The next day, segregated again—only this time in buses rather than trucks—we left Fort Jackson and rode through South Carolina and Georgia into Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Stuck in the rear vehicle of the caravan, the black guys in Dog Company were still getting the shitty end of the stick all the way.
We traveled across beautiful mountainsides and through long groves of quaking aspens, their multicolored leaves shimmering in the cool breeze beneath the morning sun. They were dark green above, gray, brown, and yellow below. America, the beautiful!
America, the dirty white racist bitch! I seethed, as the buses stopped for food and drink. The white soldiers were allowed to go into the chophouses while the rest of us were forced to remain where we were, eating cold bologna sandwiches. America, the low-down stinking bastard! I reflected bitterly as I sat there in shame, gnawing on dried-up bread and drinking the lukewarm water that was sold to us as coffee.
I was burning up inside just thinking about the total disregard that the Army was displaying for my people. Every nook and cranny of my body raged at the hypocrisy of it all—at the dirty white lies that I had been indoctrinated with all my life. I was mad at my mother, at my father, at all the niggers who held themselves in contempt of their color. But most of all, I was mad at the world for sending me down South to learn the truth about myself.
“Fuck these crackers!” I announced through clenched teeth. I looked out of the window at a bunch of drunken farmers who were crowding around a radio and disharmoniously yelling their fool-ass heads off to a hillbilly song. Their loud rebel shrieks grated on my nerves. I noticed that they all had the deep cornpone accents of Sergeant Hawkins, and the same cold eyes of that flesh-eating scavenger, the buzzard. I noticed something else, too: all these honkies were wearing guns, every last one of them. I decided I would have to get me one, too. This Army life was not really making me any nastier than what I was, but it wasn’t making it any easier for me either. It just made me care a little less than usual, which wasn’t really a helluva lot in the first place.
Fort Campbell lies some fifty-odd miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee, right on the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. By the time we arrived, the leaves on the trees had turned into deep, dark colors and the air held a subtle hint of frost. The climate was fresh and crisp after the long hot drive over the mountains and bottomlands, and the heavy fragrance of the pines, the smell of the long grass shimmering with dew, exotically filled my nose. This was a land for a man to love, a beautiful land of rolling grass and alpine trees, of towering mountains pushing their dark peaks towards majestic skies.
Jump school, however, consisted of three torturous weeks of twenty-four-hour days of corrosive annoyance. During the first weeks, we were kept fully occupied strengthening our bodies and keeping our minds alert: like hanging from the “nut cracker”—a leather harness suspended ten or fifteen feet above the ground—and learning how to fall from the belly of a mock plane; jumping from a forty-foot tower for hours upon hours; and lying on our backs strapped into an opened parachute, while huge windblowers dragged us through piles of sharp gravel until we were able to deflate the chute and gain our footing.
The third week was when we put it all together, and jumped from the bowels of a real airplane. It took five of these jumps to qualify for “blood wings,” as they were called, and thus become paratroopers—or goddamned fools; I really didn’t know which.
On the morning I embarked on my maiden voyage from the solar plexus of a C-119 Flying Boxcar, I was the fourth man to jump in a “stick” of sixteen. I remember I was trembling as the aircraft left the loading zone and started to roll. It quickly reached its flight speed and went into a ragged lift-off. Things began flashing past outside in a weird kaleidoscope of objects briefly seen and then gone forever.
The airplane shook and shuddered as it left the ground, exploding gusts of fiery flames from the engines as if it would blow up at any moment. When I looked around me, I saw everybody was quiet—scared to death, I knew. Some guys were praying that their parachutes would open on time, and if not, begging forgiveness for any wrongs they might have committed in life; others looked at pictures of their moms, or of their wives and girlfriends. I just kind of wished that I hadn’t gotten on the damned thing at all.
The jump master, a full bird colonel, nonchalantly stood in the front part of the aircraft, gazing out of an open door. He stood so close it seemed dangerous, as though the draft from the doors would suck him through them into nothingness at any moment. Suddenly the C-119 tilted sickeningly, then straightened back up and hunched forward into the added acceleration. A green light flashed on a panel behind the colonel.
“Get ready!” the colonel shouted, taking his position in the doorway. “Stand up, hook up, and check your equipment!”
