The Only Victory That Counts Is The

The Lives Of Most Men Are Patchwork Quilts. Or At Best One Matching Outfit With A Closet And Laundry Bag Full Of Incongruous Accumulations. A Lifetime Of Training For Just Ten Seconds.

It Was Bad Enough To Have Toppled From The Olympic Heights To Make My Living Competing With Animals. But The Competition Wasn't Even Fair. No Man Could Beat A Race Horse, Not Even For 100 Yards.

It Dawned On Me With Blinding Brightness. I Realized: I Had Jumped Into Another Rare Kind Of Stratosphere - One That Only A Handful Of People In Every Generation Are Lucky Enough To Know.

Joe Louis And I Were The First Modern National Sports Figures Who Were Black... But Neither Of Us Could Do National Advertising Because The South Wouldn't Buy It. That Was The Social Stigma We Lived Under.

In The Space Of Less Than Seven Days, I Attended A Track Meet In Boston, Flew From There To Bowling Green For The National Jaycees, Then To Rochester For The Blind, Buffalo For Another Track Meet, New York To Shoot A Film Called The Black Athlete, Miami For Ford Motor Company, Back Up To New York For 45 Minutes To Deliver A Speech, Then Into L. A. For Another The Same Night.