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

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

The day Lumumba’s children departed, an American celebrity arrived. Louis Armstrong was playing Africa on a goodwill tour sponsored by the State Department and Pepsi-Cola. At King Baudouin Stadium, ten thousand people—UN soldiers, foreign diplomats, and government officials but mostly everyday Congolese—paid twenty cents for admission. Carried into the venue on a red sedan chair, an honor usually reserved for chiefs, “the King of Jazz” was introduced by Ambassador Timberlake, who had memorized some lines of Lingala for the occasion. The crowd tapped along tentatively to the sounds of “Mack the Knife” and “When the Saints Go Marching In”; this music was new to most. “Give those cats time,” Armstrong remarked to a reporter. “They’ll learn.” Armstrong and his wife, Lucille, had no dinner plans that evening, so the Devlin family hosted a meal. Maureen, who had never heard of the jazz great, reluctantly emerged to say hello.

But the feel-good interlude did not change the fact that the Congo was coming apart. Western diplomats had assumed that Lumumba was the source of the country’s woes; sideline him, and calm would return. In fact, the chaos had only deepened. Leopoldville was the epicenter of the disorder. “Many murders, assaults, rapes, burglaries are taking place without any action by police,” Dayal told Hammarskjöld. It was not unusual in the city to see soldiers pinning families up against a wall and strip-searching them. Gangs of youths, allied with one politician or another, prowled the streets. Lumumba’s supporters beat and stabbed Albert Ndele, a member of Mobutu’s College of Commissioners, outside a hotel. An unknown assassin shot and killed a pro-Lumumba provincial minister visiting from Kasai while he was in a taxi; his body was tossed out the car’s window.

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

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

Hammarskjöld was a reader. (In that, if nothing else, he had something in common with Lumumba.) In the corridors of the UN building, even late at night with the Congo Club, the secretary-general routinely turned the conversation to the arts and letters, not always to the delight of his colleagues, who would much rather listen to him gossip about Jackie Kennedy than endure a lecture on contemporary poetry. For Hammarskjöld, however, the melding was essential, and he made it a priority. Before the Congo crisis, he had been able to set aside two or three hours a day for what he called “serious matters”—namely, literary translation.

As he explained to a French journalist, “I don’t believe that the taste for literature can be reduced to what Americans call a ‘hobby,’ that is to say, to entertainment and relaxation, to a pastime.” He elaborated: “It is an important complement and, for a diplomat, an indispensable one.” Poetry and diplomacy both required a keen sense of the mot juste. More practically, he needed something to pass the time during Security Council sessions while he waited for delegates’ remarks to be translated from languages he already knew.

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

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

By the summer of 1960, President Eisenhower was sixty-nine years old, nearing the end of his second term, and running out of steam. He had survived Cold War crises in Cuba, Korea, Hungary, and the Suez, not to mention a heart attack, a stroke, and intestinal surgery. After the shootdown of a U-2 spy plane over Russia in May scotched an East-West peace summit in Paris, the president largely lost interest in the duties of his job and played golf almost daily. “I wish someone would take me out and shoot me in the head so I wouldn’t have to go through this stuff,” he huffed one day in July, after a National Security Council meeting brought him bad news from Cuba and the Congo.

Eisenhower was cranky to begin with. Dubbed “the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang” by the press, he once launched a golf club at his doctor so forcefully it nearly broke the man’s leg. But the disorder in the Congo made him even more crotchety than usual. In Eisenhower’s view, the “winds of change” in Africa were turning into a “destructive hurricane.” His impression of the Year of Africa was not favorable: “The determination of the peoples for self-rule, their own flag, and their own vote in the United Nations resembled a torrent overrunning everything in its path.”

This distinct lack of enthusiasm for the African nationalist cause was hardly surprising. Given his time leading the invasions of France and Germany in World War II and his service as NATO’s top commander afterward, it was only natural that Eisenhower looked at a postcolonial crisis through a European lens. And just as he dragged his feet on civil rights domestically, he thought the Black population of Africa should move cautiously and under the tutelage of their white former rulers. The raffish Lumumba particularly offended his sense of decorum.

