Seen in the context of Ali's evolution, could it be that, to Ali, such taunting of Frazier wasn't just the mean-spirited nastiness we see it for today? That it was also political? There is no excuse for the way Ali belittled Frazier, a once-proud black man shown by Kram looking into a mirror and wondering aloud, "Do I look like a gorilla?" after Ali regaled one and all with his "Come on Gorilla, We in Manila" shtick, playing on timeworn racial stereotypes. But Ali saw Frazier -- who would say "politics is a little out of my line" when asked about Vietnam -- as a stand-in for his oppressors.

"Joe, in his innocence, was representing white America," says football great turned activist Brown in the HBO documentary. "And that will incense a revolutionary who is trying to make change and knows doggone well there's no equality."

In the final analysis, to subscribe to the revisionism of Kram, Early, Crouch, Hochman et al. is to argue from the privileged perspective of hindsight, to ignore the circumstances of the day in which Ali reigned. As Marqusee points out, from 1967 to 1970, Ali had every reason to believe that if he persisted in refusing induction, not only would he never fight again -- he'd go to jail. After all, had a prominent black man ever stood up to the U.S. government without paying a price? Paul Robeson hadn't, nor had W.E.B. DuBois. And yet Ali forged ahead, even when facing five years in jail.

When Kram and Lee appeared last month on HBO's "On the Record With Bob Costas," Lee rightfully praised Kram's book for advancing the parameters of debate when it comes to Ali's cultural legacy. And he revealed that at last year's Super Bowl, he apologized to Frazier. "I gotta admit, like a lot of young African-Americans, I got -- I'm not going to say bamboozled -- I got hornswoggled by Ali, and we bought into thinking that Joe was not a black man," Lee said. But Kram also cautioned: "What cannot be underestimated is the effect [Ali] had on black America."

And it wasn't just black people -- it was a lasting effect on the body politic. I sensed this at all of 7 years old. It was 1970 and we were gathered around the TV -- me, my 17-year-old brother (who would, within two years, grow out his hair and join the counterculture) and our dad, a patriotic Cold War Democrat. As the show began, our father grumbled, VFW style, about Dick Cavett's guest, this draft dodger. Who was he not to serve? Who was he to question America?

A half-hour later, though, something had changed. The guest forcefully and poetically repeated the practiced arguments he'd been making on college campuses across the nation. I don't recall specifically what he said, but it was no doubt the full litany, statements like, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong" and "I will die before I sell out my people for the white man's money." Suddenly, the Vietnam War was being posited for what it was: the sending off of poor black boys to kill and be killed by other dark-skinned boys, all at the behest of a privileged white elite. Slowly, softly, as though to himself, my father started muttering, "He's right, he's right," over and over again, a lilt of surprise in his voice. There sat my brother and I, wide-eyed. We were in our living room and we were witnessing none other than Muhammad Ali altering our dad's view of the world.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"