“OOOOOOh, shit” I said to myself. “Here we go!” My head was buzzing loudly, my ears were stopped up, and my blood pounded through my veins like tom-tom drums. What if my chute don’t open? I worried. What if I get to the door and freeze up? As these things flashed through my mind, I heard the jump master sound off with equipment check, and the man behind me shouted, “Four, ready!” Then I got myself together and checked out the man’s equipment in front of me.
“Three, ready!” I confirmed.
“Two’s ready!” signaled the man in front of me.
“All’s ready!” the stick leader called.
The thunderously belching airplane banked sharply into its approach pattern and then leveled off again. My stomach leveled out with it. Our altitude was twelve hundred feet, and the wind whipped through the passageways at sixty miles an hour, pushing and pulling, and threatening to drag us off our feet.
“Drop Zone coming up!” the colonel announced. “First man move up and take a ‘tee’ on me.”
The first man, the stick leader, shuffled up to the door and placed his foot against the jump master’s instep. The colonel was still standing in the doorway, his arms braced against the sides of the bucking aircraft. His knees were bent slightly, well balanced, and his eyes were riveted to the red light glowing on the wall panel. Suddenly the color changed to green.
“Hit it!” he shouted, and out the door he went. The stick leader followed immediately after him.
There was no time for thought or hesitation. I could only hear the dragging gait of many feet as man after man shuffled up to the door and jumped, was pushed, or just plain fell out of the airplane. The icy winds ripped at my clothing, spinning me as I hit the cold back-blast from the engines, and then I was falling through a soft silky void of emptiness, counting as I fell: “Hup thousand—two thousand—three thousand—four thousand!”
A sharp tug between my legs jerked me to a halt, stopping the count, and I found myself soaring upwards—caught in an air pocket, instead of falling. I looked up above me and saw that big, beautiful silk canopy in full bloom and I knew that everything was all right. The sensation that flooded my body was out of sight! I didn’t feel like I was falling at all; rather, the ground seemed to be rushing up to meet me.
I looked down, and a slight breeze whispered through the grass below, turning it from deep green to blue to shifting silver as the wind stirred along the lowlands. It was beautiful. I felt so free up there, just like an eagle soaring over his domain and controlling everything. All the cream in the Milky-White-Way was mine. I was in total command of all that marched across the horizon of my imagination.
All too soon my newly found power was gone. I hit the ground with such force that it shook my body from head to toe, forcing me to go into a five-point landing to absorb the shock and deflate my chute. That’s when I really understood what the training had been all about.
My next four jumps went much the same way, and when I finally graduated and received my wings, it was a great day of reckoning in my life. It was a day in which I proved to myself that I could do anything I desired to do, just as long as I had the will and determination to keep on pushing on.
By the time the cold winter winds of 1954 had unleashed their icy fury upon the lands of Tennessee and Kentucky, the 187th R.C.T. (Regimental Combat Team) had been sent home to Fort Campbell from Korea, and shortly thereafter, three hundred of us were involuntarily recruited into the advance party of the 11th Airborne’s transfer to Europe. I was one of those fortunate few.
Once in Augsburg, Germany, where we were based, I found it to be more racist than I imagined any southern state in America could ever be. To top that off, all of the soldiers stationed there—black and white—seemed to hate the 11th Airborne. Some said it was because we made twice the money the other G.I.s did—attracting all the fräuleins to us, and running the price of pussy up sky high. They said that in the past they’d only had to pay twenty marks ($5.00) for a quickie on toast. But as soon as we got to Deutschland, the price of beef went up to forty and fifty marks for the very same quickie—so you can just imagine how much it costed the soldiers for a hot dinner to take home!
Looking back on the situation now, I think that maybe the guys had a legitimate gripe. But nobody had to worry about me messing with their women. I was having enough troubles of my own. I just couldn’t seem to get myself together, and I guess that was my own fault, since I wouldn’t talk to anybody. Until one day I met Ali Hasson Muhammad. Then everything started falling in place.
I believe there is an old saying that likens a child to a piece of carbon paper upon which each passerby leaves a mark. It was this way with Hasson and me. He made a giant-size fingerprint on my life that could never be wiped clean from my memory.
The man was just plain too much. He was an Aswad Muslim, a Sudanese who had migrated to America during the riots in his own country, and was now trying to earn an early citizenship by pulling time in the Army.
