Jonathan Eig spent five years researching and interviewing people close to Muhammad Ali for his award-winning biography, Ali: A Life.

Louisville was very segregated at the time that Ali was growing up.

The schools were segregated by law and the neighborhoods, um, the parks were all segregated.

He grew up in a world very different from the white kids his same age growing up across town.

Cassius Clay grew up knowing what happened to Black people who spoke out, for Black people who dared to offend white people, for Black people who dared to challenge the status quo.

So Ali became very conscious of this, but also became resistant to it and began at a very early age asking his parents why it had to be this way.

Why couldn't he do the same things in life that white kids could do? Why couldn't he be rich? And his parents, his father in particular, who was cynical and, and jaded and, and hurt by the way, um, he'd been treated, would tell him, "Forget it.

But he still has another very public comeback up his sleeve.

But he's not completely untouchable, right? The authorities came close after the Pony Inn shooting.

Yeah, the Pony Inn shooting is the closest Capone comes to really getting in serious trouble.

That was 1926.

Up until that point, Capone has been operating almost completely free of risk.

He owns the police department.

He owns the courts.

He's paying off people in every corner of government so that he's protected.

What was the rest of his life like?

What was your ultimate takeaway once you got a chance to undress him, as it were?

Well, you know, now that we can read a lot of the transcripts of the FBI wiretaps and listen to some of his private conversations, what really strikes me is how much even more I admire him because he knows that he's losing popularity.

He knows that people are turning on him because he's taking these more controversial views, not just against the Vietnam War, but against racism in the North and segregation in the North, where most of the funding is coming from for his organization.

And he's frustrated.

He's sad.

He feels like no one's listening to him anymore.

He says to his friends, you know, I'm not doing this to be popular, but it would sure help if you guys would support me.

But writ large, are you at all concerned that en masse, that the masses of people will somehow see Martin Luther King Jr. as diminished, born of whatever is to come or to be wrestled with vis-a-vis these files.