CIVILIZATION: History of Mammy Market

It was in 1959. Mammy Ode, a young girl from Jericho-Ugboju in the present Otukpo Local Government Area of Benue State was married to Anthony Aboki Ochefu, a young Non-Commissioned military officer who had just been posted to Enugu from Abeokuta. They were quartered at the Army Barracks, Abakpa, Enugu. To beat idleness and perhaps earn some money to support her young family, Mrs. Mammy Ochefu established a soft drinks business. She prepared gruel, which is called umu or enyi in Idoma, or kunu in Hausa, for sale to soldiers.

She soon became popular with her stuff as soldiers trooped to her house to buy enyi. Some of her best customers were officers, who always sent their batmen to buy some of the gruel for them, Monday through Friday.

Somehow, one of the Non-Commissioned Officers, the RSM, did not flow with the enthusiasm, which Mammy’s gruel generated among other military men in the barracks. 

He complained that the stuff was attracting flies into the barracks and ordered Mrs. Mammy Ochefu to stop its production and sale. Though surprised and disappointed at the order of the RSM, she stopped the production and sale of enyi. Her husband, not being an officer at the time, could not challenge the order of the RSM.

For weeks, Mrs. Mammy Ochefu agonized over the fate of her business, just as officers and men of the Nigerian Army who enjoyed her enyi because of its freshness and nutritional value lamented the situation.

 From several quarters, pressure mounted on the RSM for a reversal of the order. After a while, he succumbed to the pressures and directed that a section of the barracks be reserved for Mrs. Mammy Ochefu to produce and sell her enyi. Her joy knew no boundaries. 

Few days after, a section of the barracks was given to her. She built a small shop and soon, her business began to boom. Most of her customers booked for their shares in advance. Before noon, she would have finished selling the available enyi for the day. Soon, other women in the barracks tapped into her fortune and started selling other items. It was not long before that portion of the barracks became known as Mammy Market. 

It also became a policy to establish markets inside or near military barracks in the country, initially for the exclusive use of officers and men. Today, no visit to Abuja, the Federal Capital City, is complete without a taste of fresh fish in one of the Mammy Markets, especially the one attached to Abacha Barracks. Similar markets attached to paramilitary barracks are also called Mammy Markets.

After the coup that overthrew General Yakubu Gowon, Anthony Aboki Ochefu, then a Colonel, was posted to East Central State as Military Governor. So Mrs. Mammy Ochefu and her husband returned to Enugu as the First Family; she sometimes visited the site where Mammy Market started about sixteen years earlier It must be stressed too that in retirement, Colonel Anthony Aboki Ochefu and his wife incorporated a company, Mammy Markets, which was into haulage and trading. Mrs.

 Mammy Ochefu is alive and lives at Otukpo as one of the prized legends of our time.”

Source: Maj Gen KOLEOSO rtd, former Comdt TRADOC.

#cooied.

ORIGINATION OF THE JAMAICAN RELIGION

 Jamaican religious traditions in the United States include Obeah, Jamaican Revivalism or Pukumina, and Rastafari. Obeah is a system of herbal and spiritual technology to cure diseases and offer protection. The Pukumina tradition is more structured than the Obeah tradition, and its rituals share some characteristics with Haitian Vodou. Rastafari, known within the U.S. through its reggae music and its characteristic hairstyle of locs, interprets Africans and African Americans as successors to Biblical prophets.

Over 750,000 African enslaved African people were forcibly brought to Jamaica from the Bight of Biafra, the region of present-day Ghana, and west Central Africa. Beginning in the late 18th century, Jamaica saw the emergence of a variety of African and African-influenced religious traditions. The three major traditions that then reached the United States are called Obeah, Jamaican Revivalism or Pukumina, and Rastafari

Obeah is a form of herbal and spiritual technology primarily used to cure ailments.  Some researchers attribute the origins of Obeah to the Ashanti people of what is now Ghana and their practice of obayifo. In Jamaica, these practices were a legendary component of slave resistance and revolt. In the United States today, Obeah practitioners, commonly referred to as “readers” and known as skilled herbalists, are sought primarily for the healing of physical, spiritual, and mental disorders, and for protection from malevolent spiritual forces.

