These powerful Black athletes met with Muhammad Ali to show their support for his defiant stance against the war on Vietnam. The truth of the matter is they were actually there to do just the opposite. This private meeting with Bill Russell, Jim Brown, and Lew Alcindor was held to convince Ali to enlist and to assure him that he would not be going to war but instead would serve as an ambassador and a morale booster to the troops in much the same way that Joe Louis was used during World War II.
To have been a fly on that wall! It is said that Muhammad Ali gave them such an impressive two-hour rebuttal on why no black man should support the Vietnam War in any shape, manner, or form, that these brothas were forced to reexamine their position on the war themselves. So much so that Lew Alcindor followed the path of Muhammad Ali and retired his own slave name a couple years later to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.