now cassius clay is confused as to who he should follow.does he follow the nation of islam , the conservatives separatist movement, or malcolm x. being pushed out of the nation of islam is going to form his own organizations going be more orthodox in terms of civil rights movement became a very difficult situation. he is actively political, there is no question about. he was a boxer before anything else. he was a like john wayne. john wayne did not serve during world war ii. he becomes the image of the american soldier, sailor, flyer in world war ii. but he never enlisted, and never served in world war ii. after the war his interest in politics to generalize was to think. he becomes cold war hero. most americans adopted the cold war position. and number two , he cannot stand america's taxation policy. the world war ii taxation policy , taking i % of your income. he wanted that to change a move from a democrat to being a republican. if you talked to john wayne , he didn't talk about politics, he talked about movies. you get that image of joh

cassius clay had never worked out underwater in his life. he could not swim. but he knew this was a way to get a new audience. the camera was important to getting a new audience, to spreading his name. think that is something important on these topics have in common, their relationship with the press and how sometimes it could be adversarial or sometimes it could be the celebrity playing the press, and other times it would be more of the opposite, where the press is playing them. mantle, ali, and mickey you talk a lot about sportswriters and what you saw, what they viewed as their role in terms of their subject. >> that was all media, too. the 1920's, 19n 30's, 1940's, 1950's, up to the 1960's, the sports writer of the place -- sports writer was supposed to say what happened at the event. it is to build up the athlete. the athletes are godlike. etchede people like against the bluegray, the october sky, all of that thing. have a new's, you group of journalists. they called themselves chipmunks. what they do, they realize that people are seeing the fight on tele

for he than for any of the other athletes because, as you know, because of his political stance, cassius clay, who later became muhammad ali, actually was stripped of his heavyweight title. his struggle went on into the 1970's. it can be argued that the most prominent black athlete, or the one who lost the most in the 1960's, could easily be called muhammad ali. and even today, the fruit that we see happening from the life of muhammad ali and in the life of colin kaepernick and in the life of eric reed and in the life of lebron james is born from the stand, the courage of muhammad ali. >> were there some other icons that we may be less familiar with that you can talk about? clyde: doug johnson from the 1920's, who was a prominent boxer who refused to allow himself to be paid in chicken feed. he was a world champion boxer in 1919 and 1920. he was the first to demand to be paid over $1000 for boxing. and jesse owens, in some people's mind, there are some in the black culture who consider him an "sellout." but there has to be trailblazers. jesse owens, the great four-time medalist in munich, ger

cassius clay had never worked out in water in his life. he couldn't swim. but he knew this was a way to get a new audience. and so the camera was important. a new audience, spreading his name. >> yeah. i think that's another thing that all of these topics have in common, is the way the relationship with the press and how sometimes it could be adversarial and sometimes it could be the celebrity playing the press and other times it would be more the opposite, where the press was playing them. and so with muhammad ali, and with mickey mantle, you talk a lot about sports writers and what they saw their view -- what they viewed themselves as their role in terms of their subjects. >> that was all media, too. it used to be in the '20s, '30s, '40s, up to the '50s, sportswriter's job was to describe an event. to build up the athlete. the athletes are god-like. you have people like grant and rice, etched against a blue gray october sky, the four horsemen ride again, all that thing. by the 60s, you have a new group of journalists that call themselves -- jim ganigan ga

. >> it wasn't in the public eye, we have mohammed ali , he was cassius clay and his goal was to become heavyweight champion of the world. he meets malcolm maddox and is influenced by malcolm maddox and is already starting to embrace the nation of islam, but if the word gets out that he's a black muslim and he's a member of the nation of islam that he's probably never going to get a chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world that he will be toxic at that time. is going through a period with all sorts of problems and they don't need a champion and the movement is considered a hate movement it wasn't but that's how americans treated others -- how americans viewed it at the time. we were able to find an incredible amount of material on malcolm giving speeches, mohammed ali giving speeches and talks and one things we could reconstruct is would malcolm say something. you would use a metaphor or story, then shortly afterwards you would see mohammed ali and the great thing about mohammed ali, he was a wonderful person, if you told him something if you told him a story, the n