A Jamaican Revivalist tradition called Pukumina—more structured than Obeah in belief and practice, with numerous churches and congregations—is practiced in most major U.S. cities today. Like mainland Black North American Christianity, Jamaican Revivalism is much more likely to be described as “African” by outsiders than by practitioners themselves, though there are many parallels between Jamaican Revivalist movements and West African cultures. Various Jamaican Revivalist practices recall West African and Haitian religions. For example, each of the various spirits venerated in Revivalism is said to prefer specific foods, colors, and music. Recalling Haitian Vodou, Pukumina ceremonial space includes the “ritual architecture” of a central pole, to which Jamaicans add a basin of water used for spirit-channelling. This apparatus stands at the center of the sacred space, whether it be in the backyard or in a special meeting hall. Drumming and dancing culminate in trances and contact between the practitioners and the spirits who bring about divine healing or divine inspiration. In the Revivalist traditions, however, it is often said to be the Holy Spirit who “mounts” the devotees, or the spirits of Biblical figures such as the prophet Jeremiah and the apostle Peter.

The most famous Jamaican religion is undoubtedly Rastafari, a complex spiritual and political movement that emerged in Jamaica during the depression years of the 1930s. It combined inspirational Jamaican folk Christianity with pan-Africanist sentiments inspired by Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association. In repudiating British colonialism, Rastafaris were inspired by Ethiopia, noted as the one land of Africa mentioned in the Bible. Ethiopia’s 20th century emperor Haile Selassie, “the Lion of Judah,” was believed by Rastafaris to be the 225th king of biblical Ethiopia; they took Haile Selassie’s name, Ras Tafari, the “Prince of Tafari Province,” as their own. Garvey’s dream of a return to Africa became the Rastafari dream as well, and some Rastafaris have indeed settled in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zaire.

Rastafaris interpret the Old Testament as the history of the Black people and as a prophetic key to understanding events in the modern world. They see themselves as successors to the biblical prophets and, like devotees of Jamaican Revivalist movements, often speak as the present-day voices of biblical prophets such as Moses, Joshua, and Isaiah. The characteristic Rastafari hairstyle, locs (dreadlocks), is said to symbolize both the lion’s mane and the strength of Samson. Some Rastafaris believe that African warriors wear their hair in a similar style. The sacramental use of marijuana among Rastafaris is believed to bring divine inspiration, to cure diseases, and to enhance strength.

In the United States, the rhythm of Rastafari reggae music has become one of the best known aspects of this Jamaican religious tradition. The lyrics, like the Rastafari lifestyle, often include a strong note of social protest as well as the dream of returning to the biblical Ethiopia. As Bob Marley sings,

We are the children of the Rastaman. 
We are the children of the Higher Man. 
Africa, Unite ’cause the children wanna come home. 
Africa, Unite ’cause we’re moving right out of Babylon. 
And we’re grooving to our father’s land.

Just as Rastafari identification with the biblical Ethiopia was a strong form of resistance to British colonial society in the 1930s, so today Rastafari protest affirms African identity in the face of Eurocentric Jamaican and American cultures.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN: The Kingdom of Oyotunji in Sheldon, South Carolina

 Oyotunji African village was founded in 1970 in Sheldon, South Carolina by Walter Eugene King. It is a religious and cultural community for African American practitioners of the West African Yoruba faith. At its height, the village was home to over 200 people.

Along the road approaching Oyotunji African Village in Sheldon, South Carolina, a sign is posted in both Yoruba and English:

You are leaving the United States. You are entering Yoruba Kingdom. In the name of His Highness King Efuntola, Peace. Welcome to the Sacred Yoruba Village of Oyo Tunji. The only Village in North America built by Priests of the Orisha Voodoo Cults as a tribute to our Ancestors. These Priests preserve the customs, laws, and religion of the African Race.

Oyotunji Village was founded in 1970 by Walter Eugene King as a religious and cultural community for African American practitioners of the West African Yoruba faith. Its name means “Oyo rises again,” referring to the West African Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, now rising in a new form near the South Carolina seashore.

King, a Detroit native, began studying Afro-Haitian and ancient Egyptian traditions as a teenager. He was further influenced by his contact with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe in New York City, an African American modern dance troupe that drew from many cultures within the African Diaspora. During a trip to Cuba in 1959, King became the first African American to be initiated into the Orisha priesthood and became known as Efuntola Osejiman Adefunmi. After his return to the United States, he formed the Yoruba Temple in Harlem in 1960. The temple, committed to preserving African traditions within an American context, was the cultural and religious forerunner of Oyotunji Village.

