Eric Kirk, a friend who was in the YSA of the SWP when we met in the early 80's, pointed out to me once at a demo to a long standing Black cadre of the SWP who he said introduced the phrase into movement sloganeering.
A google search finds this, <URL:
http://www.ralphkeyes.com/niceguys/excerpt.htm >
> When Muhammad Ali refused induction into the Army, he was widely quoted
> as saying, "No Viet Congever called me n-word." This was a perfect
> marriage of anti-war and anti-racist sentiment. Better yet, it came
> straight from the mouth of a mega-celebrity thought to possess primitive
> folk wisdom. The only problem is that Ali never made this comment. "It's
> wasn't really his mind-set to say something in that way," explained Ali
> biographer Thomas Hauser. "The companion thought of that comment is
> 'people callme n-wordin this country every day.' I never heard Ali say
> 'white people in this country call me n-word.' He would attack racism.
> But he wouldn't personalize it." Despite extensive searching by himself
> and others, Hauser has never found the source of "no Viet Congever called
> me n-word." He concluded that it was just one of those things that got
> picked up and passed around in the 60s. It was a comment we wanted Ali to
> make so badly that we made it for him...
Maybe the documentary on Ali that got kudos a few yrs ago and/or Mike Marquesee's book on Ali from Verso has more info. Michael Pugliese
-- Michael Pugliese
I got an axe-handle pistol with a graveyard frame. It shoots tombstone bullets wearing balls and chains. I'm drinking TNT. I'm smokin' dynamite. I hope some screwball start's a fight, 'cause I'm ready, ready, ready
Muddy Waters, "I'm Ready."