Why Muhammad Ali Refused to Serve in the Vietnam War
Muhammad Ali was drafted by the US military and called up for induction in 1967. He attended the induction but refused to answer to his name or take the oath. This led to Ali’s arrest and conviction, which was overturned by the US Supreme Court.
Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay, 1942-2016) was outspoken about many political issues, including his opposition to the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was raging, American soldiers were dying by the hundreds, protesters were burning draft cards and conscientious objectors were fleeing to Canada.
Ali had no intention of fleeing to Canada, but he also had no intention of serving in the Army.
“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” he had explained two years earlier. “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”
The previous April, Ali had declared himself a conscientious objector and refused induction into the U.S. Army, famously saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
By 1968, 19,560 Americans had died in the Vietnam War and another 16,502 would die that year alone. It was the year the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army mounted the Tet Offensive, an ambitious campaign that helped persuade the American public that the war wasn't going as well as the generals and politicians had led them to believe.
The war was escalating, as was opposition to it. Just a few weeks before Ali said no to his draft board, Martin Luther King Jr., had denounced the war. He later quoted Ali in support of his position: "As "Muhammad Ali puts it, we are all — black and brown and poor — victims of the same system of oppression."
Ali was already one of America's greatest heavyweights ever. He'd won an Olympic gold medal for the United States in Rome when he was just 18 and four years later, against all odds, defeated Sonny Liston to win his first title as world champion.
Ali was drafted by the United States military in 1966 and called up for induction in 1967. He attended the induction but refused to answer to his name or take the oath. This led to Ali’s arrest and conviction, which in June 1971 was overturned by the US Supreme Court.
On June 20, 1967, Ali was convicted by a Houston jury of a felony charge of violating the Universal Military Training and Service Act. According to a New York Times report, federal District Judge Joe E. Ingraham sentenced Clay to five years in prison and fined him $10,000.
Banned from boxing, he and his attorneys would spend the next four years appealing that verdict. As the Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular, Ali made speeches on university campuses, becoming an antiwar and civil rights hero.