With the rise of Black nationalism in the 1960s, King began to envision the construction of a separate African American nation that would institutionalize and commemorate ancestral traditions. In June of 1970, he fulfilled this vision with the creation of Oyotunji African Village. It was during this time that he also established a new lineage of the priesthood, Orisha Vodou, to emphasize the tradition’s African roots. Today, over 300 priests have been initiated into this lineage and the African Theological Archministry, founded by Osejiman Adefunmi in 1966, now serves as the umbrella organization for the Village.

In its early years, Oyotunji Village was home to as many as two hundred people. Today, its residential community consists of less than ten African American families, governed by an Oba ("King" in the Yoruba language) and the community’s appointed council. Each family is committed to the teachings of the Yoruba tradition, which include a religious understanding of the world as comprised primarily of the “energies” of the Supreme Being Olodumare, the Orishas, and the ancestral spirits. This religious world is maintained spiritually through rituals, chants, music, offerings, initiations, and annual ceremonies. In 2005, Adejuyigbe Adefunmi II, the fourteenth of twenty-two children of Efuntola Osejiman Adefunmi, was appointed Oba after his father’s death.

Now more than forty years old, the Kingdom of Oyotunji African Village continues to sustain and promote an appreciation for the “depth of culture, beautiful art, grandeur of customs and resilient history of the New World Yoruba in the United States.” Educational programs and resources are produced through the African Theological Archministry and disseminated through the institution’s network of priests, priestesses, and other professionals. Oyotunji hosts festivals and a trader’s bazaar, produces films and books, and offers spiritual services such as naming ceremonies and coming of ages rites.

SOURCE 

The Pluralism Project
Harvard University
2 Arrow St, 4th Floor
Cambridge MA
02138

DRAMA PIONEER: The man “Hubert Ogunde”

Hubert Ogunde, (born 1916, Ososa, near Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria—died April 4, 1990, London, Eng.), Nigerian playwright, actor, theatre manager, and musician, who was a pioneer in the field of Nigerian folk opera (drama in which music and dancing play a significant role). He was the founder of the Ogunde Concert Party (1945), the first professional theatrical company in Nigeria. Often regarded as the father of Nigerian theatre, Ogunde sought to reawaken interest in his country’s indigenous culture.

Ogunde’s first folk opera, The Garden of Eden and the Throne of God, was performed with success in 1944 while he was still a member of the Nigerian Police Force. It was produced under the patronage of an African Protestant sect, and it mixed biblical themes with the traditions of Yoruba dance-drama. His popularity was established throughout Nigeria by his timely play Strike and Hunger (performed 1946), which dramatized the general strike of 1945. In 1946 the name of Ogunde’s group was changed to the African Music Research Party, and in 1947 it became the Ogunde Theatre Company. Many of Ogunde’s early plays were attacks on colonialism, while those of his later works with political themes deplored interparty strife and government corruption within Nigeria. Yoruba theatre became secularized through his careful blending of astute political or social satire with elements of music hall routines and slapstick.

Ogunde’s most famous play, Yoruba Ronu (performed 1964; “Yorubas, Think!”), was such a biting attack on the premier of Nigeria’s Western region that his company was banned from the region—the first instance in post-independence Nigeria of literary censorship. The ban was lifted in 1966 by Nigeria’s new military government, and in that same year the Ogunde Dance Company was formed. Otito Koro (performed 1965; “Truth is Bitter”) also satirizes political events in western Nigeria in 1963. An earlier play produced in 1946, The Tiger’s Empire, also marked the first instance in Yoruban theatre that women were billed to appear in a play as professional artists in their own right.

Ogunde’s technique was to sketch out the basic situation and plot, and then write down and rehearse only the songs of his plays. The dialogue was improvised, thus allowing the actors to adjust to their audience. The plays produced by his company usually reflected the prevailing political climate and interpreted for audiences the major issues and the aspirations of those in power. His company performed with equal ease in remote villages and in metropolitan centres of Nigeria (as well as throughout West Africa). Many of Ogunde’s later folk operas were basically popular musicals featuring jazzy rhythms, fashionable dance routines, and contemporary satire. Through this format, he set an example for a successful commercial theatre and prepared audiences all over Nigeria for his followers. During the 1960s and ’70s his plays became an important part of the urban pop culture of West Africa.

