the last book I ever read (The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, excerpt one)

from The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination by Stuart A. Reid:

As far as most people knew, Devlin was a writer for Fodor’s, a popular series of travel guides. The guides’ eponymous creator, Eugene Fodor, was a Hungarian native distressed to watch Eastern Europe fall into the Soviet orbit, and as a naturalized U.S. citizen, he considered it his patriotic duty to let the CIA use his company as a front. (The funding he received in exchange didn’t hurt, either.) The profession of travel writer was an ideal cover for a spy like Devlin, since it offered a ready excuse for ranging widely across Europe while taking extensive photographs and notes. The problem was that Fodor insisted on getting actual work out of his charges, telling the CIA to send “real writers, not civil engineers.” Devlin was credited as an editor in the early 1950s editions of Fodor’s guides to Austria, Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries. How did he manage to submit travel reports for Fodor’s while spying for the United States? He plagiarized.

the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt fifteen)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

It was all but over. In what was to be another easy fight, Ali met light heavyweight Olympic gold medalist Leon Spinks in early 1978. With only seven professional victories, Spinks was sure to lose. No one told Leon. The young and hungry ex-marine wore down a fighter who looked tired and old at thirty-five, winning a unanimous fifteen round decision. In September 1978 in front of a record indoor crowd of 63,532 at the New Orleans Superdome and the second largest television audience in history, a better-trained Ali beat Spinks to become the only heavyweight champion to hold the title three different times. Although Ali won, it was another dull fight that highlighted how little he had left as well as how much damage drinking and drugging had done to an out-of-condition Spinks. Ali triumphed once again, but it felt like he had barely survived. His fans realized he could go no further.

the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt fourteen)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

Both Ali’s positive impulses and his flaws were evident in his first title defense against little-heralded challenger Chuck Wepner, dubbed “the Bayonne Bleeder” for his propensity to cut easily. Scheduled for March 24, 2975, the fight was to be an easy one to allow the champ to stay in shape by boxing on a regular basis. Promoted by Don King, whose star had risen as a result of his prominence in Zaire, the Wepner fight was to be the first where Ali gave away the profits after expenses. As reported in Jet, Ali announced at a press conference that from this fight on “all the profits will be given away.” This impulse arose from the guilt he experienced over having amassed a fortune without doling much to help poor black people. Driving through Gary, Indiana, in his Rolls-Royce, “I saw this little girl with hardly any clothes on standing at a bus stop with her mother,” Ali explained. “It was zero degrees, and she had no shoes.” He gave her mother $100: “I’ve spent $100 on some dinners. All of a sudden I felt so guilty. I’ve never felt like this in 14 years of fighting.” The experience moved him to donate money from the Wepner fight to poor African Americans in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Louisville, Gary, or elsewhere through various black organizations such as the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, and the Nation of Islam. This proposal led black sports columnist and frequent Ali critic A. S. “Doc” Young, to call this “the best idea Muhammad Ali has ever had, the best proposal he has ever presented to the public. If he follows through on his declaration, he will make the most important individual financial contribution to Black causes in the history of sport.”

This grand stance burnished his image as a black folk hero, but the Wepner fight, like much else during the second half of the 1970s, laid a little tarnish on that image. Part of the problem was that instead of offering Foreman a rematch, Ali decided instead on a series of easy fights that would offer a respite from years of constant training and self-discipline. As for a rematch with Foreman, he asserted that his decisive victory proved that Foreman was no longer a worthy contender. In contrast, he may have surmised that he had been lucky against Foreman the first time around and that the ex-champion would not be so easily fooled again. With little to fear from Wepner, Ali did not train very hard – a practice repeated numerous times in his second reign as champion – and he was decidedly unimpressive.

the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt thirteen)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

Zaire was not the only African nation that reveled proudly in Ali’s victory. After all, throughout black Africa the Reuters news service noted that he was billed as “the people’s choice,” because he was a “symbol of independence and freedom from White domination for millions of Blacks in the United States and elsewhere in the world.” There was no doubt who four thousand fans favored at Nairobi’s Kenyata’s Conference Center: “The entire crowd rooted for Ali and roared excitedly with every blow.” When the knockout came in the eighth round, the audience jumped for joy. In Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, groups of fans expressed their joy by driving around the main avenues of the city and honking their horns in celebration. After listening to the fight over radio, hundreds of fans in Accra, Ghana, “went mad with joy.” One fanatical Ali supporter ran bare chested through the city, waving his white shirt in victory, while many fans were “seen openly hugging and congratulating each other in appreciation of the resounding victory of their idol.”