“Serving time,” he would correct me. “And not for the racist ideology of this capitalistic country, either!” It was for his own personal freedom as a resident of the United States. He was very adamant about that little distinction.
He imparted to me the astute (I thought) observation that nobody, but nobody in the world today could beat a black man when it came down to fighting. Or dancing. Or singing. Nor could anybody outrun him. Or outwork him. In other words, nobody could outdo a black man in anything—as long as he put his mind and soul into it.
“So what on God’s earth,” he would exclaim, sometimes wiping tears of frustration from his eyes, “what in Allah’s name ever gave the black man in America the stupid, insidious idea that white men could somehow outthink him?” And he would shake his head in sorrow.
He once told me a story about a fat countryman of his who fell asleep one night while shelling peas upstairs in the cramped quarters of his hovel—how the hut mysteriously caught on fire, and how the village people had rushed in to save the farmer from burning to death. But they couldn’t do it, because the man was too heavy to move, and the attic too small to shift his enormous weight over to the stairs. Hasson told me how the townsmen worked desperately, but without success, to save the man before the house burned to the ground. Then how the village wise man came upon the scene and told the struggling masses trying to save the sleeping man, “Wake him up! Just wake him up and he’ll save himself!”
Hasson said that the “Black People” in America would have to wake up in order to save themselves too, that knowledge of Self and Kind is the only true means to a feasible liberation of the common people, but that a good many of the black leaders in America—most especially those jack-legged preachers who were sitting under the tree of wisdom, still hung up on spooks and spirits and a diverse assortment of other irrelevant apparitions—were all pretentious egoists who selfishly hid in the shade of ignorance and had to be kicked in their asses to drive them out into the sunshine.
He said that when a people without any knowledge of themselves blissfully take their individual liberties as indisputable facts —as his countrymen did for such a long period of time, and as the black man in America was still doing—they ultimately built the iron foundations of their own prisons. Ball-and-chain type prisons which, later on in life, would force them to shed precious blood in order to escape the constraints. They were words I would often have occasion to recall.
Ali Hasson Muhammad was about two shades darker than I was—which couldn’t be considered light by any means—with long silky hair braided about his head so that it appeared to be cut short. He also wore a shaggy, uncultivated beard over the lower portion of his face. He looked mean, but he was soft-spoken and gentle. Though he always talked in platitudes and euphemisms, he was very steadfast in his religious ideals, and he sported a mean pair of talking eyes that advised a man he’d make a better friend than he would an enemy.
While his brute strength was much less than my own, Hasson’s moral self-sufficiency was definitely greater. He had a stamina of the soul that outweighed any of my physical attributes. He was a fiercely proud man under the cool, calm face that he showed the world, and knew exactly what he was all about. Yet, even his frequent efforts at friendship rarely moved me. He just couldn’t reach me with his vast knowledge of life and limited command of the English language.
But late one night when we were returning from the service club to our barracks, and I was slightly in my cups from drinking beer, we decided to take a shortcut through the fieldhouse—and that’s where we started to communicate. That was where Hasson found the common ground on which he had so diligently sought to reach me, but could never seem to find. That ground was prize fighting.
The regimental boxing team was training in the fieldhouse that night, and we stood there and watched them for a good while. “Shit!” I stammered suddenly, “I-I-I can beat all of these niggers.”
Hasson swung around with irritation marking his face, one of the few times I ever saw him disgusted. “I can see why you don’t open your mouth much,” he snapped. “Because you don’t know what to say out of it when you do, do you? Every time you open it up you stick your foot right in it, don’t you?” he said. “So why don’t you just finish the job and tell that gentleman over there what you’ve just told me. Maybe he can straighten you out!”
The gentleman Hasson mentioned was standing off to the side by himself—a young blond-headed lieutenant who didn’t appear to be much older than I. His hair was sheared in the then fashionable crew cut—so short that you could actually see the pink of his skull. He stood about five feet eight inches and was lean. His blue eyes sparkled and danced with pride as he watched the boxers work out. The smile on his face was friendly, but his eyes were reckless—glowing with a be-damned, go-to-hell little glint—and his smile, inclining somewhat to the left side of his face, seemed to be forever on the alert to challenge whoever doubted his boys’ abilities. He was the big honcho around there—the boxing coach.
