Imagining Dissent: Muhammad Ali, Daily Newspapers, and the State, 1966-1971

“The Paranoid Style in American Politics” is an accurate way to describe what happens here. In 1966 heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was reclassified as fully eligible for military service; it became apparent that he would be drafted to serve in Vietnam. Ali—contesting the government’s right to control his body—claimed his own right to self-determination. But this question of the government’s right over the individual became far more complicated when daily newspapers turned this conflict into an “event.”

These newspapers imposed rigid and simplified categories on a situation that was not easily classifiable. Muhammad Ali’s response was to identify the “gaps” within this categorization by alternating between his various public images—including those that newspapers tried to impose upon him. To discredit the simplistic view of the newspapers Ali invoked complexity and contradiction.

By the time that the case reached the Supreme Court in 1971, Muhammad Ali had made perfectly clear through his own actions—coupled with the actions of his opponents—that he had not been given a fair hearing. The Supreme Court ruled that he should never have been drafted in the first place, essentially saying—in stark contrast to the characterizations of the newspaper dailies, federal employees, and agents of various state and local government—that the entire process was, in fact, a “non-event.”