Mohammed Ali threw his first Olympic Gold medal in the Ohio River

#StoryTime Muhammad Ali won his first Olympic gold medal in 1960 in Rome, Italy.

In his book, The Soul of a Butterly, he wrote: "I wore it everywhere I went. I ate with it, showered with it [and even] slept with it. My medal meant so much to me. It was a symbol of what I had accomplished for myself and my country. Although I still experienced the same racial discrimination that I always had, my spirits were so high that I thought all of that would change. I was sure they were finally going to let me eat downtown. I thought that my medal would open [segregated sections] up to me. I was so proud, sitting there with my gold medal around my neck. The waitress looked at…us and said, ‘We don’t serve Negroes.’

I had wanted my medal to mean something - the mayor had said it was the key to Louisville [but] what I remember most about 1960 was the first time I took my gold medal off. From that moment on, I have never placed great value on material things. What really matters is how you feel about yourself.”

In 2023, as part of the US International Visitors Exchange Programme, I visited five states across the US and the Muhammed Ali Centre remains an influential memory because alongside Ali's boxing paraphernalia, there were writings, interviews, videos and more about Ali’s philosophies and lessons on life. 

At the Muhammed Ali Museum in Kentucky, 2023

Seven years later, in 1967, Ali was stripped of his heavyweight boxing title after he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War. It is almost impossible to imagine that a world-renowned champion can be stripped of their dignity twice in a row by an institution, but this happens all the time in so many spaces in many insiduous ways. 

I often speak about titles in various spaces. I do not have a degree, but I have secured jobs (titles?) before with degree requirements. While working on The Womxn Show, I’ve had well-meaning persons heavily encourage me to enrol, some spent hours with me on Zoom calls explaining why this would be a benefit and others did email intros to heads of departments, all unsolicited. For a person of colour, particularly women, a degree – and a title – represents legitimate forward progress, but in most of the stories I've heard, particularly by women of colour, the lived experience of degrees and titles present in the same way as Ali’s gold medal: it is a smokescreen that acts as a 'key' with little or no power attached to it. 

I used to say I refuse to study further to show that one does not NEED a degree to be successful. Now I’m just afraid of the violence, both as a student and academic. Which is not to say that, like me, you should refuse to engage. We must continue to represent and display Black and female excellence in all spaces as a form of liberation. Rather, I want to affirm Ali's statement that no matter where you are in life and what you are going through, what is most important to remember is how you feel about yourself.

Lenina Rassool is a journalist from Cape Town, South Africa. She has worked for mainstream publications such as Femina and Cosmopolitan Magazines and has spent the past five years producing and presenting The Womxn Show, a TV show on gender-based violence, funded by the Ford Foundation.