We walked over to where he was watching the workout, Hasson grinning with joy. “Lieutenant?” he said. “My little buddy here thinks that he can fight. In fact, he honestly feels that he can take most of your boys right now,” he smirked. “So he’s asked me to ask you if you could somehow give him a chance to try out for the team.”
The lieutenant’s name was Robert Mullick. He was a straight-leg, a ground-pounder, a Regular Army soldier, as was the rest of his team. Hasson, too. The lieutenant looked back over his shoulder at me as if to say, “You’re crazy!” An amused smile flickered in his eyes and came to rest on the parachutist wings fastened to my blouse. I could almost hear the sweet voice of revenge streaking through his mind and saying, Ah-ha! Now’s my chance to get even with one of these proud-ass parachute-jumping bastards.
When he turned to me he said, “So you really think you can fight, huh?” He sounded defiant. “Or are you just drunk, and want to get your stupid brains knocked out? Is that what you want to happen, soldier?”
Smoke darker than the outsides of the blackest cat jumped straight from my head. Every fiber in my body told me to knock this clown down, to teach him some respect, to show him that everybody was not to be trifled with, because he just might get burned in the exchange. But the rational side of me was thinking better.
“I-I-I can—I can fight!” I stammered, getting mad because I couldn’t say much more. “I’ll even betcha on that,” I said.
“You will, huh?” he teased, his face breaking into a satisfied grin. “Well, I’m going to give you the chance to do just that, buster,” he said then, “but not tonight. You’ve been drinking, and I don’t want any of my boys to hurt you unnecessarily. Just leave your name and I’ll call you down tomorrow. Maybe by then you won’t think you’re so goddamn tough.” Then he turned his back and continued to watch the workout as if I was no longer there, signifying that the interview was over.
To be sure, I was kind of glad when he suggested that I come in the next day, because I wasn’t too anxious to climb up into that ring at all. I wasn’t a complete fool, you know. What the hell did I know about prize fighting? I had never had a pair of gloves on before in my life, and wasn’t too particular about starting then. As far as I was concerned, there would be no tomorrow; I had no intention of coming back then, or at any other time. Boxing just wasn’t my shot.
But Lieutenant Bob thought otherwise, and he wasn’t about to let me off the hook so easily. He had his mind made up not to let me slip out from under the ass-whupping he had in store for me. He wanted to teach me a lesson for low-rating his pride and joy, let the world know that he wasn’t going to stand for that kind of bullshit from anybody, especially a paratrooper. So the next day I was ordered to report to Lieutenant Mullick at the fieldhouse.
When I arrived there late in the afternoon—after having given the matter much thought—the arena was jam-packed full of people, alive with unusual activity. Prize fighting was a big thing in Germany, and my inebriated challenge of the night before had not been taken lightly. More than the usual crew of hustlers, curiosity seekers, admirers and fanatical fight fans were on hand—twice the amount than would normally be the case—to witness the jive-ass paratrooper getting his jump boots knocked off. Hasson was there, too, as were the sports reporters from Stars and Stripes. It seemed that I was being used as the blunt end of a crude publicity stunt.
As I stood unnoticed in the doorway, watching two fighters in the ring pound away at each other, I knew right then that I was out of my class. They seemed to be trying to kill each other. The short dark one was bleeding like a stuck pig from a gash above his eye, while the other fighter, no longer able to breathe through his smashed-in nose, continually spit out globs of blood from his mutilated mouth. His right eye was closed, too, and was swelling rapidly from the steady mete of right hands it was absorbing.
The crowd leaped up and down in their seats, shouting with ecstatic glee, pleading and begging for the kill—for either one of the fighters. They didn’t give a damn who it was that fell, just as long as somebody hit the dust. At that point I realized that people were even sicker than I thought they were, that human beings were addicted to violence and brutality in whatever form would suit their barbaric temperaments—just as long as it didn’t personally involve them.
For a fleeting moment, I experienced fear, and the desire to get away quickly. If I could have run and continued living with myself beyond that day, I would have flown. Standing there, I felt a cold chill, a quick shuddering premonition that only comes when, as the saying goes, somebody has just walked on your grave.
