“It’s Muhammed Ali!”

Posted on by

I only saw him once. Close up.

Holy Angels Catholic Church

Holy Angels Catholic Church, the African-American Catholic Church in South Side Chicago, was packed. Father George Clements, a bold community leader on the South Side, had convened the community meeting.

I don’t recall why we were there that afternoon. I only remember who was there.

Two pews in front of us sat a Michelangelo-chiseled figure of flesh and blood in a black suit. Massive square shoulders, thick muscled neck, beyond regal…a Greek god, Atlas perhaps, sitting erect and still, near the back of the crowed church. There was no mistaking who he was.

Muhammed Ali

“It’s Cassius Clay!” I blurted out to my fiancee…in what I thought was a whisper… pointing to the large man two rows in front of us.

“MUHAMMED ALI!” came the woman’s corrective voice from behind us. The young, embarrassed, white Christian seminarian thanked her, apologized, and sat quietly the rest of the afternoon.

Ali, the World Champion, had changed his name from Cassius Clay. He had joined the Nation of Islam. Ali refused military induction as a conscientious objector. His conviction would overturned by the U.S.Supreme Court. At the time he refused to step forward for induction to serve in the Viet Nam War, he asked:

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”“

Father George H. Clements went on to become the first African-American in the Archdiocese of Chicago to be appointed to the position of Pastor.

Father George H. Clements at Mass

As Pastor of Holy Angels, Fr. George Clements moved a statue of St. Anthony and set up an altar honoring Dr. King following Dr. King’s assassination. When the archdiocese expressed its disapproval, Fr. Clements refused to reconsider.

“Acclamatio populorum—”the people acclaim a saint,” he said. “If the cardinal wants it down, he’ll have to take it down himself.”

The Martin Luther King, Jr. statue remained in place.

Fr. Clements would later become famous as the first priest to adopt a child. He added a new title -“Dad” – as the adoptive father of four African-American children, and founded One Church – One Child, a movement in his parish inviting African-American families to adopt homeless African-American children. The program became nation-wide and still exists today.

15 thoughts on ““It’s Muhammed Ali!””

  1. Sweet story evokes my MLK-Ali memories. 1964, Cassius Clay won the big fight. Although I never came close to caring a fig about boxing… it’s serious nostalgia for me. After several months of military training in Greenville Mississippi, I was heading home to Minnesota on the train. President Kennedy was killed while I was on duty in Greenville. MLK won the Nobel Prize, was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. (A quote from a white Savanna Georgia airman in my company: “Martin Fucking, Luther Fucking King… man of the year.) It’s the place where the base commander and the chaplain advised the auditorium full of Air Force trainees to not venture in to town in racially mixed company… even though every hour of every day the young white boy from Minneapolis was in “mixed” company on the base… learning about why there was a MLK. I observed the racism on the base… and I experience the “colored” facilities in town. It was the first time I was meeting black people. Because of my father’s military history… I had a pretty good anti-racist chip on my shoulder.

    On the train, everyone was talking about the big fight. Might as well have been car engine talk to me… zero interest. Except… the talk included anger about the “sassy” attitude of Clay. My four years in the Air Force made a life-time anti-war activist out of me. Mohammad Ali was one of my heroes on that front “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” Ali’s pal Howard Cosel was one of my favorite thinkers. He had a focused radio show where he did not talk sports. I never missed it. I also listened to MLK’s little known radio show.

    I am so freak’n gratified by the wonderful beautiful human beings of 2012. There were zero black kids in my Minneapolis High School. 50th reunion last month. Got the tour of the old school. Half of the students are not caucasian. I stopped and talked to a few black students… building was jump’n even though it was August. Dang, I love the humans.

    Like

    Reply ↓

  2. I was glad to read about Fr. Clements and learn of his starting the One Church, One Child program. I had heard of this when I was working in public child welfare but never knew anything about it’s origins. It was good to read about Ali again. The part about referring to him as “Cassius” by the young seminarian was new to me!!!

    Like

    Reply ↓

  3. That is extremely inspiring. I did not know any of that information. Thank you for writing about your experience – you have been in the room with many great people, including the times when you were alone in a room.

    Like

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Christina, Flattery will get you everywhere! I’ve been lucky/fortunate/blessed to be in places where things were happening. Our preaching professor at McCormick, Rev. John Fry, Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church, South Side Chicago, was a man very much like Father Clements. Fry and Clements were birds of a feather. When one of the students in the preaching class preached a sermon that had nothing much to do with anything, Fry declared that anyone who treated scripture that lightly again would get an automatic ‘F’. “The gospel of Jesus cuts with a knife! If it doesn’t ruffle some feathers, it’s not the gospel.”

      Like

      Reply ↓

Leave a comment