YORUBA-CUBAN IFA RELIGION LINK: "Santeria": La Regla de Ocha-Ifa and Lukumi

 

Once known as "Santería,"  La Regla de Ocha-Ifá and La Regla de Lukumí came to the United States with Cuban immigrants. Typically practiced in private ritual communities rather than public worship spaces, many practitioners  in the U.S. encounter a lack of knowledge about--and hostility to--their tradition. This serves as a brief, but not comprehensive, introduction to this religious and spiritual tradition with roots in Africa and the Caribbean. 

Of all the New World societies, Cuba received people who were enslaved from the greatest diversity of African origins, and in larger numbers. Forcibly brought from all parts of the coast and interior of western Africa, between 500,000 and 700,000 Africans reached Cuba, the majority arriving in the 19th century. The size and diversity of this population has allowed a rich array of African-inspired religions to continue to flourish there, well beyond the end of the transatlantic slave trade.

The deities of the Yoruba religion from present-day Nigeria, Togo and Benin are called Orishas in Yoruba, Oricha in Spanish. Yoruba people also speak of a supreme being, Olorun or Olodumare, whose power or life-energy, called ashébecomes manifest through both blood-related ancestors called Egun and the Orisha. In Cuba, as in Haiti, West African deities became paired with Roman Catholic saints in syncretistic relationships. In Cuba, the ruler of lightning, called Shangó in Yoruba and Changó in Spanish, is identified with St. Barbara. Ogún, the Orisha who is a blacksmith and is considered the surgeon of the Yoruba pantheon, is identified with St. George, Babalu Ayé is identified with St. Lazarus, while Our Lady of Regla is the patroness of a Havana municipality called Regla.

Given the identification of the Orishaswith the saints, it has long been common to refer to these religious practices as Santería, meaning the "way of the saints." However, this term is now being rejected for its emphasis on the Catholic and syncretistic elements and de-emphasis of the practice's African legacy. Increasingly, many within the Afro-Caribbean tradition prefer to call it La Regla de Lukumí, “the order of Lukumí": the term Lukumí is said to derive from a Yoruba greeting meaning “my friend.” It is also regularly referred to as La Regla de Ocha-Ifá, “the rule of the Orishas,” or simply, Ocha.

In the past few decades, Ocha has come to the United States with Cuban immigrants: in New York, for instance, some believe the Statue of Liberty embodies the presence of Yemayá. Botanicas selling the religious articles, herbs, candles, and images of the tradition proliferate in Miami, Seattle, and New York. It is estimated that between 250,000 and one million practice these traditions in the United States. However there is no visible public infrastructure, as private homes--called Casa-templo ("home temples") serve as sacred spaces for all ceremonies and initiations. 

The practice of Ocha is organized in Ilés(or “houses”) chosen kinship communities of initiates and aspirants led by a particular priestess (Iyalocha) or priest (Babalocha). Most members of the house who have been initiated are referred to as “godchildren.”

New initiates are called Iyawó, “bride of the Orisha,” having made a lifelong commitment to a deity who becomes central to the devotee’s life and consciousness. From the time of initiation, Iyawó present regular offerings and ceremonies. After a period of ritual seclusion, the new initiate becomes becomes an Iyalocha or Babalocha (also referred to as Santera or Santero), and in time, may initiate their own godchildren.

Some cis-male priests are initiated to conduct divination or to discern hidden realities by means of an oracle. These highly prestigious diviners (Babalawos) work with individuals and families, ccommunicating with the Orishas to determine spiritual needs. Babalawos also play a critical role in many initiation ceremonies.

On the altars of initiates, the Orisha are often represented by stones—embodiments of the divine power—placed alongside other sacred emblems inside lidded calabash gourds, bowls, tureens, or jars. Each Orisha also has their own foods, Patakís or sacred stories (myths), numbers, colors, dances, and drum rhythms. At a ceremonial ritual festival in Miami, for instance, Cubans easily recognize each manifest Orisha by means of one's movements.

