Aug. 14, 1964 - Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali took a 24-year-old model as his bride today in Gary, Ind., and his husky bodyguards roughed up news photographers who tried to snap the newlyweds after the ceremony.
One photographer said he was struck on the jaw by the elbow or shoulder of an Ali lieutenant who tried to block the picture-taking. Another said he was shoved roughly aside.
Ali and Miss Sonji Roi, a Negro model, were married by Justice of the Peace Hoyt Brown.
Newsmen were barred from the brief ceremony in Brown’s “chapel.” Photographers asked the couple to pose as they walked out.
“Don’t snap that camera if you don’t want any trouble,” Brown’s wife quoted the heavyweight champ.
“Don’t let us get rough with you, now,” Ali told one photographer.
The cameraman ignored the warnings and started taking pictures.
Arnie Coons, a Gary Post-Tribune cameraman, said the new Mrs. Ali headed for a hallway rear door, and he started after her.
“A bodyguard — a big guy — blocked my progress,” Coons said. “I was hit in the jaw, either by his shoulder or his elbow. It was possible that I ran into it, rather than it was a deliberate blow.”
Charles Diller, a freelance lensman, said three bodyguards rushed him and other photographers. Diller said he was shoved roughly but not knocked down.
Ali followed his bride out of the justice’s quarters.
“I tried to get a picture of him,” Coons said, “but another bodyguard told me: ‘You can’t take no picture. Cassius don’t want no picture. He has a right to privacy.’
“He kept coming forward, forcing me up about a half-block in an alley,” Coons said.
Ali, formerly known as Cassius Clay, told newsmen before the ceremony that he and his bride would have a “big reception” in about two weeks in Chicago.
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