Many "stars" served in the military, most kept away from any real danger. Cassius could have done the same.
If I thought his intentions were to really take a stand against some kind of racist wrongdoing, then maybe I'd have some sort of sympathy for him. However, as he himself stated, he didn't want to fight "other brown people in a white mans war", so his intentions weren't right, his intention was to avoid the draft, avoid going to war, avoid serving his country. He was a racist coward that hid behind his supposed religion.
Are you retarded? You said "You think Africans turned up in the states with names like cassius?" Who gave him the name Cassius? Was it his slave owners?
exactly. so why was he a "coward" if as you say "stars" were always kept away from any danger? he could have been drafted not been stripped of his world title etc...safe in the knowledge that he was going nowhere near any danger anyway...
it was a political statement... he knew he was never going to be drafted into "war".
what you're saying is not making any logical sense.
and again, try reading some books if you don't think there was any "racist wrongdoing" to make a stand against during that era. immeasurably more so then than there is now.
smith, jones, clay...these are not african names. blacks in the US have these names due to slavery...if you're not trolling and you actually couldn't work out what ali meant by "slave names", far from me being retarded, my brain is clearly working at a somewhat higher level than yours.