March & Rally against the War, Racism, Poverty, Repression & the Draft. [Drop title].

San Francisco: The April 27 Mobilization Committee, [1968]. 17 x 11 inches. Broadside. Pale blue stock printed in dark pink. Three pinholes to upper margin; minor bumping/slight creasing to top and bottom edges. Very Good.

Small poster promoting the Saturday, April 27, 1968, protest in San Francisco. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, over 2,000 demonstrators turned up for the march from the Golden Gate Park Panhandle to Civic Center Plaza, where Muhammad Ali was the featured speaker. Per the Oakland Tribune (April 28, 1968, p. 3), Ali was "alternately booed and cheered as he urged continuation of racial segregation. Shouts of 'Ali, go home' rang out as he declared that no intelligent 'so-called Negro' would want his daughter to marry a white."

Notably, this was still relatively early on in Ali's antiwar speeches, which began in February 1968 at college campuses as a way to make money while banned from boxing; Ali was arrested, had his boxing license suspended, and was stripped of his heavyweight title on April 28, 1967, after he declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to serve in the military. As Andrew Wolfson points out, Ali's consciousness expanded by leaps and bounds during the course of 1968. While his earliest speeches leaned heavily on talking points from the Nation of Islam, he soon became a speaker able to elucidate a complex resistance to the war based on his own experiences as a Black man, his religious convictions as a Muslim, and to appeal to a broad range of audience members (USA Today, Feb. 19, 2018, "Mohammed Ali lost everything in opposing the Vietnam War. But in 1968 he triumphed."). The result was "The People's Champ," a man who lost millions by opposing the war but who eventually earned the admiration of the nation, especially as public opinion turned against the war, and who inspired countless Black athletes and activists to act on the strength of their convictions.

Other speakers at the April 27 protest included Vanessa Redgrave, Jeannette Rankin, Arnold True, Bobby Seale, and Sidney Roger.

OCLC locates one holding, at Northwestern University.