- My name is Muhammad Ali.
I am a black Islam...
I'm a black Muslim.
I am the people's champion.
(dramatic orchestral music)
- Hello!
I'm Carl Tart, and we're about to talk about
the first black player to integrate Major League Baseball.
- Oh, Jackie Robinson.
- No!
Moses Fleetwood Walker.
It's 1882.
Moses Fleetwood Walker is a student at Oberlin College,
and he's like, "I'm studying law,
I'm reading all these books.
This is wrong, this is good, this is bad, this is hell yeah,
this is hell no, but something's tearing at my heart.
I gotta play baseball.
I'm leaving college to do this,
so it better be a good idea."
So, he dips.
He joins the minor league team, Toledo Blue Stockings.
So, Fleet is playing catcher, but at this point,
catchers weren't playing with mitts.
He's playing with his bare hand.
That shit is some extra shit.
He's killin' it, though.
So, it's May 1st, 1884,
and it's opening day.
The Toledo Blue Stockings get invited
to the newly-formed American League.
They'e like, "Congratulations, white dudes and Moses.
Welcome to Major League Baseball."
Moses is like, "I'm about to be the first black dude
to ever play in Major League Baseball.
This is what I wanted to do.
This is why I left oss...
Oss...
Law school and nobody can tell me different.
I'm about to go out here and swing these bats,
catch these balls, hit these balls,
swing these bats."
This is 1884.
Think about this shit.
This is 17 years removed from slavery.
Like, 17 years.
Slavery can't drink yet.
Slavery can't fight in the war yet.
If you text slavery a picture of your knee,
you goin' to jail.
(laughing)
Let's go, let's move on.
So, he's playin', but he's experiencing
all kind of racism on the road.
He's walking up to hotels and they're like,
"You can't sleep here.
Your team can sleep here, but you can't sleep here."
And he's like, "What?
How can I not sleep here?"
Like, he's sleeping on park benches
as a Major League Baseball player.
Fans were terrible, and they're like, "Hold up!
We didn't come to see no black people on this field.
We came to see our thoroughbred whites."
And then they get to Richmond, Virginia,
and the manager of the Toledo Blue Stockings gets a letter,
and so he runs to Fleet's room,
which Fleet's room is the park bench across the street,
and he gets over there and he kicks the bench
a couple times, saying, "Fleet, wake up, Fleet."
Huh, huh, what?
He goes, "Man, you can't play the game no more.
I just got a letter.
75 dudes are gonna be outside waiting to beat yo ass.
You gotta not play tomorrow."
Moses was like, "I ain't taking no risks.
If it is flake, I ain't fake, flate.
If it is Frosted Flakes.
(laughing)
Oh my god!
- Now I'm drunk and this was supposed to be your show.
- Yeah!
(laughing)
So, he doesn't play that game.
He just sits out.
So, then they go to play against
the Chicago White Stockings.
Their manager, his name is Cap Anson,
and Cap Anson is like, "Y'all jerseys is clean,
and his jersey's clean but his face is black.
I'm not playin' with him."
And so, manager from Blue Stockings, Toledo,
goes over to Cap and is like, "Yo, Cap, we have to play.
Either you goin' take this L, or we gonna play.
And Cap was like.
(growling)
"I don't wanna lose!
All right, fine.
I'll play this black dude this time,
but I'll be back."
And so, manager of the Blue Stockings
goes back over to Fleet, and he's like,
"Fleet, I know you're resting today, but you gotta play."
He's like, "What?
Look at my hands.
My hands is the size of a donut factory."
And he's like, "You need to play, because they said
they weren't gonna play you because you're black."
He's like, "What?
Hold up.
(chuckling) Well, I'm about to play today.
They must've thought wrong
because I'm about to be on that field today.
My name is Fleet and I'm about to be on my feet
and bending my knees because I'm a catcher."
(laughing)
So,
oh shit.
We got it, we good.
And to make things worse,
he's got a pitcher named Tony Mullane.
He's like, "I'm not even pitching real to this dude.
I'm pitching what I want to pitch."
Fleet calls slider, he throws a curve.
Fleet calls curve, he throws a knuckle slide,
but Fleet was so good that he had the media on his nuts.
"The Toledo Blade" was like,
"Fleet is the most valuable player
at catcher, at bat,
than any other player."
This is crazy that they're saying this about a black dude
who's playing in Major League Baseball.
"We shouldn't have no black people on this team.
I don't want to play with them."
- Mullane has the chance there to be the white savior
from every movie about racism.
- Yeah, the white savior, but this ain't a movie.
- This is real life.