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

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

Clare Timberlake also ran into trouble with Lumumba’s guards. On August 18, the U.S. ambassador had an appointment to see the prime minister to complain about another incident in which Congolese troops had harassed and briefly detained six American airmen. Evidently unaware of the appointment, Lumumba’s guards escorted Timberlake across the street from the prime minister’s house and left him waiting on a curb. He returned in a huff to the U.S. embassy, where he had two calls from an apologetic aide inviting him back. When the meeting finally took place, Lumumba bent over backward to declare his admiration for the United States. He told Timberlake that it was obvious he was not a Communist, since he had first asked an American—Edgar Detwiler—to exploit the Congo’s riches. The United States, he said, would have the honor of receiving the first Congolese ambassador to any country. In a short radio broadcast later that day, Lumumba once again praised the friendship of the American people. “We know that the U.S. understands us,” he said.

Even as this charm offensive was under way, however, UN troops once again came under sudden attack. At Ndjili airport, fourteen Canadian signalmen bound for the interior of the Congo were readying for takeoff when a band of Congolese soldiers rushed the plane, raised their guns, and ordered everyone off. The Canadians were forced to lie down on the tarmac, arms splayed, as their blue berets were plucked off their heads. One Canadian was kicked repeatedly in the cheeks. Another was knocked unconscious by a rifle butt. The problem, it turned out, was that several of the Canadians wore paratrooper badges—wings, a maple leaf, and a parachute—and were therefore mistaken for Belgians. The incident underscored not only the problem of Congolese hostility toward the UN but also the uncertain allegiance of the African soldiers serving in the UN force. Ghanaian troops had stood idly by as the Canadians were manhandled, intervening belatedly and only at the urging of their British officers.

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

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

He had been thinking about it for weeks. He had threatened it in his ultimatum to the UN. He had perhaps discussed it in hushed tones in the Château Laurier in Ottawa and in the private office of an African ambassador in New York. It was a scheme born of desperation, rather than confidence, the last resort for a man nearing defeat, the only way he could take back Katanga and thus restore the country he was meant to rule. Lumumba was ready to make a choice that would alter the history of the Congo and of Africa: to formally request military aid from the Soviet Union.

The Americans had declined to send him direct assistance. The UN was refusing to help him in Katanga and was even putting its thumb on the scale in favor of Tshombe. Help from the Soviet Union seemed like the only way to retake the breakaway province.

So far, however, Moscow had extended only token support. Soviet leaders had denounced Western imperialism at the UN, in the pages of Pravda, and in their communications with the Congolese, each statement long on Western castigation but short on concrete promises. What tangible help the Soviets did provide—food aid, twenty doctors, planes for the airlift, among other things—was being channeled through the UN mission rather than directly to the government. Yet Moscow had hinted that it might be willing to do more. On August 1, the Kremlin released a statement warning that if the “aggression against the Congo” continued, it would “take resolute measures to rebuff the aggressors.” Four days later, the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, sent Lumumba a letter promising his “friendly and unselfish aid” and assuring him that the Soviet Union would not stand by if the Congo remained under imperialist attack. In the meantime, he gifted Lumumba a twin-engine plane for his personal use.

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

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

Nixon, for his part, had gone on a three-week, eight-nation vice presidential tour of Africa in 1957. In Accra, he represented the United States at Ghana’s independence celebrations and quizzed Nkrumah on what the new country’s nonaligned foreign policy would mean in practice. Nixon returned alarmed about the declining European influence in Africa and recommended that Eisenhower lavish newly independent African states with aid. He did not reach this conclusion out of respect for Africans, toward whom he was racist in private, once saying that they had an “animal-like charm.” Rather, he viewed Africa as an emerging battleground between “the forces of freedom and international communism.” The goal was to put as many African states as possible into the Western column. Kennedy criticized Nixon’s Cold War conception of Africa, arguing that its people were “more interested in development than they are in doctrine.”

Kennedy’s support for Algerian independence had helped him win the favor of Michigan’s staunchly progressive governor, G. Mennen Williams, and thus most of Michigan’s fifty-one votes at the Democratic National Convention. But after clinching the nomination in July, Kennedy was in trouble. An August poll put him six percentage points behind Nixon. White southern Democrats were learning from their Baptist preachers that a Catholic president would answer to Rome. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s centrist voting record, including on civil rights, turned off Black voters and the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. He needed to find an issue on which he, often regarded as a cautious, finger-in-the-wind politician, could inspire those voters but without alienating the Dixiecrats he needed to win southern states.

At some point that summer, an idea arose among his advisers: What if Kennedy made Africa a campaign issue?

