Cleveland Summit Marker Unveiled by National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

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The National Basketball Social Justice Coalition unveiled a historical marker at the site of the famous Cleveland summit Friday.

“We pay tribute to the Black athlete, activists and public servants present in 1967 by dedicating a historical marker to the original site of the summit,” the coalition said in a statement.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali and a group of Black athletes that included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown and Bill Russell held a press conference to defend Ali’s right to religious freedom after he refused to be drafted into the U.S. military to fight in the Vietnam War.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” Ali said at the news conference.

The athletes had convened to convince Ali to reach a compromise with the U.S. government but came away persuaded by the boxing great’s fight for his civil liberties.

Ali refused the compromise and was sentenced to five years in prison and banned from boxing for three years. The Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction by an 8-0 vote in 1971, and he never spent any time in prison, but the controversy kept him out of the boxing ring for three-and-a-half years.

The outpouring of athlete support Ali received at the summit and subsequent press conference is seen as one of the most important civil rights acts in sports history. The marker was put in place to commemorate the event’s 55th anniversary and is part of the NBA’s social justice efforts that have been pushed to the forefront in recent years.