(laughing)
So, it's
1987.
No, it's not.
It's 1887,
and, once again, he gets to Chicago
and his old friend there is waiting to greet him.
And Cap was like, "Well, now
I got a whole group of people who don't (bleep) with you."
And they kick him out of the game.
Major League Baseball said,
"Black people ain't gonna play in this shit
for a long-ass time."
So, after that, he's like,
"This racism shit is too hard.
I'm going back to studying and inventing shit."
So, basically, when Fleet left the game,
that ban lasted
for 63 years
until Jackie Robinson gets put in the pros.
- What would you say the moral of this story is?
- If you think got a hero,
research that hero,
and know who came before that hero
and paved the way for that hero.
- That was all great.
Can we just do it one more time with your eyes open?
(both laughing)
- Hello, today we're gonna talk about
Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling.
Big fights.
America versus the Nazis.
Let's do it.
Joe Louis was a boxer from Alabama.
He's upwardly-coming, and he had a rockin' bod,
and he's fighting this dude, Max Schmeling.
Max Schmeling, he lived in Germany.
He was a German during the time of the Nazis.
Schmeling had won the Heavyweight Championship in 1930
cause Jack Sharkey hit him in the nuts
and got disqualified.
So, he basically won
the Heavyweight Championship of the world
by getting hit in the nuts.
Joe Louis' manager was like,
"We're gonna take this ex-champion, Schmeling,
throw him in front of Louis, Louis will pummel him."
Joe Louis was like,
"I ain't training for this schmuck, you know?"
Instead of training, he was playing golf,
and he had all these women coming around and stuff.
So he's (bleep) and playing golf and stuff
instead of training for his fight.
Mmm.
So, the first fight was at Yankee Stadium.
There's tens of thousands of people there,
and everyone just assumes
Joe Louis is gonna kick Max Schmeling's butt.
Like, Hitler didn't even want it advertised in Germany.
Hitler was like, "This guy's gonna lose.
We don't want anyone to know about the fight."
It was like, Joe was doin' all right,
and then Max Schmeling just starts comin' at him.
He was like, boom, boom, boom.
And then (bleep) Schmeling knocks him down
for the first time in his whole career.
Joe Louis was like, oh, (bleep).
I shouldn't have been (bleep) golfing.
And he
loses.
So, Louis feels like,
"I'm not the real champ til I beat
Max Schmeling, you know, cause he beat me before,
so I'm gonna...
Now, I want to beat him."
And so, they basically ended up deciding
they were gonna fight again, and he was at the White House,
and Roosevelt said, "We need these arms to beat the Nazis.
Are you gonna win or whatever?"
And he's like, "Yeah, I gotta...
I can't do what I did before.
I can't (bleep) up and lose.
I gotta get my (bleep) in shape.
No women, no golf.
Joe Louis trains hard this time.
He doesn't play golf.
He doesn't (bleep) chicks, he just trains,
and the second fight was at Yankee Stadium,
and Hitler was suddenly Mr. Cool.
Like, "All right, we're gonna win.
Let's do this, tell everybody.
Let's party.
Let's watch the fight.
Everybody, you can be out til 3:00 A.M.
All the bars have to have booze, so you can celebrate.
And also, we will use the prize money to build tanks."
Cause he thought he was gonna win.
Joe Louis was prepared, and he's just like,
"(bleep) one, two, one, two."
And Hitler's like, "Uh-oh, spaghettio.
Don't let anybody hear this.
Pull the plug."
They pulled it from German radio,
cause they knew what was gonna happen.
Like, "Never mind, don't worry about it.
Go do your thing.
No Jews.
Thank you, bye."
- [Man] I don't like this idea.
- Just fight nicely.
Delicate.
One, delicate.
- Thank you.
- Joe Louis is pummeling Schmeling.
Left,
right.
- All right.
(friendly scuffling)
Okay, okay, all right.
All right, you win.
Oh, no!
No!
You got me good.
(both laughing)
The greatest fight of all time.
- And the ref said, "It's over
and Joe Louis won."
"America won."
People in America were like,
"Even me, an ass (bleep) racist American,
can realize we're beating the Nazis."
"That's (bleep) amazing!
I love that guy."
Hey.
- [Man] You won.
- I know.
I'm trying to get up.
Hold on, thank you.
(painful grunting)
- Hi, I am Ashley Barnhill,
and today, we're gonna discuss the Cleveland Summit.
- [Man] Cheers.
- So, in 1964,
at the age of 22,
Cassius Clay, he is fighting Sonny Liston.
Clay is a seven-to-one underdog.
He's not gonna win.