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

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

The night of his return, Lumumba called an emergency cabinet meeting. By the time it ended the next morning, two major decisions had been made. The first was to declare a nationwide state of emergency. “The army will arrest anyone, be he white or African, who tries to stir up trouble in the Congo,” Lumumba promised at a press conference. “It will show no mercy.”

Under the state of emergency, the government introduced new rules for political associations: henceforth, all such groups had to apply for government authorization. Attending the meeting of an unlicensed group would be punishable by two months in prison. Not long after the announcement, MNC partisans sacked the headquarters of Abako, Kasavubu’s party. Police raided the offices of the Belga News Agency and ordered its staff to stop transmitting reports to Brussels. The editor of the conservative newspaper Le Courrier d’Afrique was thrown in jail. Lumumba, who had built his national profile with large public addresses and once spent three months in jail for holding a political rally, was now himself curtailing freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press.

It was a remarkable authoritarian turn for a man who had once written about Belgian colonial rule, “You do not win the confidence, respect or obedience of a subject people by wickedness, cruelty or harshness, but by good administration, respect for the rights of citizens, and just and humane treatment.” Unable to offer good administration, however, Lumumba opted for harshness. Squelching the free press, in his view, was a matter of survival. His opponents were attacking him mercilessly in the Leopoldville papers, and from across the river, Radio Brazzaville was doing the same. Unknown critics were handing out tracts that warned, “Lumumba is going to sell your women to Russia.”

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

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

Most evenings, the apartment really did feel like an abbey. Hammarskjöld rejected nearly all dinner invitations and spent his evenings reading—Joseph Conrad was a favorite—often as Bach or Vivaldi played. Then he would lie down in a spartan twin bed, a phone beside him, ready to ring in the event of some international crisis, and fall asleep alone.

Occasionally, however, an eclectic assemblage of guests turned the place into a lively salon. Hammarskjöld counted among his friends the composer Leonard Bernstein, the poet W. H. Auden, the columnist Walter Lippmann, and the novelist John Steinbeck. Even Greta Garbo, a notorious recluse and the person who confined Hammarskjöld to the slot of second-most famous Swede in New York, sometimes surfaced in his apartment. Amid the worldly curios and guests romped a vervet monkey, a gift Hammarskjöld had been given on his African tour in January, during a stopover in Somalia. He named him Greenback, for the slight tint of his coat, and let him swing on a vine hanging from the banister. Never housebroken, the animal soiled Hammarskjöld’s shoe and wet his collar, but this did nothing to spoil the secretary-general’s affection. “Dag is crazy about the little monkey,” Ralph Bunche, one of the few colleagues to earn an invitation to Hammarskjöld’s, wrote after one dinner just before he left for the Congo.

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

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

Similar scenes were playing out across the country. In Stanleyville, white residents organized convoys and drove through the bush to reach Sudan or Uganda. In Katanga, some 250 whites spilled over the border into Northern Rhodesia every hour.

The exodus hit the Congo fast, and it hit hard. The white elite that had stayed on after independence—doctors, pharmacists, teachers, accountants, mechanics, engineers, telegraph operators, air traffic controllers—was now leaving en masse, draining the young country of badly needed expertise. Of the Congo’s 175 Belgian postal officials, only one resolved to stay. Of its 542 university-educated agricultural engineers, none did. The national radio fell silent as inexperienced Congolese operators blew through the fuses. At the Ministry of the Interior, two lonely clerks manned an office usually run by dozens of employees. This was white flight on an unprecedented scale: within two weeks of independence, some 60,000 of the 80,000 Europeans remaining in the Congo had left.

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

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

In Leopoldville, the Belgian ambassador continued, to no avail, to try to get the Congolese government to approve Belgian troop deployments. But with domestic pressure in Belgium mounting, a unilateral military intervention looked more and more likely. By the afternoon of July 9, less than a week after the start of the mutiny and not even a fortnight after independence, Prime Minister Eyskens had made up his mind: if the Congolese government did not give the green light, Belgian troops would intervene regardless.

Before sunrise the next day, they did just that. Early in the morning, ten planes carrying two companies of soldiers took off from the Kamina air base in Katanga and flew to Elisabethville. The copper province’s capital was in jeopardy: an army camp in the city had revolted, and a group of Congolese soldiers had set up a machine gun beside a road and fired into passing cars, killing five white civilians. Welcomed by Tshombe, who saw the mutiny as a Leopoldville plot, the three hundred Belgian troops took Elisabethville’s airport and army camp without firing a shot.

