A few hours ago, a twenty-two-year-old from Louisville named Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston and became heavyweight champion of the world. Instead of a party at a white hotel on Miami Beach, he spent the night at the Hampton House, a Black motel in Brownsville, with three friends: Malcolm X, the football star Jim Brown, and the singer Sam Cooke. Malcolm took photographs. Reports say they ate vanilla ice cream. Two days later Clay announced he had joined the Nation of Islam. The words are imagined.