The True History Behind 'One Night in MIami'
Posted January 15, 2021
External Article: Smithsonian
Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X , written by Johnny Smith, the Julius C. "Bud" Shaw Professor of Sports History in the School of History and Sociology, was mentioned in the article, "The True History Behind ‘One Night in Miami," published Jan. 15, in Smithsonian Magazine.
Excerpt:
As Malcolm saw it, write Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith in Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, Clay’s victory had been preordained by Allah. With this win—and Clay’s subsequent elevation in status—the civil rights leader believed his protégé was ready to move on to what was, in his view, a more pressing calling: politics.
“Well, Brown,” Malcolm reportedly asked the football star that night, “don’t you think it’s time for this young man to stop spouting off and get serious?” Brown, for his part, also felt that Clay’s new heavyweight title “was not an end in itself [but] … a platform from which to advance far more urgent matters,” per Blood Brothers.
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