ALI — "I Ain't Got No Quarrel With Them Viet Cong" #shorts #blackhistory #facts

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, all some darker people, all some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America, and shoot them for what? They never called me [ __ ] They never lynched me. They never put no dogs on me. They never robbed me of my nationality, raped and killed my mother and father.

[00:00:21]What am I going to shoot them for what?

[00:00:22]I got to go shoot them, them little poor little black people, little babies and children and women. How can I shoot them poor On April 28th, 1967, >> [music] >> Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., now Muhammad Ali, was at the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station in Houston, Texas.

[00:00:38]His name was called. [music] He did not step forward. Three times it was called. Three times he refused. An officer handed him a written statement to sign, [music] acknowledging that refusal to submit to induction was a felony. He refused to sign. He handed them a written statement of his [music] own instead, explaining his position as a conscientious objector based on his [music] Muslim faith. I will say here boldly now on television, no.

[00:01:04]I will not go 10,000 mi from here to help murder and kill another poor people simply to continue the domination of white slave masters.

[00:01:21]Within hours of his refusal, the New York State Athletic Commission suspended his boxing license.

[00:01:26]By the next day, every other state athletic commission had followed. The World Boxing Association stripped him of his heavyweight title. His passport was confiscated.

[00:01:35]>> [music] >> He was convicted of draft evasion by a jury in 48 minutes, sentenced to 5 years in prison and a [music] $10,000 fine. He remained free on appeal, but he could not fight for 3 years and 7 months. From age 25 to 29, [music] the prime years of a heavyweight boxer's career, Muhammad Ali did not box.

[00:01:56]The Supreme Court reversed his conviction unanimously. The Justice Department had quietly changed the grounds for his prosecution three times during the appeals process, never informing the [music] court.

[00:02:08]When the case finally came before the justices, they found the government's stated reasons for denying his conscientious objector [music] status were legally insufficient.

[00:02:18]Eight to zero. He had been right.

[00:02:22]Ali returned to boxing in October 1970.

[00:02:25]He lost to Joe Frazier in March 1971.

[00:02:28]He was not the same fighter who had been banned. The three and a half years were gone. In 1974, he knocked out George Foreman in Kinshasa, regained the heavyweight title at 32.

[00:02:41]In 1996, he lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, his hand shaking with Parkinson's.

[00:02:47]He had been stripped of everything for refusing to kill people who had never done anything to him. He called it the proudest thing he ever did. If you care about real history, subscribe to Afri Eye.