Cleveland Summit

Football star Jim Brown organized it in response to Muhammad Ali's refusal, a month earlier, to enter the draft for the Vietnam War.

[1] The meeting took place in an office at 10511 Euclid Avenue, alternatively described as the Negro Industrial Building or an office of the Negro Industrial Economic Union, an African-American empowerment organization founded by Brown and later called the Black Economic Union.

Most were military veterans - at least eight of the eleven, according to Robert Anthony Bennett III's doctoral thesis, which identifies the military service of Beach, Brown, McClinton, Mitchell, Shorter, Stokes, Williams, and Wooten, and also notes that Davis and Russell had undertaken U.S. Government goodwill missions, in the case of Davis to visit U.S. troops in Vietnam.

[5][6] A 2012 Plain Dealer article reported that "[a]lthough it wasn't discussed as a group before the meeting, many of the men planned to convince Ali to accept his call to the military.

"[3] Along similar lines, Brown told The New York Times a few days after the Summit, "We approached [Ali] on the basis that we were his friends, willing to give him any assistance we could.

"[14] Ali was a "pariah" in American society at the time because he refused to join the military, his boxing license had been revoked, and he faced up to five years in prison.

For the eleven other participants to stand with Ali in support of him and his position was thus an act of courage that put "their reputations and their careers" at risk.

[2][15] The Cleveland Summit has been called "a significant turning point for the role of the athlete in society" and "one of the most important civil rights acts in sports history" as well as a predecessor of the twenty-first century protest movement initiated by Colin Kaepernick.

And if he agrees, I'll have people—Jim Brown, Paul Warfield, Leroy Kelly, Cris Carter, Ray Lewis—I'll have people that will stand behind him just as we did Ali.'

"[19] On October 11, 2023, a sculpture created by the Marcus Graham Project, consisting of a mural and a replica of the press conference table, was added to the commemorative plaque at the building where the Summit occurred.