During an era when African-Americans continued to be treated as second-class citizens, and those living in southern states were subject to an ugly and often brutal system of racial apartheid, few did more to nurture black pride than Muhammad Ali.
The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr may have been the untitled leader of the civil rights movement, winning the Nobel Peace Prize and delivering the finest oration that Americans had heard since the Gettysburg Address, but many young blacks especially did not consider him anywhere near radical enough.
