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“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…?”

Source: Remarks to reporters in Louisville, Kentucky, March 1967

Context Said in his hometown of Louisville, where Black residents were campaigning for open housing, weeks before he refused the draft.

Portrait of Muhammad Ali
Muhammad AliUnited States · 1942–2016
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