On the annual anniversary of an Iyalocha/Babalocha initiation, considered their birthday in the religion, a series of ceremonies are made to their guardian Orisha. There are other annual festivities in the Ilé of Ocha including feast days, each one honoring a different Orisha. Many of these feast days roughly coincide with the Roman Catholic saints’ days—again reflecting the symbiotic relationship between Lukumí and Christian traditions. In America, the tradition has developed through these Ilés, which are practitioners' homes.

Although there are large Cuban immigrant communities, the public profile of La Regla de Ocha-Ifá and La Regla de Lukumí has remained very low in part because of hostility and misunderstanding on the part of the dominant culture and anti-Blackness. Though animal sacrifice is but one part of the ceremonies of healing and honorable feasting, it is the aspect most scrutinized by the general public. Conflict over this issue became public in Hialeah, Florida, when the city passed legislation to ban animal sacrifice. The city claimed the legislation was religiously “neutral,” but the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye in Hialeah maintained that the legislation was aimed specifically at Regla de Ocha-Ifá practices. Ernesto Pichardo, the Babalocha of the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, took his case to the courts. Eventually, in 1993, the Supreme Court determined that Hialeah had overstepped the bounds of the law by directing such restrictions on religious practices (Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah).

The Most Prolific Serial Killer in U.S. History: Samuel Little

 

Convicted serial killer Samuel Little claimed to have murdered 93 people between 1970 and 2005. With more than 60 murders confirmed, the FBI called him “the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.”

1940-2020

Who Was Samuel Little?

Samuel Little was the “most prolific serial killer in U.S. history,” according to the FBI. His life of crime began in the 1950s when he was a teenager living in Ohio. For decades, Little moved across the country and was in and out of jail. Then in 2012, he was arrested on an outstanding drug charge, and a DNA test connected him to three unsolved murders in California that dated back to the late 1980s. He was convicted of those murders and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2014. Although he maintained his innocence, Little soon confessed to a barrage of additional murders that spanned 19 states between 1970 and 2005, ultimately claiming responsibility for 93 deaths. Little died in custody in 2020 at age 80. As of December 2021, investigators had confirmed Little was responsible for more than 60 murders. 

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Samuel McDowell
BORN: June 7, 1940
DIED: December 30, 2020
BIRTHPLACE: Reynolds, Georgia
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini 

Early Life

Samuel Little was born as Samuel McDowell on June 7, 1940. Hailing from Reynolds, Georgia, Little claimed his mother was a teenage prostitute and that she had abandoned him. Authorities believe Little’s mother might have given birth to him while she was in jail. Little was raised by his grandmother in Lorain, Ohio. He had a difficult time in high school and eventually dropped out.

Little began committing crimes in his teen years, starting with theft. He was thrown into juvenile detention, and from then on, his crimes grew worse. Starting in the 1950s, he moved around from state to state and got arrested for fraud, driving under the influence, assault, armed robbery, and rape, among other crimes. By 1975, he had been arrested over 25 times across 11 states. In total, he served 10 years from these various offenses and escaped two murder convictions before his 2014 guilty verdict.

A timeline of various booking photos of Samuel Little from 1966-1995

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Little claimed he spent his years in prison learning how to box and that he showed promise as a prize-fighting boxer, a career he ended up not pursuing.

Convictions, Confessions, and Victims

In 2012, Little was located at a homeless shelter in Kentucky and transported to Los Angeles for an outstanding drug charge. Once in custody, Little had his DNA tested, which established his connection to three homicides in California between 1987 and 1989. The victims were Carol Ilene Elford, Guadalupe Duarte Apodaca, and Audrey Nelson Everett.

Samuel Little listens to opening statements during his 2014 murder trial in Los Angeles.

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In 2014, a jury found him guilty of the murders and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. After Little’s conviction, the FBI listed his informationin its Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which began finding strong links between his movements throughout the decades to a slew of unsolved murders across 19 states.

In August 2019, the imprisoned Little pleaded guilty to killing four women in Ohio, including 32-year-old Anna Stewart in 1981. He received two consecutive terms to life in prison and two consecutive sentences of 15 years to life on top of his prior rulings. 

By this point, authorities said they had confirmed at least 60 of the killings Little had admitted to carrying out. During his later years, Little said he hoped his confessions would help exonerate anyone wrongly convicted of his crimes. “I say if I can help get somebody out of jail, you know, then God might smile a little bit more on me,” he told 60 Minutes. 

