supreme Minister," Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X.

For African-Americans, the Nation represented a militant alternative to picket lines, fire hoses and attack dogs. Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm sneered at Martin Luther King's strategy of nonviolence, supported segregation and declared that the white man was the Devil. How did this hostile-to-paranoid worldview attract the people-loving boxer who was bankrolled by a lily-white investment group?

One of the signal contributions of Blood Brothers - a rigorously researched book that gracefully pivots between the world of the ring and the racial politics of the early 1960s - is its excavation of Cassius Clay Sr's impact in shaping his son's views on race, and thereby enhancing the appeal of the Nation of Islam. Mr Roberts and Mr Smith, historians who have written sports books, explain: "Cassius Clay Sr told parables that taught young Cassius ... about the world. All the stories had the same general theme: Black men die after seemingly harmless encounters with white men."

At their first meeting, Malcolm X didn't know who Mr Clay was. But from the start, "Malcolm had magnetised Mr Clay, drawing him toward the inner circle of the Nation." Within months, the fighter and the minister who was famous for the line "by any means necessary" were orbiting each other.

Though Mr Clay's boxing brain trust feared that an association with the Nation and Malcolm would deck his chances at a title shot, the fighter was spellbound. At every opportunity, he travelled to sit at Malcolm's feet and imbibe the stirring and frequently violent rhetoric. The more time he spent with the minister, the more "Clay began thinking of himself as divine, graced by the power of Allah." When the press asked him about his influences, Mr Clay liked to say, "Who made me is me." But in many ways, Malcolm X formed the man whom all the world would come to know.

Like Mr Ali, Malcolm was a charismatic person with ardent ambitions. An ex-convict, he was devoted to Elijah Muhammad, at least until he learned that Elijah had had multiple affairs and numerous children out of wedlock, and had used the Nation's treasury as his personal checking account.

Malcolm confronted Elijah and later went public about the sins of his spiritual father. Once believed to be the heir apparent, he was soon deemed a traitor. Nation members, Mr Ali included, were forbidden to associate with him. Malcolm, who "had seen gruesome images of black men bludgeoned at the hands of Muhammad's avengers," understood that "no one survived Muhammad's wrath." By 1964, he was a dead man walking.

Desperately, Malcolm tried to use his friendship with Mr Ali as leverage to bring himself back within the fold. But fearlessness in boxing does not always translate into fearlessness in life. Mr Ali slammed the door on his mentor. The authors conclude, "When Ali cut Malcolm out of his life, he revealed a new side of himself, ... an angrier, crueler side that would develop more and more in the coming years."

In February 1965, Malcolm - no longer a racial separatist - was gunned down. Decades later, Mr Ali said: "I wish I'd been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry, that he was right about so many things... If I could go back and do it over again, I would never have turned my back on him."

© 2016 The New York Times News Service