This project has developed over a number of years. Along the way I have benefited from the help and support of many different friends, colleagues, and scholars, in addition to several important institutions. When I was first beginning the research for this book, Loyola University Chicago awarded me a research leave, which provided me with time away from teaching and committee work. In addition, the Interlibrary Loan librarians at Loyola University, including Jane Currie, Avril deBat, and Victoria Lewis, made my task so much easier by quickly filling my orders for newspapers, periodicals, and books critical to this study. Equally important, the Joyce Sports Research Collection: Boxing, housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections of the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame University had a full run of The Ring, the bible of boxing, which allowed me to follow Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, as well as their boxing contemporaries, across their careers. The Joyce Collection also holds a wide array of boxing publications from the United States and elsewhere that are devoted specifically to the Rumble in the Jungle. I owe a special thanks to George Rugg, curator of special collections and his staff for going out of their way to welcome me, making sure that I saw sources critical for my study, and copying materials from the Joyce Collection when it became clear that I would not be able to take notes on all their documents in the time I had allocated for research at Notre Dame. I would also like to thank Erika Doss, then chair of American studies at Notre Dame, and her husband, Geoffrey, for putting me up in their home while I conducted my research in South Bend. Early on, my former graduate student, Lindsay Hugé, provided some of the spark for this project when he gave me a VHS of When We Were Kings.
Because of health problems that made travel and research away from home difficult, I relied on research assistants for gathering materials at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. I want to thank Elliot Gorn for putting me in touch with Mason Farr at George Mason University, who then found Lee A. Ghajar, for research at the National Archives, and Chris Elzey, who collected and digitized materials about the fight in the international, especially the African, press. I would also like to thank the staffs of the Library of Congress and Amy Reytar of the National Archives for their cooperation. The staff at the National Archives helped me find digitized communications between the American embassy in Zaire and the State Department. Once I had stories from the international press, I realized that my long-ago ability in French was not adequate to the task. To the rescue David Pankratz, a friend and director of the Language Learning Center at Loyola, put me in touch with Danielle Gould, who began the translation of the Francophone press. Along the way an old friend, Howard Sanchuck, chipped in, as did another friend, Malcolm Bush, for the Angolan press. Thomas Greene helped out as well. My greatest debt for the translations, however, I owe to Bernard Graham-Betend of Belles Lettres Global Communications, who undertook the bulk of the translations in a timely and affordable fashion. I would also like to give special mention to Tricia Gesner at AP Photos, who along with her researchers, Susan Boyle and Stephen Ciaschi, helped me find images suitable for this book at a reasonable price. Early on Kevin Gaines, of the University of Michigan, suggested useful sources, as did Patricia Ogedengbe, the librarian of Africana at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University.
A number of other people deserve special mention. Steve Riess of Northeastern Illinois University and Gerald Gems of North Central College invited me to present an early version of the project at the Newberry Library Sports History Seminar in Chicago, where I received valuable comments. Steve and Gerald deserve thanks as well for serving on a panel with me at the North American Society for Sports History in Orlando, Florida, where the audience response was both helpful and very positive. Thanks also go to the Journal of Sport History 39, no. 1 (2012), for publishing an early version of this project, “‘Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in the Age of Global Spectacle,” as well as Gerald Early, who invited me to publish a different piece, “Echoes from the Jungle: Muhammad Ali in the Early 70s,” in the Cambridge University Companion to Boxing (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press).
Many friends and colleagues helped in a variety of ways. My dear friend Lary May read several drafts of an article that served as the genesis of this project. His insightful suggestions, especially regarding organization, helped strengthen this book. Another old friend, Clarke Halker, offered suggestions on selective parts of the manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge the anonymous readers of the manuscript for the University of Chicago Press, whose suggestions helped improve this book. Even more than in the past, Susan Hirsch has contributed mightily to the completion of this work. She went over several drafts of the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb, eliminating repetition, suggesting reorganizations, and pointing out problematic interpretations. In addition, she has continued to provide the love and support that has sustained me during the writing of this book and throughout the forty years of our married life. I could not have done it without her.
Early on my research assistants Dan Platt, Ebony Dejesus, and Basil Saleem dug up loads of material for me. A special thanks to them and an even bigger one to my son, Jesse Hirsch Erenberg, who took it upon himself to garner important sources in the various clipping files at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, as well as materials from their extensive collections of the African American press, most notably Jet magazine and Muhammad Speaks. It was a pleasure to work together. Thanks as well to the staff at the Schomburg for smoothing his way and making the job enjoyable. I would also like to thank the FBI for handling my Freedom of Information Act request with dispatch. Michael May of National Public Radio helped by sending along a transcript of interviews he conducted with George Foreman. Doug Mitchell at the University of Chicago Press deserves special thanks for early on recognizing the worth of this project and believing that I could overcome great odds to complete it. Kyle Wagner, his assistant at the press, as well as copy editor Katherine Faydash and the capable staff of proofreaders and designers kept this book moving smoothly from start to finish. I also want to thank those who agreed to be interviewed for this project: Bill Caplan, Jerry Izenberg, and Stewart Levine. Although I was unable to secure an interview with George Foreman, I want to thank him for answering my questions via email. I also benefited from discussions with Jonathan Eig and Michael Ezra as the manuscript neared completion. Needless to say, I am responsible for any errors.
Throughout the entire process of writing this book, I was sustained by the love and encouragement of my friends and family. At a time when my health seemed bleak and my spirits were low, Malcolm Bush, Mike Cabonce and Dave Yocum, Bucky and Toni Halker, Anne and Elliott Lefkovitz, Lary and Elaine May, Bernie and Joy Noven, Mary O’Connell, Harold Platt, Tom and Barbara Rosenwein, Carol Woodworth, John Faustmann, and Isaac and Adi Ohel provided encouragement and support. So, too, my brothers, Ira and Stan Erenberg. Above all, I want to thank Susan Hirsch and our son and daughter, Jesse and Joanna, as well as our son-in-law, Oscar López Flores, for their love and support. My two young grandchildren, Marcelo López Erenberg and Oriana López Erenberg, turned my attention toward the promise of the future. It is with love and gratitude that I dedicate this book to them.
Lewis A. Erenberg
Chicago/Oaxaca