Muhammad Ali Refused To Be Drafted And It Nearly Ended His Career
Photo Credit: Vince Melamed/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Early in his career, boxing legend Muhammad Ali was drafted to help fight the Vietnam War. In protest, he refused and was suspended from boxing for the next four years. The suspension crippled him, “I am not allowed to work in America, and I’m not allowed to leave America.”
Having no career was more important to Ali than fighting a war he didn’t believe in. He wasn’t alone, though. Martin Luther King opposed the war and quoted Ali about why, “we are all — black and brown and poor — victims of the same system of oppression.” Coming up, do you know what the song, “What’s Going On?” is really about?
