Today Is...Muhammad Ali Refuses US Army Draft

I have only ever seen Muhammad Ali fight in old clips so if he was the greatest i will leave to people who watched him in his pomp to argue over but outside of the ring his support for civil rights certainly made him a giant.
Calling a black man racist names is frowned upon these days but it wasn't very nice back in his day either but it never stopped white people from doing it which is why he refused to be drafted to fight in Vietnam as America had to recruit it's youth to fill the tens of thousands of coffins and American flags that they had
ordered but he refused to co-operate with the US government in oppressing another race of people and said that he had: 'No quarrel with them Vietcong' and 'No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger', that abuse came just from my own countrymen'.
He was stripped of his title, fined $10,000 and was given five years in jail, a sentence that was later quashed on appeal.
That he made a stand when the Vietnam war was still popular and at a time when black people still lacked basic civil rights in America was a huge step, such was the racism in America that you had Rednecks with three teeth and their dungarees buttoned up wrong saying things like: 'you can't go mixing up white and
black folks blood because you might accidentally make us white folk less intelligent'.
When he refused the draft he must have known that it would hit his boxing career and his popularity but he was a rare breed where his largest impact was felt far beyond the boxing ring where he gave up some of the best years of his sporting career on principle and therefore moved on civil rights for generations to come and that is why he is rightly called an inspiration.