I just read an excellent book on Ali by Jack Cashill called Sucker Punch: The Hard left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King’s Dream (2006, Nelson Current)

In the book, Cashill reflects on his own Newark, NJ childhood in the sixties, his neighborhood’s rapid implosion, and the influence of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali on his contemporaries. A thoroughly investigated account of Ali’s association with Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and The Nation of Islam, the book tells of the deceit in Ali’s “conscientious objector” stance, his “Oh Well” attitude concerning the murder of his friend Malcolm X, and the cruelty this supposed civil rights hero showed the black fighters he faced, especially Joe Frazier, Floyd Patterson, and Ernie Terrell.

Yet, Cashill sees in Ali a morally pliable man with basically decent instincts. Ali’s pliability, likely due to his illiteracy, rendered him vulnerable to Muhammad’s influence, though after Muhammad’s death in 1975, his more reasonable, and genuinely religious son, Herbert, began Ali’s journey back to the decent principles that lived closer to his heart. A journey that is completed by his humbling physical infirmities.

At once scathing and sympathetic, Cashill zeroes in on the truth of Ali. That is, as the highest profile athlete of his time, with the potential to build racial bridges, he built walls instead. His was “an opportunity lost.”