Muhammad Ali was awakened on the morning of June 8, 1973, with devastating news: his closest friend, Major Benjamin Coxson, had been murdered in his own home, just seven minutes away from Ali’s residence in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Four men in a black Cadillac had arrived at Coxson’s house on Barbara Drive at approximately 4:00 a. m. They entered the home after Coxson opened the door, reportedly greeting one of them by name—Samuel Christian, a founder of the Philadelphia Black Mafia.
The intruders bound everyone in the house with neckties, including Coxson, his common-law wife Lois Luby, and her three children. Coxson was forced to kneel beside his water bed and shot three times in the back of the head. Lois, 17-year-old Lita, and 14-year-old Toro were also shot. Thirteen-year-old Lex, still bound hand and foot, broke through a sliding glass door and hopped through the dark to a neighbor’s house, bleeding and covered in shattered glass.
Lois survived but was temporarily blinded. Toro survived but permanently lost sight in one eye. Lita died four days later in the hospital. She was 17 and had no connection to the criminal dealings that led to the attack.
The word on the streets soon delivered a chilling message: “Ali’s next. ”
How did the greatest boxer in the world end up on a hit list from the most violent organization in Philadelphia? Ali met Coxson in 1968, a period when Ali had been banned from boxing for refusing the Vietnam War draft, stripped of his title, and largely abandoned by the sports world. Coxson was flamboyant and magnetic, a sharp-dressed nightclub co-owner who moved easily between politics, entertainment, the streets, and the mosque.
Ali found in him a kindred spirit—someone who matched his energy. What Ali either did not know or chose to ignore was that Coxson had been arrested 17 times and convicted 10 times on charges including fraud, larceny, and interstate car theft. He had served 22 months in federal prison and ran dummy corporations involved in credit card fraud and extortion. Law enforcement reportedly considered him one of the top four or five traffickers in Philadelphia.
Coxson was also a direct pipeline between the Gambino crime family in New York and the Black Mafia in Philadelphia, brokering deals between major trafficking figures. He convinced Ali to move his family to Cherry Hill and helped him secure a mansion on Winding Drive. Coxson then moved around the corner on Barbara Drive—just seven minutes away. The relationship deepened publicly.
Coxson announced a campaign for mayor of Camden, and Ali became the face of the effort. At a kickoff party at the Latin Casino, 2,300 guests watched The Supremes and The Temptations perform, with Ali front and center. Around the same time, the IRS confiscated Coxson’s fleet of luxury cars over $135,000 in back taxes. Coxson was in debt to the mob, in debt to the IRS, and running for mayor simultaneously.
Ali responded by donating a silver Rolls-Royce for Coxson to use during the campaign. Ali’s public endorsements continued. After beating Jerry Quarry in Las Vegas, he dedicated the victory on live television to “the next mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Major Coxson. ” He appeared with Coxson at a hardware store opening in Germantown.
Before his fight with Ken Norton in San Diego, Ali sat ringside with Coxson and told reporters that Coxson was his unpaid financial advisor. Each public appearance sent a signal to the Black Mafia: Ali vouched for this man. Coxson owed them money, and the message from the organization was becoming clear. During the campaign, reporters asked Coxson about his criminal record.
He responded with a line that drew laughs and headlines: “Most politicians start out as office holders and wind up getting arrested. I aim to reverse that process. ”
Coxson lost the May 1973 election in a landslide to Angelo Errichetti, who was later convicted in the Abscam FBI sting—a case depicted in the film American Hustle. Coxson’s prophecy turned out to be accurate, but he did not live to see it.
Prior to May 1973, a shipment worth $1 million from the Gambino crime family was stolen. The Gambinos offered Coxson $300,000 to recover it. Coxson brought in the Black Mafia as subcontractors, keeping $100,000 for himself. The Black Mafia found the thieves and killed them.
Bodies were discovered on May 1, 1973. The Gambinos were not satisfied. The high-profile murders drew too much law enforcement attention, and they refused to pay. Coxson was now caught between two mobs.
The Black Mafia still expected their $200,000, and Coxson was broke—the IRS had taken his cars and the campaign had drained him. About a week before the murder, a dealer received a warning from the streets: collect the money Coxson owes in the next week because “he has been fingered. ”
On the night of June 8, 1973, the Black Mafia acted. According to the 13-year-old survivor, Coxson thought the men at his door were friends.
He greeted Samuel Christian by name and invited him in. The men talked in the foyer for a while before the violence began. The Black Mafia’s history made the threat against Ali especially terrifying. Five months before the Coxson murder, on January 18, 1973, Ronald Harvey and other Black Mafia members entered a house at 7700 16th Street Northwest in Washington, D.
C. —a home that basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had purchased and donated to Hanafi Muslims, members of his own faith. Posing as buyers of religious literature, they shot three people dead, including a child, then drowned four more children ranging in age from 9 days old to 10 years old. A woman was forced to watch her children drown before being shot eight times; she survived.
It was the worst mass killing in the history of Washington, D. C. , at the time. This was the organization that put a contract on Muhammad Ali’s life.
After the Coxson murder, Ali disappeared from public view. Police wanted a statement, but he was nowhere to be found. He eventually returned from Central Pennsylvania and went straight into seclusion. The message from the streets was unmistakable: “Ali’s next.
”
Ali’s public response was simple: “I am a Muslim. Allah will take care of me because my hands are clean. ”
His hands may have been clean, but his address was seven minutes from a crime scene, and his face had appeared on national television beside the dead man for five years. Within the month, Ali packed up his family and fled Cherry Hill for Chicago.
He sold the mansion on Winding Drive in May 1974 for $175,000. His marriage to Khalilah fractured during this period and ended in a bitter divorce a few years later. The two lead suspects in the Coxson murder were Ronald Harvey and Samuel Christian. They were listed as numbers 320 and 321 on the FBI’s Most Wanted List—back to back.
Harvey was indicted on 11 counts, with bail set at $3 million. Harvey was convicted for the Hanafi massacre and died in prison. He was never convicted for the Coxson murder. Samuel Christian was never convicted either.
No witnesses would come forward—nobody wanted to be next. More than 7,000 people visited the block around Wayland Temple Baptist Church in Philadelphia for Coxson’s funeral. His father had been a deacon there for 25 years. Over 100 cars formed a motorcade, with a second procession coming from Camden.
The lead car was a maroon 1973 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, one of the favorites from Coxson’s collection. The man who died with no assets received the funeral of a king. Ali could not attend. The Black Mafia would have been watching, and showing up might have meant dying.
The man who had fought Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, and the United States government could not go to his best friend’s funeral because the Philadelphia Black Mafia told him not to. Today, Muhammad Ali’s Cherry Hill mansion at 1121 Winding Drive is a rental property—over 10,000 square feet with a pool, tennis court, basketball court, and fire pit. It sits seven minutes from where Major Coxson was executed, seven minutes from where a 17-year-old girl was shot in the head, seven minutes from where a 13-year-old boy hopped through broken glass to save his own life. Ali survived the U.
S. government trying to destroy him, survived 3½ years of exile, survived death threats, a severed dog head in the mail, and gunshots at his training camp. But the Philadelphia Black Mafia almost did what none of those could—they almost took the greatest of all time off the earth, not in a boxing ring or a courtroom, but in a quiet suburb in South Jersey.