a racist press keen to portray him as the kind of brutish black man 'White America' so badly feared.

"He's arrogant, surly, mean, rude and altogether frightening," the famed New York Times columnist Arthur Daley wrote. "He's the last man anyone would want to meet in a dark alley." Reporters often used thinly-veiled racist terms - 'gorilla' and 'beast' - in their descriptions of him. When he was set to face Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight title, President John F Kennedy went so far as to urge Patterson to find an opponent with "better character".

Sonny Liston stares down his opponent - Floyd Patterson - ahead of their rematch in 1963

The public and the press did not take to him. Liston was cast as an outsider, loathed for his outlawpast and his criminal connections.

This dislike reached its peak when he destroyed Patterson - who was widely liked - in two minutes and six seconds to win the heavyweight crown in 1962. When he returned home to Philadelphia, he hoped a crowd would be there to welcome him. "He rehearsed his speech with the journalists on the flight," Rob Steen says. "He gets to the top of the stairs when they arrive ready to greet everyone with this speech about how he's going to be a great role model for the black race - and there's no one's there! It makes him shrink back into his shell."

It was not just 'White America' that rejected him. The civil rights movement did too - in large part because of his