Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali

In 1966, Life magazine assigned Gordon Parks to cover the controversial young boxing champion Muhammad Ali. In 1970, the two came together again for a second Life feature. These encounters framed a critical passage in Ali’s early career. In the midst of the civil rights movement, Ali’s anti-Vietnam War and black separatist views were unpopular with many Americans. As Ali fought for his beliefs, Parks used his talents as a journalist to help re-shape the boxer’s public image. Despite their generational differences, Parks and Ali both battled racism and prejudice throughout their careers. They understood the power of media to influence popular opinion. Ali cultivated a contentious, memorable media persona, while Parks used the broadly influential platform of Life to present a sympathetic image of Ali during this formative period. 

Gordon Parks first met Muhammad Ali in the spring of 1966. Ali’s public image was, as Parks described it, “in tatters…He [had become], in the public eye, not just a loud-mouthed kid but a ‘shameless traitor.’” Ali had publicly denounced the war in Vietnam; the following year, he would be stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing the draft. Many Americans vilified him for joining the Nation of Islam, a religious and political organization that promoted black separatism over racial integration.

Over several weeks, Parks photographed the champion in Miami and London as he trained for a fight against the English boxer Henry Cooper. Life published only three of the 850 images Parks took for the assignment in the September 9, 1966, issue, accompanied by Parks’s essay, “The Redemption of the Champion.” Through his earnest reporting, Parks conveyed a nuanced portrait that brought readers closer to understanding Ali’s motivations and beliefs. 

Ali’s affiliation with the Nation of Islam (NOI), a religious and political organization of black separatists, unsettled many Americans. On a previous Life assignment, Parks spent time with the group’s leaders, including (at that time) Malcolm X. Though Parks disagreed with many of the NOI’s tenets, he understood the anger and frustration of its members in the wake of the era’s brutal racial violence. 

Parks describes the impact of the NOI on Ali’s beliefs in his 1966 written essay for Life, but his photographs of these encounters were not printed. Parks and the editors of Life knew that pictures had a more immediate impact than words and could be misinterpreted without additional context. In the eyes of a polarized public, such images would likely have undermined the nuanced portrait of Ali that Parks aimed to impart. 

Gordon Parks made one of his most arresting portraits of Ali during his visit to Lord’s Cricket Ground, just after he defeated Henry Cooper in London’s Arsenal Stadium on May 21. Formally dressed, the boxer appears thoughtful, peaceful, and confident. Posed looking into the light, Ali appears “illuminated,” both literally and spiritually.  Hanging on the wall behind him is an English sporting portrait. Ensuring that the painting is visible, Parks aligns Ali’s athletic legacy with celebrated historical precedents. Parks presents Ali as a man whose legend will endure, and a figure who firmly belongs in sporting history.

In April 1967, Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title. Convicted on charges of draft evasion, he was banned from professional boxing in the United States. For the next three-and-a-half years, pending appeal of his case, Ali traveled across the country, speaking out against the Vietnam War and American racism.

During this period, public sentiment increasingly turned against the war. Ali's views sharpened as he spoke to college students, many of whom had participated in the antiwar and civil rights movements. Over time, Ali's dedication to causes beyond prize money and sponsorship earned him the respect of a broad, middle-class public.

 

By 1970, Ali was eager to return to boxing. Life published Parks’s photographs of Ali preparing for his highly anticipated comeback fight against Jerry Quarry. Parks’s striking color portrait of Ali made the magazine’s cover, accompanied by the headline, “Look out-he’s back! A different Muhammad Ali returns to the ring.” No longer in need of “redemption,” as implied in Parks’s 1966 article, Ali was reentering the public arena brimming with confidence and a heightened sense of purpose. 

The enormity of Ali’s fame, and the bravado he often displayed, could have made him a difficult subject for Parks. But Parks was no ordinary photographer. It is a testament to his immense talent, and the trust these two men placed in one another, that the photographer was able to convey the complexity and humanity of the young athlete at this crucial moment in Ali’s early career.

As historian Gerald Early so eloquently writes in his catalogue essay, “Even [Ali] could not control the transcendent nature of his own meaning, which may signify that in a way he made being black a transcendent kind of humanity.”



Using his influential platform at Life magazine, Gordon Parks helped shape that meaning, and indeed embodied a transcendent humanity himself. Ultimately, the remarkable success of these two men went well beyond the pages of Life, reshaping American culture and the annals of history. 

Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself, and becoming a photographer. During his storied tenures photographing for the Farm Security Administration (1941–1945) and Life magazine (1948–c. 1971), Parks evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man: he found success as a film director, writer, and composer. The first African American director to helm a major motion picture, he introduced the Blaxploitation genre through his film Shaft (1971). He wrote numerous memoirs, novels, and books of poetry, and received countless awards, including the National Medal of Arts, and more than fifty honorary degrees. Parks died in 2006. Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. (1942-2016), was an American professional boxer, activist, and philanthropist. Nicknamed “The Greatest,” he is widely regarded  as one of the most significant sports figures of the twentieth century and one of the greatest boxers of all time.