Muhammad Comes to the MT

That was the headline in my high school newspaper after Muhammad Ali visited the Northfield Mount Hermon campus during our school's Afro-American Society's Black Arts Festival in April 1974.

I remember he walked slowly and gracefully, and spoke quietly and poetically.

"The man who has no imagination stands on the earth, he has no wings, he cannot fly."

Ali was in his prime. Earlier that year, he defeated Joe Frazier in a unanimous decision on January 28 at Madison Square Garden. Six months later, he knocked out George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in then Zaire.