We just can’t sit back and do nothing with all this going on. That’s the approach Jim took with everything: Ask the right questions, figure out what needed to be done and then go out there and do it.Īs we became friends there with the Browns, Jim got to the Browns in ’57 and I got there in ’59, the thing he would always tell me is, Woot, we can’t stand on the sidelines. After Jim asked the right questions, he knew Ali needed our support. With what Ali was going through, Jim wasn’t just going to sit back and watch that. Jim saw what was going on, he saw a need for change, and he went to work to try to change things. That meeting came together because Jim saw a need and went to work. If there was something Jim was doing to help kids get jobs, help get programs going to educate kids and try to improve their situations, Jim could get anyone on the phone and get their help. Because of who Jim was, because of everything Jim was doing, he had so much respect in the NFL and with all. When you look at that picture, that picture that so many people still talk about today, you have to understand that meeting doesn’t happen without Jim. In the wake of Brown’s death, Wooten, his close friend of more than 60 years, reflected on the legacy of a giant in the arenas of football and civil rights. NFL offensive lineman John Wooten, a longtime Browns teammate of Brown’s, is pictured in the second row standing behind Alcindor. The meeting proved to be a watershed moment in Black athlete empowerment, and it produced the iconic photo above. In the first meeting of its kind, Brown brought together some of the most prominent African American athletes of the time – including Boston Celtics great Bill Russell and UCLA basketball superstar Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – and one Black politician to question Ali about his convictions and, ultimately, back him. Later in June, Ali would be convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and required to surrender his passport (he would remain free on appeal until the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971 in a unanimous 8-0 decision). Legendary former NFL superstar Jim Brown, who had retired from the league about a year earlier while still in his prime, organized the meeting in support of Ali, who had been stripped of his heavyweight World Boxing Association title in April and had his boxing license suspended after he refused to be drafted into the military based on his religious beliefs and his ethical opposition to the Vietnam War. On June 4, 1967, the Cleveland Summit, which is also referred to as the Muhammad Ali Summit, occurred on the East Side of Cleveland.

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