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

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

In the end, the agency decided against a full-fledged influence campaign, settling instead for a lighter touch. Although it is not clear whether Lumumba ever received any CIA money, the agency did issue small payments to various politicians it deemed promising and pro-Western. The goal was less to influence the elections per se than to develop sources; the bribery was, in the agency’s words, “in the realm of intelligence acquisition, not political action.” It was too soon to pick winners. “In most cases the political leaders of the Congo today have not matured ideologically,” an internal CIA paper argued. Why permanently alienate some of the Congo’s most important politicians just because they might have taken some francs from Moscow?

Lumumba’s electoral campaign continued to gain steam, and the CIA eventually resigned itself to his victory. At a meeting of the National Security Council in May 1960, the agency’s director, Allen Dulles, told President Dwight Eisenhower that Lumumba was likely to lead the free Congo. Dulles did not hide his dislike of the candidate, describing him as an “irresponsible” embezzler, susceptible to bribery and Communist influence.

Eisenhower already had little faith in the Congo’s prospects. A footdragger on civil rights at home, the president was a skeptic of independence in Africa, too. When Dulles pointed out that some eighty political parties were vying for power in the Congo, Eisenhower quipped that he didn’t realize so many people in the colony could read. (In fact, the Congo’s literacy rate, at more than 40 percent, was among the highest on the continent; for all the deficiencies in secondary and higher education, access to primary school was widespread.) It was not the first time the U.S. president expressed his low regard for Africans. At a National Security Council meeting earlier that year, a White House official fresh from a trip to the Congo had told him that “many Africans still belonged in the trees,” and were thus easily manipulated. To that, the president replied in apparent agreement that “man’s emotions still have control over his intelligence.”

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

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

There were two Leopoldvilles, really. The whites took the best parts for themselves: the downtown, close to the riverbank and the train station, along with the hilly suburbs, where a gentle breeze whisked away the muggy air. In these neighborhoods, the Belgians sought to import all that was European and repress all that was African, taking over with the fervor of an invasive species. They built blocky office buildings in the International Style popular in the West, shading the windows and slitting the walls to keep the tropical heat at bay. Fourteen-story buildings sprang up, elevated on piers to promote air circulation, as if raising a trouser hem to keep it from the rainy-season mud. “Europe in Leo weighs down on the African soil in the form of skyscrapers,” the novelist Graham Greene wrote when he visited the city. At Lovanium University, a nuclear reactor, Africa’s first, was installed as part of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program.

This Leopoldville was an orderly colonial capital. By virtue of its proximity to the equator, the sun rose and set at nearly the same time all year—6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. To combat malaria, a helicopter regularly circled above and emitted from its stinger a plume of DDT, infusing the city with the chemical whiff of progress. Below, specially designed trucks did the same, engulfing the cars behind them in a disorienting fog. White passengers were chauffeured gently through streets named for Belgians: former kings, princes, colonial governors-general, vice-governors-general, and other notables unknown to the Congolese drivers. Servants, nannies, gardeners, cooks, and other domestics commuted to the European quarters on gyrobuses, state-of-the-art vehicles made in Switzerland and powered by electrically charged flywheels. Inside their employers’ houses, the yen for Europe extended to the smallest of creature comforts. Instead of filling their vases with tropical flowers, some Belgians paid for wilting carnations flown in from Brussels. It helped them feel at home. Here, one could forget that there were just 100,000 Europeans in the Belgian Congo, compared with 12 million Congolese.

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.

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

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

Whatever the causes of Foreman’s defeat, they did little to restore his reputation or his pride after such a humiliating performance. Indeed, Ali’s dramatic victory destroyed the myth of George Foreman’s invincibility. One fight fan put it succinctly. Ali, the Chicagoan Seely Hagan wrote The Ring magazine, “is the only interesting fighter in the business. He made a monkey out of the greatest hitter in years. George knows as much about boxing as he know[s] about flying to Russia. How did he ever stop Joe Frazier?” Promoter Don Fraser was equally adamant. “George Foreman turned out to be the ghost of Sonny Liston.” At the hands of Ali, “within a few minutes, Foreman’s portrait went from invincible, unbeatable powerhouse to pathetic chump.” Indeed, asked Foreman’s supporters, where was the Foreman “who had smashed Joe Frazier down six times to win the championship and destroyed Ken Norton in defense of it.” How could it be that a Foreman who had “mastered those two with contemptuous ease, was a stumbling amateur against their victim.” The answer according to Chicago Tribune sports columnist Rick Talley was this: Ali “did it the simplest way. He just sat back and hit him in the face.” Instead of dancing, he lay back on the ropes and counter punched against Foreman’s head, a target that was always right in front of him.

