'Fetch Clay, Make Man': An unusual sparring match

"Unlikely" doesn't begin to describe the friendship struck up in the mid-1960s between heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and movie actor Stepin Fetchit. One was an empowering figure of strength and self-confidence, a role model for a generation coming of age in the civil rights era. The other, through his big-screen portrayals of servile black men, was a throwback, an unwelcome reminder of some of the humiliations endured for centuries by African Americans.