Daniel Johnson
   Sports Editor

It is currently 1:15 AM, June 4th, that this piece is being written. An hour ago, a cultural, sports, and world icon passed away in a Phoenix hospital. Muhammad Ali, in the most turbulent time of this country’s history became the largest name in any professional sport and one of the faces of the countercultural era of the 1960s, died. That sentence alone is difficult to say. I am fighting tears  as I attempt to write some sort of farewell or final tribute to this world giant. But it is impossible to paint a picture to Ali’s life and legacy. It’s a picture that would dwarf the ceiling of sistine chapel and be more complex in its beauty and mystery than the Mona Lisa.

The desire of winning and success through hard work and perseverance has pushed sports and the athletes who dominate their respected sport into the spotlight of this country. There are some names that people just know. You may have never swung a baseball bat in your life, but you have heard the name Babe Ruth before. On the basketball court, you may have two left feet, but you’re wearing “Air Jordans”, hoping to fly like Michael Jordan. There is a chance you never been in a fist fight, but there is something in you saying to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” However, describing the man formerly known as Cassius Clay as just a great athlete would be an insult to his name.

In the late 1960s, Muhammad Ali was an open black militant and member of the Nation of Islam, a powerful and influential organization in the 60s, often considered to be dangerous by news outlets. Yet Ali was loved by blacks and whites alike. The two most prominent African Americans activist of the 1960s, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, were both touched by Ali, with Malcolm bring him into the NOI and Ali’s decision to refuse to serve in the Army pushing Dr. King to be more vocal against the Vietnam War.  All his showboating and invented rhymes before, during, and after fights left us with some of the greatest sound bites in news media history and influenced a generation of black Americans who would plant those rhymes into the streets of the New York boroughs and grow the foundation of hip hop through the 1970s.

When a Parkinson’s stricken Muhammad Ali lit the opening flames of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, I was 58 days old. Yet, the moment I saw the first R.I.P tweet about Ali’s death, time and my body stood still. After a couple moments (I can’t say minutes because I lost track of time), I ran to the next room. It’s past midnight but I had to wake up my older brother who, a couple months prior, I had bought him a 24×18 poster of Ali, standing over and taunting a fallen Sonny Liston. For a moment, he was angry at being disturbed, but his anger turned into confusion and acceptance when I told him of Muhammad Ali’s death. Then I called my father in Mississippi, where it was 11:30 at the time and I expected him to be asleep. I had to call him. I know Muhammad Ali was one of his first heroes. He answered and all I could do was to dip my head. I could only muster two sentences

. “Are you watching tv?” He said no. “Turn on CNN, Muhammad Ali died.”

I’m twenty years old, over six feet, and easily over 200 lbs, but I have not felt weaker and lighter since my grandmother’s passing earlier this year. And I’m not a boxing fan! I do not watch boxing at all, aside from the occasional highlight video on YouTube! But once again, Ali was more than a boxer, an athlete, man, or the Greatest as he and most of his contemporaries called him. Ali has obtained icon status in this country and around the world. He was a person who negotiated a hostage release in 1990 in Iraq. He was a person that in 1981, talked a suicidal man off ending his life, saying “I am your brother” and staying with him until he literally carried him out the window and into safety. A person who was refused the lunch counter in his hometown, with an Olympic Gold medal around his neck and sacrificed the best years of his career for his beliefs. He was a person that in September of 2001, ravaged by Parkinson, spoke on behalf of his religion and against those who hijacked it for their own demented actions.

Watch old films of his fights and his speeches. His famous back-and-forths with Howard Cosell and his quick rhymes on the streets. Through all of this, I’m reminded of one story in particular. When Ali, then Cassius Clay, was 12, he wandered into a boxing gym after his bike was stolen fuming; a petty crime that set the stage for one of the greatest cultural icons of the 20th century.