On this date 40 years ago, it took an all-white jury in Houston all of 21 minutes to convict boxer Muhammad Ali of draft-evasion charges.

It was at the height of the Vietnam war, and Americans had not yet decided that the war was killing a lot of people without a good reason.

Sort of like how the majority of United States voters felt about the Iraq conflict in 2004 when they re-elected President Bush.

But one big difference between 1967 and 2004 was the draft. There was one in the 1960s, before the all-volunteer Army began in 1973.

Back in 1967, it was easy for relatively affluent young men to get a student deferment or join the National Guard to get out of having to go to Vietnam. But it was still considered apostasy for anybody asked to report to his draft board to say he wouldn’t fight for his country.

Cassius Clay had changed his name when he converted to Islam, and white America didn’t exactly know what to make of the Black Muslim movement, except that it was scary.

Cassius Marcellus Clay had been a brash, extremely talented fighter who spouted a lot of bad poetry.

Muhammad Ali was something else, again. He seemed to be in the clutches of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X and all those other Black Muslims who said nasty things about white society.

So, when Ali received his draft notice, it was a matter of some interest.

He reported as instructed for his physical, and cooperated right up until he was asked to step forward and take the Army oath.

He refused, saying he was a Muslim minister and a conscientious objector.

"I ain’t got no quarrel," he said, "with them Viet Cong."

The thing that made Ali’s stand so courageous was the fact that as heavyweight champion of the world, he never would have gotten within a hundred miles of any Viet Cong.

Like Joe Louis and other prominent boxers before him, he would have spent his time in the service boxing exhibitions and staying far out of harm’s way.

Ali was arrested, excoriated and stripped of his boxing title, but he stuck to his beliefs.

"No Viet Cong," he said, "ever called me a nigger."

He was sentenced to five years in prison.

"So now I have to make a decision," he said. "Step into a billion dollars and denounce my people, or step into poverty and teach them the truth. Damn the money. Damn the heavyweight championship. Damn the white people. Damn everything. I will die before I sell out my people for the white man’s money."

Ali lost 3½ years of his boxing career before the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that he was right about being a conscientious objector and the government of the United States was wrong.

Muhammad Ali fought against what he believed to be an unjust war. Forty years later, we’re in another unpopular war.

We don’t seem to have learned very much along the way.