President Senghor of Senegal, one of the major architects of Negritude as a Pan-African ideology, recognized Ali’s victory as a celebration of African independence. Immediately after the bout he sent a congratulatory message to Ali, “the greatest militant of Black civilization.” Senegal’s Daily Sun added that, ‘in Senegal, Ali’s victory is considered like that of Africa, as the triumph of the oppressed.” One proof of this veneration of Ali as a symbol of black African liberation occurred as Norman Mailer was flying home soon after the fight. His airplane landed at Yoff Airport in Dakar at one in the morning for what was intended as a brief stop, but it was prevented from taking off for several hours because thousands of local Senegalese had received word via a radio bulletin that the new champion might be on board. Surrounding the plane, they demanded that Ali come out to greet them. So insistent were they that they had to see – and believed they had a right to see – their newly crowned heavyweight champion that they refused to allow the airplane to take off until a delegation had come aboard to observe for themselves that Ali was not among them. Needless to say they found no Ali and were exceedingly disappointed. Finally, however, they let the plane take off.

the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt twelve)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

Equally important, the bout not only featured standard-bearers for opposing positions on the war; in a number of ways it symbolically reenacted America’s frustrating experience in that long and fruitless conflict. As a symbol of American power, Foreman relied on his overwhelming size and strength, rather than finesse, in the match, and he relished his ability to knock out opponents early and in convincing fashion. This led to overconfidence in his own power and underestimation of the enemy’s strength. In addition, the champion followed the lead of his corner to a fault and at crucial moments in the battle proved unable to change his tactics as the situation demanded. Instead, he kept throwing bombs that time and again failed to subdue a weaker and more resourceful enemy. In the end he exhausted his energy, lost his confidence and will, and was defeated because of his own failings rather than as a result of the strength of his clever foe.

As the avowed opponent of the Vietnam War, Ali managed to transform Zaire into his home field and stun his powerful foe to achieve an upset victory. Much like the Viet Cong and its North Vietnamese allies, Ali surprised the world – not only by winning but by winning so convincingly that the whole idea of victory culture was placed in doubt. Using an impenetrable defense, the challenger unleashed just enough sneaky offense to weaken Foreman’s resolve. Even as Foreman continued to throw the heavier punches and win the early rounds, Ali, as Foreman himself acknowledged, “owned their hearts and minds more completely with every punch he absorbed.” At the same time, Foreman proved incapable of winning the support of the Zaïrois people. His aloofness and distance was a clear indication that was “miserable about being in Zaire, and in Africa,” noted Suruba Ibumando Wechsler, a Zaïrois woman who kept up with the event via local radio and newspapers. By contrast, she declared, Ali “seemed to be having the time of his life, here in the very heart of Africa. He mingled with everyone, young and old, rich and poor, black and white.”

the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt eleven)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

African Americans celebrated Ali’s victory as a matter of racial solidarity, a pattern not seen since Joe Louis’s heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. Even though his opponent was black, Ali’s triumph was viewed as a victory over the injustices of the white world. As president of Morehouse College, Hugh M. Gloseter, told Ali in front of four thousand students: “As much as you are admired by boxing fans in general, you are admired even more by the members of your own race. You are our main man.” Taking back his title that “’they’ had taken from him” because of his religion and his refusal to be drafted, made him an overarching symbol of racial pride in an era when black pride was at its apex. As the Chicago Defender put it, “Now the self-appointed Messiah of black everywhere, to Harlem, to South Africa, to the slums of the cities of all the world, he preaches pride in being black, pride in the determination to overcome, to meet the white man’s world on its own terms, and to defeat it.” He amuses many, frightens some with his tirades: “There are blacks who greet him with laughter and glee as he excoriates the white world, but there are also blacks who take his vitriolic, militant speeches as a green light to overthrow the white man’s establishment.”

Ali’s antiestablishment stance was highlighted when he returned to Louisville, Kentucky, on November 8 for Muhammad Ali Day. At a central plaza, seven thousand people, mostly black, but many whites too, gathered to honor a “black folk hero and the most famous defender of the faith of Islam.” Although a boxer, he stood before the crowd “like a Black Prince,” with his face unscarred and, “as men’s faces can be, . . . something approaching beautiful.” A triumphant living symbol that black was beautiful, Ali received greetings from “those who genuinely loved him,” as well as, finally, “some of the bigshots who shied away from him in the old days when he was considered a traitor and a bum for refusing to enter military service and for changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.” As he walked through the crowd, people nearly trampled one another to touch him. “It was,” wrote Charles Sanders in Ebony, “an outpouring of black love upon a man for whom black people have gained profound respect – for refusing to knuckle under despite the cruelest pressures; for standing up for what he believed even though it cost him, in dollars and otherwise, far more than most men are willing to lose, and for refusing to give up and for trying hard enough and often enough to eventually triumph.”

the last book I ever read (The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage, excerpt ten)

from The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali & George Foreman on the Global Stage by Lewis A. Erenberg:

That sense of fulfillment and liberation was felt all over Kinshasha. It was dawn when Ali left the stadium, and at every village and crossing crowds were leaping and yelling as he passed, many holding up babies so that they could see the victor who had set their hearts aflame. Hundreds of fans remained in the stands and in the ring itself, mimicking the dramatic manner in which Foreman was knocked out. While Foreman lay awake in his hotel room tortured by his inconceivable loss at the hands of a seemingly washed-up former champion, Ali and his wife Belinda sat in the back seat of their Citroen as they were driven back to N’Sele. As Ali told George Plimpton, he and Belinda were struck by how odd it seemed to be leaving the arena in the light of day. They just could not stop talking about how unusual it seemed. Normally, they knew, prizefighters arrive at the arena during the daylight hours and when the fight is over they exit while it is dark. “It seemed so symbolically appropriate that on this occasion he should be coming out of darkness into light.” After seven years of battling the government, the boxing establishment, and the ravages of Father Time, the newly crowned champion indeed felt that he had survived the dark days of struggle and doubt and emerged into a lighter, more optimistic future.