Over the past few days, we've seen image after image of Muhammad Ali: triumphant in the ring, joking on talk shows and shakily lifting the Olympic torch at the 1996 Atlanta games. He's remembered these days as an athlete and a humanitarian, and that was, definitely, Ali. But so was the defiant, incisive Ali."I'm sayin' you talking about me about some draft, and all of you white boys are breaking your necks to get to Switzerland and Canada and London!" Ali once said. "I'm not going to help nobody get something my Negroes don't have. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die right here, fightin' you."He was arguing with white college students in 1967 — a time when black Americans were still being denied the vote in some places and where, in many places, perceived disrespect to whites — even students — could still get a black man killed.Ali's unshakable self-confidence was a revelation to many black men, given those circumstances. "We had not seen an athlete be so brash and bold and swaggering in
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