Boxing
Heavyweight champion Max Schmeling had been lauded by the Nazi Party as a heroic symbol of German destiny and Aryan supremacy. A politically charged boxing match with Joe Louis was preceded nationalistic symbolism and imagery. Schmeling defeated Louis, for the latters first professional defeat in 1936. Langston Hughes recalled the national reaction to Louis' defeat.
| “ | I walked down Seventh Avenue and saw grown men weeping like children, and women sitting in the curbs with their head in their hands. All across the country that night when the news came out that Joe was knocked out, people cried. - Langston Hughes | ” |
Schmeling was, however, welcomed home with a jubilant reaction. Hitler sent his wife flowers with the message: "For the wonderful victory of your husband, our greatest German boxer, I must congratulate you with all my heart." Schmeling responded to the accolades saying: "At this moment I have to tell Germany, I have to report to the Führer in particular, that the thoughts of all my countrymen were with me in this fight; that the Führer and his faithful people were thinking of me. This thought gave me the strength to succeed in this fight. It gave me the courage and the endurance to win this victory for Germany's colours."
A rematch was scheduled later in New York City. In the build-up to the event U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered his support: "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany." Schmeling's hotel was picketed by American protestors after an accompanying Nazi Party publicist declared that a black man could not defeat Schmeling and that when he won, his prize money would be used to build German tanks. Louis won the rematch in a first round knock out and he became the focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to World War II. Louis later recalled the pressure on him before the fight: "I knew I had to get Schmeling good. I had my own personal reasons and the whole damned country was depending me."
Decades later, Muhammad Ali took up political causes in his refusal to be drafted for the Vietnam War amid the civil rights era during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Already a rising star since high school,
After earning the championship, Clay converted his religion to Islam, which instigated conflict with his boxing career. He also abandoned his name that was given to his slave ancestors and adopted Muhammad Ali. On April 28, 1967, he refused to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War, stating religious reasons that it goes against the Qur’an’s teaching.
| “ | I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong...no Vietcong ever called me nigger. - Muhammad Ali | ” |
He then became an icon of not only the civil rights struggle, but also the anti-Vietnam War movement. However he was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and stripped of his championship. It was not until a lawsuit in 1970 that Ali redeemed his title. He would continue in historical boxing matches now known as Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 and Thrilla in Manila in 1975, defeating George Foreman and Joe Frazier, respectively.
Read more about this topic: Politics And Sports
Famous quotes containing the word boxing:
“... to paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)