When the bloody sparring session in the ring had finally reached its conclusion, Lieutenant Mullick—who had been up in the square jungle officiating as both referee and timekeeper—jumped down from the apron and elbowed his way through the crowd to where I was standing. Silence cradled the gymnasium softly into its arms and rocked it gently to sleep.
“Are you ready for that workout now, mister?” Mullick shot at me, waiting for me to refuse. “Or do you have a hangover from boozing it up too much last night and want to call it off?”
I shook my head.
The lieutenant nodded, wheeled around, and strode back towards the ring, where his fighters were grouped in a huddle and talking among themselves. He began explaining something to them and the men became quiet. They were even more quiet by the time I reached them.
I couldn’t help but to look in awe at the many sweat-polished, black faces that surrounded me. All of them were scarred, ring-battered and worn. But they had a togetherness about them that went far beyond their blackness. They were men of great courage whom one would have to shoot in order to stop, for their pride and integrity was such that they couldn’t be broken. Still, not one of them appeared hostile in the face of my stupid braggadocio.
Then a big black dude separated himself from the rest of the squad, climbed into the ring, and started shadowboxing—shaking out his arms, his legs, and his thick neck muscles to loosen them up. At this sight the mob of spectators came alive, jumped to their feet, and shouted his name. They sensed the kill. The nigger did look good, I had to admit.
He was Nelson Glenn from Atlanta, Georgia, stood six-foot-one in his stocking feet, had thick ropy shoulders like a bull, and one of those short, compact necks that made his head appear to be attached directly to his deltoids. His chest was broad, deep, and massive. His stomach was hard and flat, like a washing board, and the muscles flexed and rippled each time he moved. His hands were big, too. He just oozed with the sheer animal power of a gorilla.. (He kinda looked like one, too.) But the powerful shoulders, arms, legs, and hands all spoke of many years of dedicated training.
Lieutenant Mullick climbed through the ropes and began lacing up a pair of gloves on his fighter. At the same time, he motioned for me to get into the ring. It was too late to back down now, so I mounted the apron and climbed in. Hasson was right behind me.
I could feel the adrenaline race through my body, firing up my blood, yet I remained calm in spite of it. I seemed somehow to feel extra light and especially strong at the same time. But I also felt a loneliness, a deep-down vulnerability to be in the ring by my gutter-sniping seventeen-year-old self with a highly trained fighter. There was another twinge of feeling mixed up in there somewhere, too—pride—a sharp, electrifying sense of self-respect.
Over in the opposite corner, Nelson Glenn looked huge and almost indestructible as he pranced around the ring with a sure-fire cockiness that left very little doubt in my mind as to what would be the outcome of this ill-matched fray. His entire body was glistening, gleaming with sweat. He was a formidable opponent, and I readily accepted him as being the better man with the boxing gloves. Still, I wouldn’t yield to him in the least. I couldn’t do that! It just wasn’t in me. I hadn’t challenged him directly, but I was going to attack him as viciously as if he’d just stolen a white-faced mule in Alabama. My best bet was to show him that I wasn’t scared, that he wasn’t going to just whup on me without getting whupped on himself. I was going to let him know that he would have to bring ass to get ass; that he couldn’t leave his in the corner when he came out to get mine.
My stomach tightened up even more at this thought, tickled by the butterflies, so I turned around and pretended to be listening to the instructions that Hasson was giving me while he tied up my gloves.
“... so stay down low, and watch out for his right hand,” he whispered softly, the depth of his concern very obvious. “And try to protect yourself at all times, you hear?”
I nodded.
Nelson Glenn had been the All-Army Heavyweight Champ for the past two years, and was well on his way to repeating that feat again this season. And here I was getting ready to box him—me!
Then the bell rang.
Glenn danced out of his corner snorting, pecking away at my head with a sharp jab. as we swung around toward the ring’s west ropes. I bobbed and weaved, slipping and sliding, fighting him as if it were at street fight and we were out in some alleyway, trying to stay underneath his crisp left hand. I bobbed out, feinted, then darted back in again, and lashed out with my first punch of the fight—a blurring left hook that caught the heavyweight flush on the point of his chin. And down he spilled on the canvas.
It probably startled me more than it did him.
