I read this article by William Rhoden in NYT today, and I am also posting article on my visit to Vietnam War Museum in Saigon, Vietnam. In the article I have posted the pictures taken from the Museum. In a way both are related. ( F. Sheikh)
Excerpts from article;
I woke up Thursday morning and heard a familiar voice that I thought was part of a dream: Muhammad Ali was discussing why he had refused to be inducted into the Army.
This was no dream, but the commemoration of an unforgettable moment that was being replayed on the radio. The clip was taken from a June 20, 1967, interview after Ali was convicted of draft evasion. Two months earlier, at an Army induction center in Houston, Ali refused to step forward.
The radio show host, Joe Madison, who played the clip, said he was a high school senior in 1967 and that Ali’s defiant action made a profound impact on his life.
As a high school junior and varsity athlete in Chicago, I had a similar reaction to Ali’s act of resistance. We were engulfed in the Vietnam War in personal and often tragic ways. Two classmates of mine at Harlan High School — one a great track athlete, the other an outstanding quarterback — each lost their legs in combat.
Ali was one of the most identifiable human beings on the planet. Here was the Greatest, telling the world that he was not going to war. For me, words like conscience, principle and integrity were merely terms in a civics class. When Ali defended his controversial position, how he had no appetite for war, standing for one’s principle became concrete.
“My conscience won’t let me shoot my brother or some darker people,” he told reporters. “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger.”
Click Link below for full article;
Posted By F. Sheikh