He goes, "You're an ugly bear.
You smell like a bear.
You're an ugly bear.
You smell like a ugly bear.
When I'm done with you, when I beat you,
I'm gonna donate you to the zoo."
Bam, bam, bam.
He wins.
Yeah, he becomes the World Heavyweight Champion.
Right after he wins the championship, he announced,
"My name is Muhammad Ali.
I'm a black Islam...
I'm a Black Muslim.
I am the people's champion.
So, the war was going on.
Muhammad Ali
was drafted.
He was like, "You know, my religion doesn't...
I'm not allowed to fight in wars.
This doesn't seem right."
- "Yeah.
(gaggin)
"You all right?"
- "Yeah, I'm okay."
Should I start over from the beginning?
- [Man] Yeah, can you start again?
(laughing)
- We're gonna be talking about the Cleveland Summit.
(both laughing)
- So,
Muhammad Ali is drafted and and he says,
"Now, I'm a conscientious objector.
My religion doesn't let me fight in a war."
And then he also added, "I have no quorum with Viet Cong.
Like, no Viet Cong has ever called me the N-world... N-word.
No Viet Cong has ever sicced dogs on me."
The draft board said was...
The draft board says,
"Too bad.
Sorry, we don't accept that.
You have to go to the induction ceremony."
(cracking)
- [Man] Geeze!
How the (bleep) did you do that?
That was, like, four cracks.
(laughing)
- So he goes to the induduction,
and the officer's like,
"We're gonna say your name,
and then you have to step forward.
Okay.
Cassius Clay."
"My name is Muhammad Ali."
He doesn't step forward.
"Cassius Clay."
And he doesn't step forward.
And the officer is like,
"Do you understand what you are doing?
Basically, if you don't step forward,
you're committing a felony.
You can serve five years in prison."
"Thank you, I know what I'm doing."
"Cassius Clay."
He doesn't step forward.
That day, he's stripped of his medals,
his boxing title...
his boxing license, and his title.
Okay, people in America were like,
"Ugh, this is bull (bleep).
This guy's just trying to getting...
This guy's just trying to get out of going to the war.
Muhammad Ali's manager calls football legend, Jim Brown,
and he's like, "Can you talk to him?
Can you convince him to go to the army?
And can you not tell him I told you this?
Or anyone I told you this.
Can you keep your mouth shut?
Can you keep your (bleep) mouth shut?
Don't (bleep) tell anyone I ever told you this.
Bye!"
Jim Brown is very shocked.
"This is shocking.
This is a shocker."
Jim Brown calls John Wooten and he goes,
"Can you gather ten
of the most prominent, top black athletes
and meet me in Cleveland?"
"Yeah, on it."
Everyone's just like,
"Yeah, see you there, got it.
Be there."
"We're talking to Ali?
He's my hero, okay."
So, basically, they're all like,
"We have all served, you know, we've been part of ROTC.
We've been lieutenants of this and that.
We've been in
this and that
military-affiliated...
We're served, we've served.
What's going on, you know?"
He talked for two hours straight
and just kind of talked about
his religious convictions and beliefs.
I stand by my religion.
Black Muslim religion.
The Nation of Islam, which is basically,
I will not contribute to any war.
- That's a good point.
- That is a good point.
They face the media.
"Hi, media.
Yeah, we thought this guy was full of (bleep),
and this guy, have you met Ali?
This guy,
we support Ali.
We believe in him, and he's sincere and we believe in...
we validate his religious conviction."
Ali was on trial.
It was presented in front of an all-white jury,
And within 21 minutes,
they found him guilty, and he's sentenced to five years.
So, he appealed and he appealed,
and basically, he gets to the Supreme Court.
So, the Supreme Court is planning
on ruling five-to-three against Ali,
but then Justice John Harlan reads a book
based on Black Muslim religious doctrine,
and he goes to all the other justices and is like,
"We screwed up.
This is me convincing you.
I am convincing you we screwed up,
you screwed up, I screwed up.
We have to change our opinion."
"Okay, you're right."
So, they anonysmally
vote.
Anonys...
Anonysmally?
I have a hard word sober.
- [Man] Anonymous?
- Anonysmally.
No, that's not the word.
They anonysmally...
(both laughing)
Anonysmally.
So, basically, they vote for Ali to go free.
He wanted to be the greatest,
and eventually he would become the greatest.
"This is what I stand for.
I don't care if you don't believe in it.
I'm gonna die for it."
Ali fought for
his religion.
He fought for his race.
He fought for civil rights.
He fought for...
I mean, kind of everything that was going on at the time.
He changed the world.