In destroying Foreman and his myth of invincibility, just as he had done to Liston ten years earlier, Ali sealed his legend as the greatest heavyweight boxing champion of all time. “Can the world beat it?” asked Los Angeles Times boxing columnist John Hall. “If not a legend before, the strutting, swaggering, shouting Ali most certainly is now. Instantly, the promoters rush back to beat upon his door.” The shock of the upset and the seeming magic of Ali’s accomplishment brough the skeptics to their knees. No matter what other fighters thought, and “never mind what the critics say,” Hall continued, “Ali is king. He’s magic. He’s magnificent. He’s a hypnotist. He casts a spell over himself as well as his people, all the people.” Speaking for his former critics, Hall admitted that “we bow and scrape at the Ali shrine.” Even more, boxing experts had to take responsibility for building up Foreman into a myth of invincibility. “It was the ghost of Liston,” he wrote, “another swift disintegration of a myth we all helped to create.”

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

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

When Ali returned to his corner, his handlers pleaded with him to stay off the ropes, to dance as they had planned or else be killed by any one of Foreman’s mighty blows. Seemingly calm and collected amid the storm, Ali told everyone, “Shut up! All of you. I know what I am doing. Don’t tell me nothing! I don’t want to hear another word. Shut up.” Then, according to Ferdie Pacheco, he explained: “The champ has nothing. He has nothing. He can’t hurt me. I’m going to let this sucker punch himself out.” All during training Ali had planned on using his speed to dance away from the champ’s power and tire him out by rounds eight to ten. Gregorio Peralta had gone the distance with Foreman earlier in the champ’s career, but in that case it was fighting off the ropes. Having watched tapes of the Foreman-Peralita match, Ali’s camp planned to test Foreman’s stamina, but not by laying on the ropes right in front of the champion. Rather, the challenger would dance around the ring and tire Foreman out. Echoing the feeling of the entire camp, Dundee recalled that “when he went to the ropes, I felt sick. I thought Ali would win but not that way.” The goal was to dance for five or six rounds and against a stand-up fighter who didn’t move his head much, Ali could jab him silly. Then when Foreman tired, Ali would knock him out in the late rounds. “But,” Dundee recalled, “everything we planned was built around not getting hit.”

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

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

By his own admission, Foreman was miserable in Zaire, “not least because of the food.” His cook Tyree Lyons, who had worked at the Pleasanton, California, Job Corps site, searched all over Kinshasa for food that George would eat, but he found little that pleased his employer. No one in either camp developed a fondness for monkey meat. Lyons did, however, develop a mysterious ailment that swelled his hands and eyes, which must have been a further deterrence for Foreman’s mixing with the local populace. Rats, insects, and lizards infested his quarters in an old army base, up the hill from Ali’s more luxurious digs. Rowdy, beer-sodden soldiers patrolled the base fully armed and cyclone fencing and barbed wire turned Foreman’s camp into a prison. Except for daily press conferences “we’re restricted,” noted the champ’s publicist Bill Caplan. “Nobody is allowed in the Foreman camp. Government orders.” Seeking relief from the claustrophobic environment, the champion demanded a suite at the Inter-Continental Hotel. Even there, however, Foreman worried that someone might break in and mess with him and his things. As a deterrent, he hired guards to watch his room twenty-four hours a day. Never much of a social being, he would have to live surrounded by so many people who favored Ali.

