PROVES HE IS A REAL CHAMPION
Muhammad Ali, world heavyweight boxing champion, has announced that he will refuse to take the required oath at his scheduled induction into the U.S. Army on April 28 in Houston, Texas.
Ali is one of America's highest paid professional athletes, a type generally notorious for their conservatism and superpatriotism. Ali's action is a sign of how deep the opposition to the war in Vietnam runs in the U.S., particularly among black men.
In a scathing indictment of the war, Ali said he would not go into the army "simply to help continue the domina-~ tion of white slave masters over darker people the world over.
"Why should they ask me, another so-called Negro, to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"
Muhammad Ali, better known as Cassius Clay, is an adherent of the Black Muslim organization. He declared, "I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for justice, equality and freedon."
The boxer could receive five years in prison for refusing to be drafted.