One of the main reasons Little’s murders went undetected for so long was that many of his victims and alleged victims were on the fringes of society—sex workers, unhoused people, and drug addicts, for example—with many being women of color. “I never killed no senators or governors or fancy New York journalists. Nothing like that,” Little told the New York Times. “I stayed in the ghettos.”

To this day, many of the victims remain unidentified, and many of their deaths were attributed to natural causes, drug overdoses, or accidents. Little’s method of killing started out by punching his victims out cold and then strangling them to death. With no bullet or stab wounds, it was difficult to detect foul play. The Los Angeles Police Department gave him the name “The Choke-and-Stroke Killer” since he often masturbated while strangling his victims.

Samuel Little listens to opening statements during his 2014 murder trial in Los Angeles.

Getty Images

According to New York Magazine, Little believed he was commissioned by God to kill his victims to alleviate their misery. At other times, he felt he was possessed by the devil. Either way, he described murder as a thrill. “It was like drugs,” he told an investigator. “I came to like it.”

In May 2023, authorities identified his earliest known victim: 20-year-old Yvonne Pless. Little murdered her in 1977 in Macon, Georgia. He then killed Fredonia Smith, also in Macon, in 1982.

Victim Drawings

Although Little’s memory of dates and what his victims were wearing at the time of their murders were not entirely accurate, he seemed to have maintained an acute memory regarding other details. “He remembers where he was and what car he was driving. He draws pictures of many of the women he killed,” an FBI statement from 2018 reported.

In 2018, while Little was being held in a California prison, Texas Ranger James Holland visited him in hopes of solving the 1994 murder of a prostitute named Denise Brothers in Odessa, Texas. Little ended up confessing to the murder and many more in exchange to be transferred out of Los Angeles County prison. 

Learning that Little had a talent for drawing, Holland provided him with art supplies so he could illustrate his victims. Little produced impressively accurate portraits of his victims, which the FBI attempted to use in order to solve several dozen cold cases.

“I live in my mind now. With my babies [victims]. In my drawings,” he told New York Magazine. “The only things I was ever good at was drawing and fighting.”

Relationships

Little claimed he was married once, though any record of that hasn’t been confirmed, and was involved in two long-term relationships. He didn’t have any children. 

His most notable long-term relationship with a woman named Orelia “Jean” Dorsey, whom Little met in prison in 1971. According to Cleveland Magazine, Dorsey warned Little that his then-girlfriend Lucy Madero, intended to testify against him in an upcoming robbery trial. Records show a jury found Little not guilty in 1972. Afterward, Dorsey, who was 27 years older, and Little became inseparable, with Dorsey serving as his surrogate mother and traveling companion. The pair shopliftedthousands of dollars in clothing, cigarettes, and electronics up until Dorsey’s death from a brain hemorrhage in 1988.

Death

Little died in custody at a Los Angeles area hospital on December 30, 2020. The 80-year-old’s cause of death wasn’t publicly revealed, though there were no signs of foul play. 

Once an imposing figure at 6-foot-3 and more than 200 pounds, Little had become wheelchair-bound in prison. He suffered from heart problems, diabetes, and other unspecified ailments. 

Documentaries

In 2020, the Oxygen network released a documentary about Little called Catching a Serial Killer: Sam Little.

The next year, the docuseries Confronting a Serial Killer debuted on the Starz network. The five-part series highlighted the relationship between Little and journalist and author Jillian Lauren, who interviewed the imprisoned killer for a book about his crimes and victims. Lauren’s Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killerreleased in July 2023.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! 

Tyler Piccotti

Associate News Editor, Biography.com

Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.comstaff in 2023, and before that had worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, an avid sports fan, a frequent moviegoer, and trivia buff.

SOURCE 

Tyler Piccotti And Eudie Pak

Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali’s Surprising Secret Friendship

 In 1961, an athlete named Cassius Clay prepared for a bout with Duke Sabedong in Las Vegas. The 10-round boxing match was the young boxer’s seventh, but his swagger and charm had already gained him admirers.

That day, the man who would soon become Muhammad Ali received a telegram from an unexpected correspondent. “Your youthful good humor, physical prowess, and flippant charm have made you an idol to many American young people,” it read. “May God protect you and your opponent in the coming contest.” It was signed Martin Luther King Jr.