He was up before the count could even start. He was groggy and reeling around in confusion, but able to duck the blows out of pure instinct. Obviously, he was surprised by the power of a mere welterweight. But once again, a relatively short, bone-crunching left hook crashed against his head. With a screech born of nothing I recognized, I leaped in with another left hook, and then another one, and Nelson’s mouthpiece flew from between his teeth. His eyes turned glassy, his powerful arms hung down at his side, and he started sinking softly to the canvas.
When the battering explosions of gloves pounding against meat died away, it became so still inside the arena that you could hear the clouds pass by overhead. Then it burst into pandemonium, and the spectators were up and standing in their seats, gaping with disbelief at the quivering champ still stretched out on the floor, knocked cold.
There seemed to be no end to the exhilaration of this mob. They continued to cheer even after Hasson had removed my gloves and Nelson was revived. They were applauding for me, now—the cloudbuster—though I’ll bet they would rather have slept in shit than see Nelson Glenn lying there in the dust instead of me.
It was at that moment in my life, after having searched in strife for so many years, that I finally knew exactly what I had been created for: fighting. Street fighting, gutter-sniping, and prize fighting have always been my amazing grace.
The next day—after Lieutenant Mullick had cut through tons of Army red tape and pulled Lord knows how many governmental strings—I was transferred to the Special Service detachment and relieved of any further military obligation, as far as being a weapons-bearing soldier was concerned. I was told that I was fighting for Uncle Sam, now, and as a result I could do no wrong and could have no need too great for the Special Service to satisfy. Now I belonged to the elite!
The boxing team had an entire building allocated to itself, three floors of plush living space to accommodate twenty-five men. On the first was a vast recreational area containing every type of entertainment imaginable—plus its own kitchen and cooking personnel. The second floor was sectioned off into bathtubs and shower stalls, whirlpools and rubbing tables, while the top floor had our sleeping quarters—individually secluded and kept very private. This was the utopia of Army living.
When I sat down to the table at suppertime that first night, I looked at the rugged faces—black, white, and Puerto Rican—around me and suddenly felt at home. At home with people I knew but slightly, but could feel strangely warm and comfortable with. I felt their easy understanding, their awaiting friendship, their obvious sympathy. They were strong, honest people, hard-working and equally hard-fighting, but simple in their ways. There were no complications there whatsoever, no tensions, no fears.
I was accepted immediately by these fellows (even Nelson Glenn) without the slightest hesitation. They all seemed to understand that we were brother warriors, each and every one, and as such we should live together in peace and harmony—regardless of individual temperaments. And I liked that.
After that I lived for boxing alone. It was the beginning, middle, and end of everything in my life. Apart from fighting, nothing held much meaning for me. I rapidly built up a strong following and quite a name for myself with a quick knockout style. I had twenty bouts and lost only one, with sixteen kayos to my credit, and I got better and better all the time. I was happy for myself, but something was still missing.
It was Hasson, again, who pulled my coat and showed me the way. He showed me that stuttering was not the root of my speech problem, not the villain I had made it out to be in order to justify my difficulties. He said that stammering was only a small cause of my antisocial behavior, a psychological block that could be very easily removed simply by going back to school. He even promised to enroll himself, if I felt too embarrassed to go it alone.
“Knowledge,” he said, “and especially of one’s self, has in it the potential power to overcome all barriers. Wisdom is the godfather of it all.” And so it was that we enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course at the Institute of Mannheim, where we happened to be based at the time.
As I began learning how to talk with some clarity, all the knowledge that I had picked up in the course of my life simply by remaining quiet and listening, began to pour from my mouth like the unbridled Niagara. I had this beautiful feeling of being able to communicate at last—a big, wide, wonderful world full of my own sounds, where every new word I learned was immediately shoved aside by the force of the one that followed.
I developed a special feeling for verbal expression. Even Hasson couldn’t keep me from talking, couldn’t stop me from telling him about the million-and-one atrocities in my life that I’d kept bottled up inside me for so long. Silence was no longer a defense mechanism for me; it became, instead, a luxury. If I kept quiet now, it was only because I wanted to, and not because I felt I had to.
My whole life changed. My attitude, even my boxing ability, greatly improved. I had an all-consuming thirst for knowledge. I learned that an education, and especially a European one, could very easily be spread thick over many slices of good times, and that’s exactly what I did with it: I boxed and went to school, and tried to combine the pugilistic aspects of myself with the militarism of the Haitian general Dessalines, in the scholarly manner of a Frederick Douglass.
