Muhammad Ali, Vietnam and the Asiatic Black Man National Museum of African American History & Culture

This piece is from Re:Collections, a project of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center which traces collections and exhibits from Smithsonian museums relating to Asian Pacific American stories. Although Re:Collections will launch summer 2016, this article has been released early in honor of Muhammad Ali’s life. 

“He’s Back,” reads the  1970 LIFE Magazine cover that touted the return of Muhammad Ali, heavyweight boxing champion of the world. After famously rejecting his Vietnam War draft and being banned from boxing, Ali’s reemergence to the sport was indeed a media sensation. And while Ali’s defiance against the war captured headlines, little attention was paid to how the Black icon’s steadfast beliefs that made him an unlikely advocate for Asians both in the U.S. and abroad.

Life Vol. 69 No. 17 • October 23, 1970 • ink on paper (fiber product)
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History &
Culture
Gift from the Dwaine Simpson 5th St. Gym Museum Collection

When Ali went on his anti-Vietnam War speaking tour in the late 1960’s, it was primarily an effort to substitute his income after his boxing ban. But while his membership in the Nation of Islam (NOI) and friendship with civil rights leader Malcolm X aligned his anti-war stance with the Black liberation movement, it also put him in a ripe position to counter widespread anti-Asian sentiment in a time when there were no Asian American media icons to do so. “My enemy is the white people, not Viet Cong or Chinese or Japanese,” Ali announced in a 1967 speech. Only two years after the public had been exposed to its first glimpses of war footage, Ali added dimension to the media’s portrayal of Vietnamese which otherwise illustrated them as faceless enemies and victims.

“My conscience won’t let me shoot my brother, or some darker people…for big, powerful America,” Ali expressed in an interview. Such statements were not only expressions of empathy, but also coalition – intended to galvanize solidarity among communities of color. Statements from Ali’s anti-war speeches and stance against anti-Asian sentiment was adopted by both African American and Asian American civil rights activists.

Harlem Peace March to End Racial Oppression, 1967 (Photo: Builder Levy)

Harlem Peace March to End Racial Oppression, 1967 (Photo: Builder Levy)

Ali’s expressed kinship with Asians was not merely a circumstance of the war taking place in Vietnam. In fact, he and members of the NOI identified as “Black Asiatic,” a concept tracing back at least as early as the beginning of the 20th Century. Japan’s 1905 victory in the Russo-Japanese War became a point of inspiration among a number of Asian and African nations, the platform for imagining a non-white coalition embraced by the likes of Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen and African American leader Marcus Garvey. Concepts such as the Black Asiatic, third-world liberation and a “dark-skinned race” eventually became elemental to the founding of the NOI by Elijah Muhammad.

Painter Toyohara Chikanobu’s depiction of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904.
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper.
Collection of Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Portrait of Muhammad Ali
Henry C. Casselli, Jr.
Oil on canvas, 1981
On view at the National Portrait Gallery

However, these ideals were not universally adopted, and in fact quite controversial – for example, Malcolm X withdrew his identity as “Black Asiatic” in favor of “Afro American” upon his 1964 trips to Africa and the Middle East, and his subsequent disassociation with the NOI. Yet for Ali, who remained an active member of the organization until the mid-70’s, his identity as “Asiatic” served as a mechanism to bridge the plights of African Americans, Vietnamese and minorities alike.

Today, lasting terminologies like “people of color” as umbrella concepts for oppressed racial communities continue to be both embraced and criticized in public discourse. Yet, a lasting legacy of Ali’s opposition to the war is his insistence that the concerns of Africans and Asians, within the U.S. and abroad, are not mutually exclusive.

View a collection of Muhammad Ali items when the National Museum of African American History and Culture Museum opens September 2016!