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

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

The world first learned of Zaire 74 when Don King, in an effort to make an epic global sporting event even more spectacular, announced that the Rumble in the Jungle would include a three-day music festival that would precede “the greatest sporting event in the history of the world,” on September 20-22. As Ali declared, the Rumble in the Jungle was “much more than a sports event. It’s a symbol of the Black American Awakening, with . . . all those beautiful black people goin’ home to share their experiences with the black musicians who never left.” Financed by the brother of President William Tolbert of Liberia and organized by Levine, Hugh Masekela, and R&B singer Lloyd Price, the festival featured the Americans James Brown, B. B. King, Bill Withers, the Spinners, the Jazz Crusaders, Sister Sledge, the Pointer Sisters, Etta James, and Price. Representing the Caribbean, where enslaved Africans has also deeply influenced the region’s musical traditions, were Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Mexican artists Johnny Pacheco, Celiz Cruz, Ray Barretto, Jorge Santana, and Héctor LAvoe, among others, including the Caribbean music devotee Jewish pianist and bandleader Larry Harlow—the top names in salsa. Like the fight itself, Zaire 74 highlighted a global black consciousness that was an important element in the cultural politics of the era.

The festival also sought to bring the music of Africa to the attention of the world. Among the major stars on the bill was transatlantic singer Miriam Makeba, the South African expatriate who had built an audience in the United States and Africa for her international repertoire or protest, popular, and native songs. In addition, Manu Dibango, the saxophone and keyboard dean of Paris-based African musicians, and the composer of “Soul Makossa,” an Afro-beat hit that moved global dance floors, was also expected to perform. Zaïrois bands were scheduled too, including the Madjesi Trio, Franco and the TPOK Jazz Band, Abumba Masikini, the Pembe Dance Troupe, Abeti, and afrisa with singer Tabu Ley.

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

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

When the Congo achieved its independence in 1960, white Americans viewed the political infighting through a Cold War lens deeply influenced by the colonial discourse. Molded by book and movies such as Tarzan of the Apes (1912), King Solomon’s Mines (1950), Watusi (1959), Something of Value (1957), and Congo Crossing (1956), white—and many black—Americans continued to see black Africans as naked, illiterate, and emotional savages prone to irrational revolt. Indeed, US officials depicted Lumumba, who rejected the colonial discourse of white paternalistic leadership, as the devil and equated him with a history of black African savagery and chaos. Without a strong man friendly to the United States in charge, the Russians would have taken over. After all, Africans could not rule themselves.

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

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

Given his role in sparking the athletic rebellion, Ali verbally supported the boycott movement while Foreman remained removed from the controversial protest. “Giving up a chance at the Olympics and a gold medal is a big sacrifice,” Ali declared when the boycott was first announced. “But anything they do that’s designed to get freedom and equality for their people, I’m with 1,000 percent.” Foreman first heard of the boycott movement when Edwards and some of his supporters came to the New Mexico Olympic training site to recruit athletes to their cause. They made speeches, but because there were no big-name boxing stars, they “passed us by the way a freight train would a hobo,” Foreman recalled. “Not one of us high school dropouts [on the boxing team] were ever asked to be part of what they were doing. They never asked the poor people to join.” Nor did they ask female Olympic athletes, because the radicals were focused on demonstrating their defiant black manhood. Foreman later asserted that the boycott worked best for UCLA basketball star Lew Alcindor and other college athletes who were accustomed to radical issues and protest movements on their campuses. “Whether the students’ anger was righteous, I don’t know,” Foreman recalled. “I know only that their world wasn’t the one I saw.” He put it succinctly: “How could I protest the Establishment when it had created the Job Corps for guys like me?” Besides, Foreman rejected the black nationalist message that only white people were prejudiced. In Houston, he claimed that black teachers, some of his relatives, and members of the black community were prejudiced when they summarily labeled him a failure.

While Foreman’s class resentment against the boycott’s organizers alienated him from their cause, it is also true that Olympic boxing coach Pappy Gault made sure his team ignored the protests. As the first black coach for the US team, Gault was older, forty-six, a World War II veteran, and, like many of his generation, more conservative in his views. Having fought with the marines at Iwo Jima, he ran the boxing squad as a quasi-military unit. Both he and assistant Ray Rogers, also an ex-marine, were addressed as “Sarge.” Six of the team’s eleven boxers were black, Gault maintained: “My fighters believe in me. They do what I say.” His major goal, in fact, was to make the notoriously individual sport of boxing “into a team sport. I don’t want stars or individualists,” he told Sports Illustrated. “I believe in unity. I think this will show a new side of the US. We are never individuals when we support the US.” Victory surpassed racial protest. His boxers, he bragged, were not “involved in any of this demonstration stuff . . . . We’re proud to be fighting for the United States. This is our country. We’re all brothers, aren’t we?”

