I saw my parents sitting silently by our black-and-white television, listening as a young black boxer, Muhammad Ali, talked. I know the young Ali, lean and dangerous and endlessly boastful, only through my father’s stories, and from old newsreels. We celebrate athletic courage. “My conscience won’t let me go and shoot them,” Ali said in that rat-a-tat-tat stream-of-consciousness style of his. Ali reincarnated himself as champion, three times winning that title, and that gave to his life narrative a metaphorical power.

Source: New York Times June 04, 2016 06:14 UTC