It was an overture to an unlikely friendship, one that took place on the stormy stage of the Civil Rights Movement. Though it is uncertain how many times MLK and Ali met during their lifetimes, they were friends.

But publicly, the two men couldn’t have been more opposed — and their secret friendship was only revealed to the public through surveillance files that showed the FBI had long been following them.

Despite their differences, King and Ali had a strong bond

The bond between King and Ali was surprising: Ali was the world’s most famous boxer, and an outspoken member of the Nation of Islam, a Black separatist group that preached non-integration and revolution. That was the opposite of King’s ideals of nonviolent protest and integration. 

During the 1960s, the men found themselves on two different sides of a growing rift between King’s Civil Rights Movement, on the one hand, and the NOI’S turbulent vision of Black power, on the other.

But the men had much in common. Both had grown up in the segregated South. They were arguably the two most famous Black men in America — King for his protests and preaching, Ali for his astonishing athleticism. 

And by the end of the 1960s, they were two of the most hated men in the United States, too. Racists branded them both with ugly stereotypes. They decried King’s insistence on the dignity and worth of Black men and his agitation on behalf of the poor, and derided Ali’s insistence on Black pride, from his name change in 1964 to his resistance to the Vietnam War as a white man’s fight.

Publicly, the men could not seem more opposed. “Integration is wrong,” Ali said in 1964 when King was at the height of his visibility for nonviolent protests and calls to integrate Black people into a white-dominated society. “White people don’t want it, the Muslims don’t want it... I don’t join integration marches and I never hold a sign.”

Meanwhile, King repeatedly declined to engage with the Nation of Islam and turned down an invitation by Malcolm X, the NOI’s most visible figure, to march together. “I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views,” King said later.

He may just as well have been speaking of Ali. But ironically, the issue that made Ali one of the most hated Black men in America brought both men together. In 1966, Ali announced that he would refuse to serve in the Vietnam War. “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he said. To Ali, the war was both unethical and not his to fight.

King supported Ali even when the boxer evaded the draft

That decision ignited a tinderbox. The war was already unpopular, and men around the country had begun to dodge the draft and declare themselves conscientious objectors. 

The United States tried to broker a behind-the-scenes deal with Ali, offering him a deal to allow him to serve without seeing actual combat in the hopes of avoiding his becoming a public conscientious objector. It failed, and Ali was arrested and charged with draft evasion. 

Ali paid a heavy price for his actions: His heavyweight title and boxing license were stripped from him, leaving him unable to box and the subject of derision and hatred from those who supported the war.

But not King: He publicly supported Ali and his actions. “He’s doing what he’s doing on the basis of conscience,” he said in a news conference. “He’s absolutely sincere. I strongly endorse his actions.”

This was a change in tune for King, who had opposed the war in private but only addressed  his opposition in public in 1967 after Ali took his stand. Friends later told Ali’s biographer, Michael Ezra, that they thought Ali’s public stance had helped prompt King’s public opposition to the war.

King mentioned Ali to his parishioners, too. “No matter what you think of Mr. Muhammad Ali’s religion, you certainly have to admire his courage,” he said.

Ali called King his "brother"

In private, the men had already long been friends. FBI notes from a 1964wiretap of their conversation show Ali telling King that he is keeping up with his work and “that MLK is his brother and is with him 100 percent but can’t take any chances.” 

They continued to talk on the phone after Ali refused the draft, and when King was imprisoned in 1967 after organizing what police characterized as an un-permitted protest, Ali sent a telegram to jail that read “Hope you are comfortable not suffering.”

During Ali’s trial for draft evasion, the men’s conversations became public during discovery materials that unexpectedly revealed the FBI had been wiretapping King’s phones without a warrant for years. Though a judge later ruled that the transcripts of the calls did not affect Ali’s conviction for draft evasion, they were big news and confirmation of the widespread fear of both men.

In 1967, King and Ali appeared together in public, standing together at a rally for fair housing in Louisville, Kentucky. “In your struggle for justice, freedom, and equality, I am with you,” Ali told King as cameras rolled.

Though they remained opposed on many points, it makes sense that two of the most prominent, and vulnerable, Black men in the United States would bond. But the friendship was cut tragically short in 1968 when King was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis. “Dr. King was my great Black Brother,” Ali later recalled. “He’ll be remembered for thousands of years to come.”

SOURCE 

Erin Blakemore