The movie One Night in Miami commemorates the night Cassius Clay, soon to be known as Muhammad Ali, proclaimed himself “The Greatest” after defeating the fierce and formidable Sonny Liston in a legendary heavyweight fight. It imagines the conversations that might have taken place among Clay, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X, who met in a hotel room after the fight.
It happened on February 25, 1964, and I remember that night well.
I was seated in the auditorium at St. Francis High School in La Cañada, where William Pickering, an eminent rocket scientist at the nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), was the featured speaker at a banquet for academically inclined students. Don’t ask me to recall anything he said. I can report that a cheer broke out during his talk.