Ali Hasson Muhammad was always there to counsel and assist me, inspiring me to reach for ever greater heights by learning more and more facts about life, about living, about myself. Everything in Hasson’s world began and ended with Islam, Islam, Islam. He fasted according to the Holy Koran, ate only by the mathematical maxims of Hadith, and fulfilled Allah’s benevolent principles with every ounce of strength in his being.
This fascinated me no end. So I was more than willing to embrace his Allah when he asked me to consider it, and in fact, I was downright honored to be finally unified in soul and spirit with the man who had performed an important miracle in my life. I wanted to know from what Hasson had derived all this incredible strength, who it was that gave it to him, and how I too could become as powerful as he.
The Holy Ghost spookisms of the Protestant religion that my father had shoved down my throat in my childhood, and the asinine Virgin Mary bullshit of Catholicism that was violently thrust upon me in jail (and it was), were all still preserved within the dusty museums of my past. I knew every prayer, and every Apostle from Peter to Judas, but I could never relate to anything where ghosts or spirits were concerned. So, I thought to myself, “What the hell, what harm could it possibly do if I checked out this Islam thing?”
So out of the cradle of ignorance came Saladin Abdullah Muhammad—me—the warrior and general!
I was taught that the black man is the Original Man, the maker, the owner, and the Father of Civilization—the cream of the planet earth, and God of the universe; that black man himself placed the sun in the sky over seventy-eight trillion years ago, and the moon sixty-six trillion; that the earth travels at the speed of one thousand thirty-seven and a third miles per hour, and that one cubic foot of common earth weighs sixty pounds. I found out that I had seven and a half ounces of brains lodged in my head, but, in ignorance of self, only functioned on a mere half an ounce; that there were seven inhabitable planets in the outer universe, but that the white man knew of only one.
I looked at my new discovery and it was good! I rejoiced in the knowledge of it. But when I questioned my teachers about ever meeting this extraordinary entity called Allah, I was told that I either would have to die first, or could meet Him in the person of a little black man living in Chicago named Elijah Muhammad, all praises due! This, then, was the same devious God of all the other religions and cults and Daddy Grace practices, I thought, and I could not go for any of that bullshit.
In the school of Islam I attended four nights a week, after my other classes, there were two or three different types of Muslims, who couldn’t seem to agree ideologically about who the amazing Allah actually was. But my man knew! My good friend Hasson, who had been born and raised as a Muslim in northeastern Africa, knew, and he vehemently denied that Allah was a separate entity, as was being taught by the American-born Muslims in Germany. He said that Allah was in us all, that man himself was God. And this was an explanation I could readily accept. For if, indeed, I was a god, then everything had been all right all along. Because I had never stopped believing in myself anyway.
Hasson told me that Man’s mind was an explanation-seeking organ. Thus a spirit was conceived as an entity roughly shaped from the clay of superstition, which gave Man an excuse for being, and relieved him from the burdens of his own conscience. The mind, Hasson said, was a label-placer to justify the faults inherent in Man’s own deeds and weaknesses.
He said that the belief in Holy Spirits merely invoked in Man a response to justify the world’s creations and degradations. Because Protestants, Catholics, and skeptics of many other denominations invariably loved mystery better than they did explanation, they could readily believe that God—this spiritual being—actually created heaven and earth. By throwing aside their objectivity, they could conceive of a universe that had not always been here, but could always be here, and that words such as “beginning” and “end” were all man-made symbols to identify a passing phase in life. That’s what Hasson believed, and I could believe that part of it, too.
It could have been a day, a week, an eternity—but it was really two years that had slipped past when it came time for me to go home. Two good years, during which I twice racked up the European Light-Welterweight Championship by winning fifty-one bouts—thirty-five by knockouts—and sustained only five losses. I was honored when I was asked to compete in the Olympic Trials that were soon to take place, but was told I would have to re-enlist in order to do so, since my discharge was due before the date they were to begin.
I loved prize fighting, but I wasn’t about to prolong my Army career in order to compete in nothing. Shucks! I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to America and find Ray Charles! Because I had missed him the first time around.
So, in June of 1956, I was shipped back to the States to be discharged.