In February 1964, Cassius Clay faced that hulking man-mountain, Sonny Liston, and won, becoming boxing’s world champion. On hand for that match in Miami were three other famous Black men, NFL star Jim Brown, singer Sam Cooke and the Nation of Islam’s Malcolm X. When X invites them to his hotel room after the fight, Clay, Brown and Cooke come expecting to party. X has other ideas. He wants to talk about the Black struggle and the contributions each of them can make to the cause.
The hotel room meeting was the intriguing idea behind Kemp Powers’ play, One Night in Miami… Powers adapted his story for the screen under the directorial debut of actor Regina King. The 2020 drama is up for three Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actor (Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke).
X’s three guests are stars, but a sequence of preludes tries to show the limited space granted even to Black celebrities. The least effective prelude puts Clay (Eli Goree) in a London boxing match whose crowd booed him and backed their hometown hero (what’s surprising?). Cooke is shown bombing at the Copacabana, performing for an older white audience several years behind the hit parade (surprising?). The one chilling prelude concerns a visit by Brown (Aldis Hodge) to the mossy plantation where his family had lived in service for generations. The owner greats him warmly, even shares lemonade with him on the porch, but doesn’t allow “Negroes” into the house. Benign paternalism has its limits.
Of course, the limits of Black acceptance in a white society is the point pounded home by X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), the lynchpin bringing the other three together. He’s the spiritual advisor who teaches Clay to pray and a recognized Black leader for Brown and Cooke. Although it’s not clear whether he’s gone by this point beyond castigating of all whites as “devils,” X has become aware of corruption in the Nation of Islam and is on the verge of seeking the truth of Islam as a multi-ethnic faith. Foreboding hangs over him. X is shadowed by the FBI and worried about his impending break with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. And yet he remains tirelessly devoted to the cause of Black ascent.
The discussion that occupies most of One Night in Miami… comes down to an argument between X and Cooke, with Brown leaning toward Cooke’s position and Clay as X’s acolyte (except when he sneaks a drink when his mentor isn’t looking). Cooke believes that economic freedom is the key, pointing to his own success as a music publisher. He cites an example: R&B singer Bobby Womack was devastated when The Rolling Stones’ cover of his “It’s All Over Now” pushed him off the charts—until he received his royalty check. Aside from that, Cooke insists, winning whites over through music is a victory against racism.
“You bourgeois Negroes are happy with scraps,” X shoots back. “You’ll never be loved by the people you’re trying to win over… you’re a monkey dancing to an organ grinder.”
Although Ben-Adir’s X won’t make anyone forget Denzel Washington’s star performance in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, he credibly embodies a man of fierce determination and rhetorical skill. Goree’s Clay gets the gist of his flamboyant character, a dancer and rapper as much as an athlete, buoyed by an ego uncomfortably contained within any belief system. Odom endows Cooke with exuberance and grace and fully deserves his Oscar nomination. Hodge plays Brown as a man who keeps his own counsel, appraising every situation carefully.
The conversation ends inconclusively and history fills in the rest. Clay joined the Nation of Islam and as Muhammad Ali continued his reign as world champion. He remained a Muslim but eventually denounced the Nation of Islam. Brown became a football Hall of Famer and enjoyed a long acting career in Hollywood. However, the lives of Cooke and X were cut short. Cooke was shot to death in December 1964 by a hotel manager during a bizarre incident. In February 1965 X was assassinated by Nation of Islam gunmen, albeit some wondered whether government agencies also played a role in his death.
