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A merican public perception of Muhammad Ali has undergone a dramatic shift since his conviction for draft evasion. Although Ali was once a controversial figure, his image has stabilized over the last forty years. Hated by many during the late 1960s, Ali has come full circle in the new millennium, admired almost universally, excepting a handful of dissenters . Ali’s makeover from a largely disliked figure into one now understood in more positive terms is nothing new. People who could be viewed as Ali’s cultural peers, like former Nation of Islam (NOI) spokesman Malcolm X and Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight champion, have been similarly reconstructed as misunderstood trailblazers who were ahead of the times. While interesting, America’s forgiving of Ali is hardly unique.1 One factor that makes Ali’s transformation worth studying is its intensity. Public sentiment toward Ali has skyrocketed past forgiveness into veneration . A vague collective understanding that previous generations were wrong about him has gushed forth into a full-blown movement to canonize him as a standard-bearer of American values and the embodiment of the best things this country has to offer. It is this sanctification that makes the rehabilitation of Ali’s image unprecedented, going way beyond anything that has happened to Jack Johnson, Malcolm X, or any other once-controversial figure. The mainstream that once rejected Ali now embraces him. In American cultural history, there are simply no parallels to what has happened. Thus, this final section of Muhammad Ali: The Making of an Icon is dedicated to making sense of this strange process, figuring out why this Forty Years of Ali The Making of an Icon 138 Good People transformation has happened and what has sustained it, and speculating about its future. While understanding the evolution of Ali’s image is important in itself, the more significant task is to use it as a window to view how American society works. Although the details of his life must be assessed in order to get to its larger significance, the big picture is not really about Ali, but rather about how economic concerns, race matters, and historiography come together to create symbols and folklore that influence the ways people perceive themselves and the world. The relationships between the commercial and cultural aspects of Muhammad Ali’s life and career reflect the societies in which they have existed. Although it encompasses a much broader period than previous parts have, this section maintains an analytical focus on the relationships between moral authority and financial interests. At the heart of the investigation are the questions of how and why Ali’s moral authority, once largely shaped by the external forces with which he was associated, like the Louisville Sponsoring Group and the NOI, now rests primarily on Ali himself, despite the irony that he is less able to shape his own meaning than ever before because the tools that he once used to do so, boxing and speaking, are no longer available. Doubly ironic is that this change in public perception has occurred as the desires of those who stand to profit from his image have superseded Ali’s in the public transmission of what he purports to represent. Ali has less control than ever before over his meaning, yet more than ever before people recognize him, and he is represented, as being its sole author and owner. It is the assessment of this paradox that ultimately drives my study of Ali’s life and career during the past half century or so. ...

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