(Note: I posted this Friday morning…Later Friday, the Nelson Gallery announced it will be closed from Saturday, March 14, to April 3.)
If you’re looking for something fun and interesting to do that doesn’t involve large crowds, I suggest you visit the Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali photographic exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum.
The exhibition features several dozen photos from hundreds that famed photographer and writer Parks took in 1966 and 1970 while producing two photo/stories about Ali for Life magazine.
(Being a Louisville native — like Ali — I have a special fondness for him…To this day, one of the greatest thrills of my life was watching on closed circuit TV as Ali beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title the night of Feb. 25, 1964, when I was a senior in high school.)
Parks
Ali and Parks, a Fort Scott, KS, native who died in 2006, became close friends, but before they did, Ali gave Parks unprecedented access to his training and personal life as Ali prepared in Miami and London for his 1966 match with British boxer Henry Cooper. (Ali won after Cooper began bleeding excessively and the referee stopped the fight in the sixth round.)
Ali, of course, was a magnetic and yet extremely controversial figure from the time he won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics until the day he died in 2016.
Last night, the Nelson presented an outstanding program on the exhibition. The program featured William Rhoden, an author and former New York Times sports columnist, and Damion Thomas, curator of sports at the National Museum of African American History in Washington D.C.
April M. Watson, who curated the exhibition, led the discussion.
Damion Thomas (center) and William Rhoden participated in a discussion last night about Muhammad Ali and Gordon Parks. April Watson, of the gallery, led the discussion.
Rhoden and Thomas reflected on Ali’s roller-coaster swings, from hero to villain and back to hero, in the public’s perception.
He zoomed to fame with the stunning, 1964 defeat of Liston, but his appeal soon plummeted after he announced he had embraced the Nation of Islam and then refused to be inducted into the armed forces.
As Rhoden, the former NYT columnist, said: “When you renounce Jesus, you are problematic. The entire nation was caught off guard.”
Even before the Supreme Court overturned his draft-evasion conviction in 1971, Ali was on the way to restoring his image and regaining the public’s affection.
Rhoden and Thomas said Parks’s photos and stories in Life had gone a long way toward humanizing Ali and deepening his public appeal, even though only three photos ran with Parks’s story in the Sept. 9, 1966, issue.
Another thing Parks’s first story did was bring certain aspects of African American culture to the attention of white people. The story also had a profound impact among black people because, as Rhoden said, it further elevated him as an inspirational figure and role model for young black people.
But Parks was more than just a chronicler of Ali, Thomas and Rhoden said. His friendship and guidance, they said, helped Ali mature and learn more about dealing with the public. Rhoden said Parks challenged Ali, in effect telling him, “You got to prove yourself” in the court of public opinion.
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Here are three photos that are included in the exhibition…
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The Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali exhibition continues through July 5. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. Admission is free every day.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Fitz, I think you meant to say that you were a senior in high school, not college.
You never cease to amaze me, Mike, with your memory for details…Will change.
I think you said ‘closed circuit tv’ too. But I know I saw ‘rope a dope’ on something else. What did they call it? Close circuit auditorium? I think it was at Municipal Auditorium and it was very unique. The last one I saw that way was ‘no mas’ Sorry kids, no cable in those days!
I’m glad you brought that up, Bill…I wondered if anyone would take note of that.
Could you be thinking of “pay per view,” which succeeded closed-circuit TV?
Here’s what Wiki says about closed-circuit TV…Kind of interesting:
“Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly transmitted.
“…Closed-circuit television was used as a form of pay-per-view theater television for sports such as professional boxing and professional wrestling, and from 1964 through 1970, the Indianapolis 500 automobile race. Boxing telecasts were broadcast live to a select number of venues, mostly theaters, where viewers paid for tickets to watch the fight live. The first fight with a closed-circuit telecast was Joe Louis vs. Joe Walcott in 1948.
“Closed-circuit telecasts peaked in popularity with Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and 1970s, with “The Rumble in the Jungle” fight drawing 50 million CCTV viewers worldwide in 1974, and the “Thrilla in Manila” drawing 100 million CCTV viewers worldwide in 1975. In 1985, the WrestleMania I professional wrestling show was seen by over one million viewers with this scheme. As late as 1996, the Julio César Chávez vs. Oscar De La Hoya boxing fight had 750,000 viewers. Closed-circuit television was gradually replaced by pay-per-view home cable television in the 1980s and 1990s.”
…I had no idea closed-circuit went all the way back to 1948, and I did not recall the Indy 500 being available only on closed circuit. I do remember listening to the race on the radio in the mid-1960s because it wasn’t carried live on TV. At some point, it was aired on network TV later the same day. Finally, it went live; that must have been in the ’70s.
I guess that’s right. The terminology escapes me. I do remember walking it and it was the biggest screen you could imagine. I can’t remember if it was from the front or rear, but probably the front.
Sadly, I have never been in the Ali Museum in Louisville. Plan to make it a priority next visit. Have you been there?
Yes, once, John. Bill R. and I went one time when Ali was making an appearance there. I had about 20 seconds to talk to Ali. This was when he was deep in the throes of Parkinson’s. I prattled on as fast as I could about having been at the Armory watching him beat Liston on closed-circuit TV. He looked straight ahead and nodded, but I’m not sure how much comprehension there was. It was sad. I’ve long thought that for his sake he would have been better off if he’d never walked into Joe Martin’s gym in Louisville.
Jim, I enjoyed reading your comments on Parks & Ali. As a Navy journalist and photographer, I had the privilege to meet and escort Gordon for about a week in Okinawa and Southeast Asia when he came there for a National Geographic shoot in the late 1960s. When he learned I was a newspaper guy from SW Missouri, just across the line from Ft. Scott, we had some great chats about common places we’d been and enjoyed, as well as racial issues in that corner of the world. Great guy and as the world now acknowledges, an awesome photographer.
Good anecdote, Richard.
The Nelson just closed for 3 weeks. Don’t kill the carrier pigeon….