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

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

Finally George made a friend, Richard Kibble, a hippie from Tacoma, Washington, who introduced him to the new youth culture that was beginning to sweep the nation. On their first meeting Kibble asked him why he fought with everyone all the time and asserted that fighting was not important. Together they listened to Kibble’s Bob Dylan records, which, according to Foreman, was when his real education began. Although he continued to fight with anyone and everyone, George discovered a love of learning. He learned grammar and vocabulary and for the first time in his life read a book. In fact, he began to devour books, especially the Autobiography of Malcolm X, which given its story of an alienated black young man who descends into crime and prison before being redeemed, must have spoken forcefully to him. It was through Kibble that he also made a few friends, most of whom he had beaten up at one time or another. While listening with them to the radio broadcast of the Muhammad Ali-Floyd Patterson bout on November 22, 1965, one of his new friends asked him why he did not take up boxing, since he liked beating up people so much. Excited by the challenge of the sport and the glamour of the heavyweight champion, six months later George transferred to the Camp Parks Job Corps Center run by Litton Industries near Pleasanton, California. Located about forty miles east of Oakland, the center would allow George to continue his education and make use of its excellent physical education facilities, including an already-established boxing program.

The boxing program at Camp Parks was run by Nick “Doc” Broadus, one of the most important influences in George’s life. More than boxing, the forty-eight-year-old amateur and professional fighter strove to provide Foreman with a discipline, direction, and a strong adult male role model. Only five foot five, Broadus had a boxing résumé and a background in martial arts that earned George’s respect and made the coach fearless toward his towering young pupil with the hair-trigger temper: “You bigger than me, but I can handle you baby. Size don’t mean nothin’ to me.” Broadus told him: “I been in that jungle, too, George. Whatever you did, I was doing’ myself not long ago. But that’s ol’ history now, an’ our job is to make history.” As an amateur boxer Broadus had won one hundred straight bouts and twenty-four out of twenty-five as a professional. As soon as he lost, he turned coach, first in the air force, then in the Job Corps. Even with his vast experience, however, steering the angry Foreman proved challenging. When George threatened a counselor, he was nearly expelled from the Job Corps as an irredeemable hoodlum. “I was held responsible for him,” Doc noted. “It was going to be his last opportunity.”

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

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

As he campaigned for a title match with Liston, Clay’s fresh-faced challenge to boxing’s accepted rules invigorated a dying sport. Floyd Patterson seemed a nice-enough fellow, but except for Liston, his manager Constantine “Cus” D’Amato kept him away from tough opponents, especially any with mob ties. In his battles with Liston, Patterson was “the good Negro,” humble and modest, versus the surly, amoral black man from the ghetto, a Bigger Thomas with boxing gloves. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) did not want Patterson to fight Liston, fearing the consequences of a black champion with criminal ties, but once the fight was announced, the civil rights organization, like President Kennedy, rooted for Patterson and was horrified when he was humiliated in 1962 and again in 1963 by the former mob enforcer. From the moment he won his Olympic gold medal in 1960, Cassius Clay stepped into this gloomy picture to help establish a new era in boxing. “Whether you like Clay or not,” noted Ring’s Dan Daniel, “the fact remains that he performed for boxing a tremendous benefice similar to that which Babe Ruth achieved for baseball” after the Black Sox scandal had shaken public confidence in the sport. Clay knew how to capture the spotlight. He was “fresh, new, and filled with the liveliness of a new age,” argued Angelo Dundee. “Put them all together and all of a sudden it was the Age of Cassius.”

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

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

Three days before a match with Duke Sabong in Las Vegas in 1961, Clay met the outrageous wrestler “Gorgeous George” Wagner, with his dyed blond hair, flashy robes, and a habit of insulting opponents while touting his own good looks and wrestling skills. To Clay’s surprise, the wrestler drew fans by the thousands who hoped for his defeat. A light went on. The more Clay bragged about himself, the more he sassed his opponents, the more outrageous his self-presentation, he realized, the more fans would come out to see him lose. He began touting his looks and his skills and denigrating those of his opponent: “I’d never been shy about talking, but if I talked even more, there was no telling how much money people would pay to see me.” Lots of fighters boast, but Clay also took to ridiculing his opponents in rhyme, seemingly making up doggerel on the spot, using the black verbal art of the dozens. Boasting “I am the greatest,” he took charge of his own identity in and out of the ring.