We didn't volunteer.

And yet today the back remains, we're still held captive here.

We came in chains.

Now we say cut us loose.

Though that may go against your brain still there's no excuse we came in

now we'll bar the cause till every one of us regains the freedom we have lost

Muhammad Ali the Broadway star.

It sounds unbelievable, but it's true.

Unable to compete in the ring, the former heavyweight champ played the lead role of

big-time Buck White.

He'd been banned from boxing three years earlier and stripped of his title for refusing

to drag.

The show barely lasted a week. What you've just heard is Ali performing the plays

We Came and Chains on the Ed Sullivan show in 1970.

On opening night in 1969, Ali said, I wasn't really acting.

Those are my true feelings of freedom, justice, and equality.

Off the stage, the struggle for these civil rights and liberties had led our lead to lead Christianity for the nation of Islam at least 10 years earlier.

And the words he mentioned had a special meaning.

And that's what you would see on the flag that we had in the nation of Islam.

F was freedom, J justice, E was equality, and then I would be there, which means that you will only get freedom, justice, and equality in the religion of Islam.

Muhammad Ali began his spiritual journey as a Muslim with the nation of Islam, a conversion that scandalized the American public.

Everything changes in the next morning, after he wins the title, he says,

...