Muhammad Ali
He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942, to Cassius Marcellus Clay and Odessa Lee Grady. His father was a sign painter and named after a politician and abolitionist. His mother was a household domestic. Born as Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., the name change would come later, as would Rudolph or Rudy, his younger brother, His parents knew he would be something special when he was born was boxing gloves and wouldn’t fit in the car to be brought home. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. However, it is true that at the age of three, he wouldn’t fit in his crib. He had to be in a regular bed.
A story goes around that when the older son and his parents departed a bus and headed to their new home, Ali climbed an apple tree. Some man admonished him to get down before he broke a leg. Ali followed his orders and ran back through the house with no furniture in it. Even at a very young age, this was one creative individual.
The Clays weren’t the wealthiest of families, but were rich with friends and good health. Ali never had to work as his dad was a very successful sign painter, buying his first home at twenty-three. Cassius, Sr. always had work and was his own boss, but he was a womanizer. Ali relates the story of the time when he was a young lad that his father hopped on a bus. Ali wondered why he did this since his dad owned a car, which he had just left. He was on the vehicle for less than a mile when he got off it. When Ali asked him about his actions, his dad said, I just wanted this girl’s phone number. Maybe he figured she wanted him to paint some signs.
Cassius, Sr. was a talker, even outtalking his son – if you can imagine that. When Ali joined the Black Muslims, he acknowledged that there was no pressure for his dad to join, too. Ali is not known to drink, smoke or chase women, but Clay’s father didn’t have those restrictions, nor did he desire to have them. Nonetheless, Ali’s dad and Odessa always paid with cash, never on credit.
Rumor has it that Ali’s mother was the daughter of a colored woman and a fellow from County Claire in Ireland named O’Grady. Hence Ali is predominantly of African American descent, but possessing some English and Irish ancestry. His mom was a stay-at-home person who loved to cook and make draperies. She loved her boys and raised them well, allowing no cursing and having them behave like gentlemen. She marched them off to church every Sunday.
Cassius began to box since he figured it was the quickest way for a black person to succeed in America. He won his first amateur fight at twelve and a year later was on television doing the same. He gathered a big fo1lowing in Louisville by going around bragging that he would beat someone up and they could watch him on TV. He was challenged in the classroom with his studies and he knew this limited his making it as a football or basketball player.
His grades at Virginia Avenue Grade School and Central High dipped while his ability as a boxer improved. He had the talent, great reflexes and a mind that could win bouts. His training discipline was a plus and his desire was to be the best. His bragging had a triple purpose: he wanted to bring in fans; it gave him confidence; it might psych out his opponents. Ali was always looking for answers that would make him a better fighter. He was a student of boxing who read books on it and gathered as much information on the sport as he could.
In 1958, he won the light heavyweight crown in the Louisville Golden Gloves. In the Tournament of Champions in Chicago that followed, he lost to Tony Madigan, his first defeat. The following year in Toledo, he was winner in the same class of the National A. A. U. His words were, here is the prettiest middleweight in the world. It was the start of his run in the ring as well as another run. Ali lost to a Marine named Johnson in the Pan American Games in Chicago but his promoter Joe Martin thought he should stay an amateur and box in the Olympics in Rome in 1960.
He won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics and continued winning championships afterwards as a professional. I was never a big fan of boxing, so I only read about his victories. Heavyweight champion in 1964, he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, becoming a Black Muslim. Uncle Sam called three years later, but the champ refused. He did it on the grounds that he had no beef with the Vietnamese people and had no intention of killing people in a foreign land. In his biography, he mentions never intending to hurt anyone. Ali was arrested for draft evasion and found guilty of draft evasion charges. He was stripped of his boxing title. He wasn’t fighting for four years when on June 28, 1971, the New York Daily News featured this headline: