short essay about muhammad ali

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Muhammad Ali

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 27, 2024 | Original: December 16, 2009

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) was an American former heavyweight champion boxer and one of the greatest sporting figures of the 20th century. An Olympic gold medalist and the first fighter to capture the heavyweight title three times, Ali won 56 times in his 21-year professional career. Ali’s outspokenness on issues of race, religion and politics made him a controversial figure during his career, and the heavyweight’s quips and taunts were as quick as his fists.

Born Cassius Clay Jr., Ali changed his name in 1964 after joining the Nation of Islam. Citing his religious beliefs, he refused military induction and was stripped of his heavyweight championship and banned from boxing for three years during the prime of his career. Parkinson’s syndrome severely impaired Ali’s motor skills and speech, but he remained active as a humanitarian and goodwill ambassador.

Muhammad Ali’s Early Years and Amateur Career

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., the elder son of Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. (1912-1990) and Odessa Grady Clay (1917-1994), was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky . It was a red-and-white Schwinn that steered the future heavyweight champion to the sport of boxing. When his beloved bicycle was stolen, a tearful 12-year-old Clay reported the theft to Louisville police officer Joe Martin (1916-1996) and vowed to pummel the culprit. Martin, who was also a boxing trainer, suggested that the upset youngster first learn how to fight, and he took Clay under his wing. Six weeks later, Clay won his first bout in a split decision.

Did you know? Muhammad Ali has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated 38 times, second only to basketball great Michael Jordan.

By age 18 Clay had captured two national Golden Gloves titles, two Amateur Athletic Union national titles and 100 victories against eight losses. After graduating high school, he traveled to Rome and won the light heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics.

Clay won his professional boxing debut on October 29, 1960, in a six-round decision. From the start of his pro career, the 6-foot-3-inch heavyweight overwhelmed his opponents with a combination of quick, powerful jabs and foot speed, and his constant braggadocio and self-promotion earned him the nickname “Louisville Lip.”

Muhammad Ali: Heavyweight Champion of the World

After winning his first 19 fights, including 15 knockouts, Clay received his first title shot on February 25, 1964, against reigning heavyweight champion Sonny Liston (1932-1970). Although he arrived in Miami Beach, Florida, a 7-1 underdog, the 22-year-old Clay relentlessly taunted Liston before the fight, promising to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and predicting a knockout. When Liston failed to answer the bell at the start of the seventh round, Clay was indeed crowned heavyweight champion of the world. In the ring after the fight, the new champ roared, “I am the greatest!”

At a press conference the next morning, Clay, who had been seen around Miami with controversial Nation of Islam member Malcolm X (1925-1965), confirmed the rumors of his conversion to Islam. On March 6, 1964, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) bestowed on Clay the name of Muhammad Ali.

Ali solidified his hold on the heavyweight championship by knocking out Liston in the first round of their rematch on May 25, 1965, and he defended his title eight more times. Then, with the Vietnam War raging, Ali showed up for his scheduled induction into the U.S. Armed Forces on April 28, 1967. Citing his religious beliefs, he refused to serve. Ali was arrested, and the New York State Athletic Commission immediately suspended his boxing license and revoked his heavyweight belt.

Convicted of draft evasion, Ali was sentenced to the maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, but he remained free while the conviction was appealed. Many saw Ali as a draft dodger, and his popularity plummeted. Banned from boxing for three years, Ali spoke out against the Vietnam War on college campuses. As public attitudes turned against the war, support for Ali grew. In 1970 the New York State Supreme Court ordered his boxing license reinstated, and the following year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a unanimous decision.

Muhammad Ali’s Return to the Ring

After 43 months in exile, Ali returned to the ring on October 26, 1970, and knocked out Jerry Quarry (1945-1999) in the third round. On March 8, 1971, Ali got his chance to regain his heavyweight crown against reigning champ Joe Frazier (1944-2011) in what was billed as the “Fight of the Century.” The undefeated Frazier floored Ali with a hard left hook in the final round. Ali got up but lost in a unanimous decision, experiencing his first defeat as a pro.

Ali won his next 10 bouts before being defeated by Ken Norton (1943-). He won the rematch six months later in a split decision and gained further revenge in a unanimous decision over Frazier in a non-title rematch. The victory gave the 32-year-old Ali a title shot against 25-year-old champion George Foreman (1949-). The October 30, 1974, fight in Kinshasa, Zaire, was dubbed the “Rumble in the Jungle.” Ali, the decided underdog, employed his “rope-a-dope” strategy, leaning on the ring ropes and absorbing a barrage of blows from Foreman while waiting for his opponent to tire. The strategy worked, and Ali won in an eighth-round knockout to regain the title stripped from him seven years prior.

Ali successfully defended his title in 10 fights, including the memorable “Thrilla in Manila” on October 1, 1975, in which his bitter rival Frazier, his eyes swollen shut, was unable to answer the bell for the final round. Ali also defeated Norton in their third meeting in a unanimous 15-round decision.

On February 15, 1978, an aging Ali lost his title to Leon Spinks (1953-) in a 15-round split decision. Seven months later, Ali defeated Spinks in a unanimous 15-round decision to reclaim the heavyweight crown and become the first fighter to win the world heavyweight boxing title three times.

After announcing his retirement in 1979, Ali launched a brief, unsuccessful comeback. However, he was overwhelmed in a technical knockout loss to Larry Holmes (1949-) in 1980, and he dropped a unanimous 10-round decision to Trevor Berbick (1954-2006) on December 11, 1981. After the fight, the 39-year-old Ali retired for good with a career record of 56 wins, five losses and 37 knockouts.

Muhammad Ali’s Later Years and Legacy

In 1984 Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome, possibly connected to the severe head trauma suffered during his boxing career. The former champion’s motor skills slowly declined, and his movement and speech were limited. In spite of the Parkinson’s, Ali remained in the public spotlight, traveling the world to make humanitarian, goodwill and charitable appearances. He met with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) in 1990 to negotiate the release of American hostages, and in 2002 he traveled to Afghanistan as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

Ali had the honor of lighting the cauldron during the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. In 1999 Ali was voted the BBC’s “Sporting Personality of the Century,” and Sports Illustrated named him “Sportsman of the Century.” Ali was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a 2005 White House ceremony, and in the same year the $60 million Muhammad Ali Center, a nonprofit museum and cultural center focusing on peace and social responsibility, opened in Louisville.

Ring Magazine named Ali “Fighter of the Year” five times, more than any other boxer, and he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. Ali has been married four times and has seven daughters and two sons. He married his fourth wife, Yolanda, in 1986. Ali died at the age of 74 on June 3, 2016.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was a three-time heavyweight boxing champion with an impressive 56-win record. He was also known for his public stance against the Vietnam War.

We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.

Who Was Muhammad Ali?

Quick facts, olympic gold, relationship with malcolm x and conversion to islam, vietnam war protest and supreme court case, muhammad ali’s boxing record, wives, children, and family boxing legacy, parkinson’s diagnosis, philanthropy, muhammad ali center, declining health and death, funeral and memorial service, movies about muhammad ali.

Muhammad Ali was a boxer, philanthropist, and social activist who is universally regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Ali became an Olympic gold medalist in 1960 and the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1964. Following his suspension for refusing military service in the Vietnam War, Ali reclaimed the heavyweight title two more times during the 1970s, winning famed bouts against Joe Frazier and George Foreman along the way. Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and devoted much of his time after to philanthropy. He earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

FULL NAME: Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. BORN: January 17, 1942 DIED: June 3, 2016 BIRTHPLACE: Louisville, Kentucky SPOUSES: Sonji Roi (1964-1965), Belinda Boyd (1967-1977), Veronica Porché (1977-1986), and Yolanda Williams (1986-2016) CHILDREN: Maryum, Jamillah, Rasheda, Muhammad Jr., Miya, Khaliah, Hana, Laila Ali , and Asaad ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. His birth name was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

At an early age, young Clay showed that he wasn’t afraid of any bout—inside or outside of the ring. Growing up in the segregated South, he experienced racial prejudice and discrimination firsthand.

At the age of 12, Clay discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate. After his bike was stolen, Clay told police officer Joe Martin that he wanted to beat up the thief. “Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people,” Martin reportedly told him at the time. In addition to being a police officer, Martin also trained young boxers at a local gym.

Clay started working with Martin to learn how to spar and soon began his boxing career. In his first amateur bout in 1954, he won the fight by split decision. Clay went on to win the 1956 Golden Gloves tournament for novices in the light heavyweight class. Three years later, he won the National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions, as well as the Amateur Athletic Union’s national title for the light heavyweight division.

Clay attended mostly Black public schools, including Central High School in Louisville from 1956 to 1960. Clay often daydreamed in class and shadowboxed in the halls—he was training for the 1960 Olympics at the time—and his grades were so bad that some of his teachers wanted to hold him back from graduation. However, the school’s principal Atwood Wilson could see Clay’s potential and opposed this, sarcastically asking the staff, “Do you think I’m going to be the principal of a school that Cassius Clay didn’t finish?”

In 1960, Clay won a spot on the U.S. Olympic boxing team and traveled to Rome to compete. At 6 feet, 3 inches tall, Clay was an imposing figure in the ring, but he also became known for his lightning speed and fancy footwork. After winning his first three bouts, Clay defeated Zbigniew Pietrzkowski of Poland to win the light heavyweight Olympic gold medal.

After his Olympic victory, Clay was heralded as an American hero. He soon turned professional with the backing of the Louisville Sponsoring Group and continued overwhelming all opponents in the ring.

Clay met charismatic Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X at a rally in Detroit in June 1962. Floored by Malcolm X’s fearlessness as an orator, the two developed a friendship and Clay became more involved in the Black Muslim group. Malcolm X even assigned an associate to help manage Clay’s day-to-day affairs.

In 1964, Malcolm X brought his family to visit Clay while he trained in Florida for his February 25 title fight against Sonny Liston . Clay’s victory over Liston earned him his first world heavyweight boxing championship. Following the win, the two held an evening of reflection in a hotel room with Jim Brown and Sam Cooke that became the inspiration for the One Night in Miami stage play and 2020 drama film.

The next morning, on February 26, Clay announced his affiliation with the Nation of Islam. At first, he called himself Cassius X before settling on the name Muhammad Ali. Surprisingly, his allegiances were with supreme leader Elijah Muhammad and not the exiled Malcolm X. Ali and Malcolm’s friendship quickly fractured, and the two went their separate ways by that spring.

Ali showed little remorse upon Malcolm X’s murder on February 21, 1965, but admitted in his 2005 memoir Soul of a Butterfly : “Turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life.”

The boxer eventually converted to orthodox Islam during the 1970s.

Ali started a different kind of fight with his outspoken views against the Vietnam War. Drafted into the military in April 1967, he refused to serve on the grounds that he was a practicing Muslim minister with religious beliefs that prevented him from fighting. He was arrested for committing a felony and almost immediately stripped of his world title and boxing license.

The U.S. Justice Department pursued a legal case against Ali and denied his claim for conscientious objector status. He was found guilty of violating Selective Service laws and sentenced to five years in prison in June 1967 but remained free while appealing his conviction.

Unable to compete professionally in the meantime, Ali missed more than three prime years of his athletic career. Following his suspension, Ali found refuge on Chicago’s South Side, where he lived from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s. He continued training, formed amateur boxing leagues, and fought whomever he could in local gyms.

Finally granted a license to fight in 1970 in Georgia, which did not have a statewide athletic commission, Ali returned to the ring at Atlanta’s City Auditorium on October 26 with a win over Jerry Quarry. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in June 1971, allowing Ali to fight on a regular basis.

Ali had a career record of 56 wins, five losses, and 37 knockouts before his retirement in 1981 at the age of 39.

Often referring to himself as “The Greatest,” Ali was not afraid to sing his own praises. He was known for boasting about his skills before a fight and for his colorful descriptions and phrases. In one of his more famously quoted descriptions, Ali told reporters that he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” in the boxing ring.

A few of his more well-known bouts include the following:

Sonny Liston

After winning gold at the 1960 Olympics, Ali took out British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper in 1963. He then knocked out Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964, to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

Joe Frazier

On March 8, 1971, Ali took on Joe Frazier in what has been called the “Fight of the Century.” Frazier and Ali went toe-to-toe for 14 rounds before Frazier dropped Ali with a vicious left hook in the 15th. Ali recovered quickly, but the judges awarded the decision to Frazier, handing Ali his first professional loss after 31 wins.

After suffering a loss to Ken Norton, Ali beat Frazier in a rematch on January 28, 1974.

In 1975, Ali and Frazier locked horns again for their grudge match on October 1 in Quezon City, Philippines. Dubbed the “Thrilla in Manila,” the bout nearly went the distance, with both men delivering and absorbing tremendous punishment. However, Frazier’s trainer threw in the towel after the 14th round, giving the hard-fought victory to Ali.

George Foreman

Another legendary Ali fight took place on October 30, 1974, against undefeated heavyweight champion George Foreman . Billed as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the bout was organized by promoter Don King and held in Kinshasa, Zaire.

For once, Ali was seen as the underdog to the younger, massive Foreman, but he silenced his critics with a masterful performance. He baited Foreman into throwing wild punches with his “rope-a-dope” technique, before stunning his opponent with an eighth-round knockout to reclaim the heavyweight title.

Leon Spinks

After losing his title to Leon Spinks on February 15, 1978, Ali defeated him months later in a rematch on September 15. Ali became the first boxer to win the heavyweight championship three times.

Larry Holmes

Following a brief retirement, Ali returned to the ring to face Larry Holmes on October 2, 1980, but was overmatched against the younger champion.

Following one final loss in 1981, to Trevor Berbick, the boxing great retired from the sport at age 39.

Ali was married four times and had nine children, including two children—daughters Miya and Khaliah—he fathered outside of marriage.

Ali married his first wife, Sonji Roi, in 1964. They divorced a little more than one year later when she refused to adopt the Nation of Islam dress and customs.

Ali married his second wife, 17-year-old Belinda Boyd, in 1967. Boyd and Ali had four children together: Maryum, born in 1969; Jamillah and Rasheda, both born in 1970; and Muhammad Ali Jr., born in 1972. Boyd and Ali’s divorce was finalized in 1977.

At the same time Ali was married to Boyd, he traveled openly with Veronica Porché, who became his third wife in 1977. The pair had two daughters together, Hana and Laila Ali . The latter followed in Ali’s footsteps by becoming a champion boxer. Porché and Ali divorced in 1986.

Ali married his fourth and final wife Yolanda, who went by Lonnie, in 1986. The pair had known each other since Lonnie was just 6 and Ali was 21; their mothers were best friends and raised their families on the same street. Ali and Lonnie had one son together, Asaad, and remained married until Ali’s death.

Grandchildren

Rasheda’s son Nico Walsh Ali became a boxer like his grandfather and aunt. In 2021, he signed a deal with legendary Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who promoted 27 of Muhammad Ali’s bouts. He won his first eight professional fights, according to database BoxRec.

Nico’s brother, Biaggio Ali Walsh, was a star football running back, helping lead national powerhouse Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas to the top of the USA Today rankings from 2014 through 2016. He played collegiately at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas before becoming an amateur mixed martial artist.

The brothers have drawn the attention of social media celebrity Jake Paul, a novice boxer who has said he’d like to fight both and “erase” them.

One of Ali’s other grandsons, Jacob Ali-Wertheimer, competed in NCAA track and field at Harvard University and graduated in 2021.

In 1984, Ali announced that he had Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological condition. Despite the progression of Parkinson’s and the onset of spinal stenosis, he remained active in public life.

Ali raised funds for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona. And he was on hand to celebrate the inauguration of the first Black president in January 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn into office.

In his retirement, Ali devoted much of his time to philanthropy. Over the years, Ali supported the Special Olympics and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, among other organizations. In 1996, he lit the Olympic cauldron at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, an emotional moment in sports history.

Ali traveled to numerous countries, including Mexico and Morocco, to help out those in need. In 1998, he was chosen to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace because of his work in developing nations.

In 2005, Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush .

Ali also received the President’s Award from the NAACP in 2009 for his public service efforts. Other recipients of the award have included include Ella Fitzgerald , Venus and Serena Williams , Kerry Washington , Spike Lee , John Legend , Rihanna , and LeBron James .

Ali opened the Muhammad Ali Center , a multicultural center with a museum dedicated to his life and legacy, in his hometown of Louisville in 2005.

“I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given,” he said. “Many fans wanted to build a museum to acknowledge my achievements. I wanted more than a building to house my memorabilia. I wanted a place that would inspire people to be the best that they could be at whatever they chose to do, and to encourage them to be respectful of one another.”

Ali lived the final decade of his live in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley, Arizona.

A few years before his death, Ali underwent surgery for spinal stenosis, a condition causing the narrowing of the spine, which limited his mobility and ability to communicate. In early 2015, he battled pneumonia and was hospitalized for a severe urinary tract infection.

Ali died on June 3, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona, after being hospitalized for what was reportedly a respiratory issue. He was 74 years old.

Years before his passing, Ali had planned his own memorial services, saying he wanted to be “inclusive of everyone, where we give as many people an opportunity that want to pay their respects to me,” according to a family spokesman.

The three-day event, which took place in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, included an “I Am Ali” public arts festival, entertainment and educational offerings sponsored by the city, an Islamic prayer program, and a memorial service.

Prior to the memorial service, a funeral procession traveled 20 miles through Louisville, past Ali’s childhood home, his high school, the first boxing gym where he trained, and along Ali Boulevard as tens of thousands of fans tossed flowers on his hearse and cheered his name.

The champ’s memorial service was held at the KFC Yum Center arena with close to 20,000 people in attendance. Speakers included religious leaders from various faiths: Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s eldest daughter; broadcaster Bryant Gumbel; former President Bill Clinton ; comedian Billy Crystal; Ali’s daughters Maryum and Rasheda; and his widow, Lonnie.

“Muhammad indicated that when the end came for him, he wanted us to use his life and his death as a teaching moment for young people, for his country, and for the world,” Lonnie said. “In effect, he wanted us to remind people who are suffering that he had seen the face of injustice—that he grew up during segregation and that during his early life he was not free to be who he wanted to be. But he never became embittered enough to quit or to engage in violence.”

Clinton spoke about how Ali found self-empowerment: “I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would not ever be disempowered. He decided that not his race, nor his place, the expectations of others—positive, negative, or otherwise—would strip from him the power to write his own story.”

Crystal, who was a struggling comedian when he became friends with Ali, said of the boxing legend: “Ultimately, he became a silent messenger for peace, who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls.”

Pallbearers included Will Smith , who once portrayed Ali on film, and former heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. Ali is buried at the Cave Hill National Cemetery in Louisville.

Ali’s stature as a legend continues to grow even after his death. He is celebrated not only for his remarkable athletic skills but for his willingness to speak his mind and his courage to challenge the status quo.

Ali played himself in the 1977 film The Greatest , which explored parts of his life such as his rise to boxing fame, conversion to Islam, and refusal to serve in Vietnam.

The 1996 documentary When We Were Kings explores Ali’s training process for his 1974 fight against George Foreman and the African political climate at the time. Directed by Leon Gast, the film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Actor Will Smith played Ali in the biopic film Ali, released in 2001. For the performance, Smith received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Ali’s relationship with Malcolm X is explored in the fictionalized 2020 drama One Night in Miami and the 2021 documentary Blood Brothers: Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali .

• The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
• It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.
• I’m gonna float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see.
• I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given.
• I’m the champion of the world. I’m the greatest thing that ever lived. I’m so great I don’t have a mark on my face. I shook up the world! I shook up the world!
• If Clay says a mosquito can pull a plow, don’t ask how—Hitch him up!
• You get the impression while watching him fight that he plays cat and mouse, then turns out the light.
• The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people, or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom, and equality.
• Religions all have different names, but they all contain the same truths. I think the people of our religion should be tolerant and understand people believe different things.
• It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
• I set out on a journey of love, seeking truth, peace, and understanding. l am still learning.
• Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves.
• At night when I go to bed, I ask myself, “If I don’t wake up tomorrow, would I be proud of how I lived today?”
• This is the story about a man with iron fists and a beautiful tan.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

Famous Athletes

Travis Kelce

The Complex Legacy of NFL Star Steve McNair

How Babe Ruth Became a Cancer Pioneer

How to Watch the 2024 Olympics Live and Online

Sha’Carri Richardson

Simone Biles

Katie Ledecky

6 Breakout Stars at the Paris Olympics

Simone Biles’ Goat Necklace Was Custom-Made

Simone Biles’ Huge Net Worth Isn’t From Gymnastics

13 U.S. Athletes to Watch at the 2024 Olympics

• Fundamentals NEW

• Biographies
• Compare Countries
• World Atlas

Muhammad Ali

Introduction.

Early Years

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. His original name was Cassius Marcellus Clay. At the age of 18 Clay won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Rome. He became the world heavyweight champion in 1964.

Loss of Title

In 1964 Clay joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. At the time, the United States was fighting the Vietnam War . In 1967 Ali refused to join the armed forces because of his religion. He was convicted of breaking the law. His title was taken from him, and he was not allowed to box.

Return to Boxing

Ali was allowed to return to boxing in 1970, and the next year the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction. In March 1971 Ali challenged Joe Frazier to a fight. Frazier was the current heavyweight champion. Ali lost that match but later defeated Frazier. By then, however, Frazier had lost the title to George Foreman. In a match against Foreman in 1974, Ali regained the world heavyweight title. He held the title until 1978. In 1979 Ali announced that he would retire.

Later Years

Ali came out of retirement for matches in 1980 and 1981, and he was defeated both times. In later years he suffered from Parkinson’s disease . Despite his illness Ali remained active in several activities. He traveled widely as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Ali was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 9, 2005. He died on June 3, 2016, in Phoenix, Arizona.

It’s here: the NEW Britannica Kids website!

We’ve been busy, working hard to bring you new features and an updated design. We hope you and your family enjoy the NEW Britannica Kids. Take a minute to check out all the enhancements!

• The same safe and trusted content for explorers of all ages.
• Accessible across all of today's devices: phones, tablets, and desktops.
• Improved homework resources designed to support a variety of curriculum subjects and standards.
• A new, third level of content, designed specially to meet the advanced needs of the sophisticated scholar.
• And so much more!

Want to see it in action?

Start a free trial

To share with more than one person, separate addresses with a comma

Choose a language from the menu above to view a computer-translated version of this page. Please note: Text within images is not translated, some features may not work properly after translation, and the translation may not accurately convey the intended meaning. Britannica does not review the converted text.

After translating an article, all tools except font up/font down will be disabled. To re-enable the tools or to convert back to English, click "view original" on the Google Translate toolbar.

• Privacy Notice
• Terms of Use

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Sports — Muhammad Ali

Essays on Muhammad Ali

What makes a good muhammad ali essay topics.

When it comes to writing an essay about Muhammad Ali, it's important to choose a topic that is not only interesting but also relevant and thought-provoking. A good essay topic should allow you to delve deep into the life and legacy of this iconic figure, while also providing a unique perspective or angle. In order to come up with a great Muhammad Ali essay topic, it's important to take the time to brainstorm and consider what aspects of his life and career are most compelling to you.

One way to brainstorm potential essay topics is to consider what aspects of Muhammad Ali's life and career are the most meaningful or impactful. For example, you might consider writing about his early life and upbringing, his rise to fame and success as a boxer, his activism and advocacy work, or his lasting impact on popular culture. It's also important to consider what specific themes or ideas you want to explore in your essay, whether it's the intersection of sports and social justice, the power of resilience and determination, or the complexities of fame and celebrity.

Ultimately, a good Muhammad Ali essay topic should be one that allows you to explore a specific aspect of his life or legacy in depth, while also providing an opportunity for critical thinking and analysis. It should be a topic that you are passionate about and that allows you to bring your own unique perspective and insights to the table.

Best Muhammad Ali Essay Topics

• The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali and the Fight of the Century
• Muhammad Ali: The Greatest of All Time
• The Activism of Muhammad Ali: Beyond the Boxing Ring
• Muhammad Ali and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Legacy of Muhammad Ali: Impact on Popular Culture
• Muhammad Ali: A Champion Inside and Outside the Ring
• The Personal and Professional Life of Muhammad Ali
• Muhammad Ali's Fight for Social Justice
• The Art of Trash Talk: Muhammad Ali's Impact on Boxing
• Muhammad Ali and the Olympic Games: A Gold Medalist's Journey
• The Religion of Muhammad Ali: Exploring his Conversion to Islam
• Muhammad Ali and the Vietnam War: Conscientious Objector or Draft Dodger?
• The Influence of Muhammad Ali on Future Generations of Boxers
• The Life and Times of Muhammad Ali: A Cultural Icon
• Muhammad Ali: The Man Behind the Legend
• The Ali Shuffle: Muhammad Ali's Signature Move
• Muhammad Ali: A Hero or a Villain?
• The Enduring Legacy of Muhammad Ali: An Everlasting Impact
• Muhammad Ali: A Champion of Self-Expression and Individuality
• The Muhammad Ali Effect: How His Influence Transcends Generations

Muhammad Ali essay topics Prompts

• Imagine you are a journalist covering Muhammad Ali's most famous match. Write a detailed article capturing the atmosphere, the participants, and the impact of the event on the world of sports and culture.
• If you could interview Muhammad Ali, what would be the top three questions you would ask him? Explain why these questions are important to you and how his answers would contribute to a deeper understanding of his life and legacy.
• Write a fictional short story about an encounter between Muhammad Ali and a young fan. How does this interaction change the young fan's perspective on life and the world around them?
• Create a multimedia presentation (video, audio, or visual) that highlights the key moments and accomplishments of Muhammad Ali's life and career. Explain why you chose these specific moments and how they reflect the essence of who he was as a person and a public figure.
• Imagine you are tasked with organizing a tribute event to honor Muhammad Ali's legacy. What would this event look like? Who would be the key speakers and performers, and what message would you want to convey to the audience about the impact of his life and work?

Muhammad Ali: The Life and Rise to Glory of a Boxing Legend

Changing the world: muhammad ali, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Muhammad Ali – The Man that Shook The World

Muhammad ali biography, an analysis of the stand of muhammad ali, muhammad ali – a fighter in and out of the ring, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Muhannad Ali and His Protest Against Violence

Why muhammad ali is a hero, the life of muhammad ali and his impact on the world, muhammad ali - one of the greatest athletes in boxing history, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

The Prophet Muhammad Ali and The Four Pillars of The Islamic Faith

Racial segregation in american sports.

January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016

Muhammad Ali, original name Cassius Marcellus Clay, was an American professional boxer and social activist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century, and is frequently ranked as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.

Olympic Games, Golden Gloves, Presidential Medal of Freedom (2005).

Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest boxers in history, the first fighter to win the world heavyweight championship on three separate occasions. In addition, he was known for his social message of black pride and black resistance to white domination and for refusing induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." "Don't count the days. Make the days count." "Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." "If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it - then I can achieve it." "I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was."

Relevant topics

• Jackie Robinson
• Paying College Athletes

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

The Best Stories Ever Written About Muhammad Ali

A collection of great journalism about the greatest of all time..

AFP/Getty Images

Muhammad Ali died on Friday at age 74 . Here are the greatest stories ever written about the greatest of all time. (Many thanks to Alex Belth , who published several of these pieces on Deadspin ’s archive of classic sports journalism, the Stacks .)

“ The Champ and the Chump ,” Murray Kempton, the New Republic , March 1964

Unlike a lot of journalism written about the fighter before his beatification, Kempton’s dispatch from the first Clay-Liston fight holds up magnificently. Kempton understood better than anyone what anxieties Clay aroused in people, and his story is an account of the young fighter’s sudden transfiguration in the public eye from a mouthy punk to a champ worthy of his new station.

Just before the bell for the seventh round, Cassius Clay got up to go about his job. Suddenly, he thrust his arms straight up in the air in the signal with which boxers are accustomed to treat victory and you laughed at his arrogance. No man could have seen Clay that morning at the weigh-in and believed that he could stay on his feet three minutes that night. He had come in pounding the cane Malcolm X had given him for spiritual support, chanting “I am the greatest, I am the champ, he is a chump.” Ray Robinson, that picture of grace who is Clay’s ideal as a fighter, pushed him against the wall and tried to calm him, and this hysterical child turned and shouted at him, “I am a great performer, I am a great performer.”

Suddenly almost everyone in the room hated Cassius Clay. Sonny Liston just looked at him. Liston used to be a hoodlum; now he was our cop; he was the big Negro we pay to keep sassy Negroes in line and he was just waiting until his boss told him it was time to throw this kid out.

“ Muhammad Ali Then and Now ,” Dick Schaap, Sport , 1971

Schaap had a long history with Ali, having squired a teenage Cassius Clay around New York City before Clay went to Rome to win gold in the 1960 Olympics. He would later complicate their relationship when he broke the story of Ali’s connections with the Nation of Islam.

On the ride uptown, Cassius monopolized the conversation. I forget his exact words, but I remember the message: I’m great, I’m beautiful, I’m going to Rome and I’m gonna whip all those cats and then I’m coming back and turning pro and becoming the champion of the world. I’d never heard an athlete like him; he had no doubts, no fears, no second thoughts, not an ounce of false humility. “Don’t mind him,” said [his Olympic teammate Wilbert] McClure, amiably. “That’s just the way he is.”

He was, even then, an original, so outrageously bold he was funny. We all laughed at him, and he didn’t mind the laughter, but rode with it, using it to feed his ego, to nourish his self-image.

But there was one moment when he wasn’t laughing, he wasn’t bubbling. When we reached Sugar Ray’s bar on Seventh Avenue near 124 th Street, Robinson hadn’t shown up yet, and Cassius wandered outside to inspect the sidewalks. At the corner of 125 th Street, a black man, perched on a soap box, was preaching to a small crowd. He was advocating something that sounds remarkably mild today—his message, as I recall, was simply buy black, black goods from black merchants—but Cassius seemed stunned. He couldn’t believe that a black man would stand up in public and argue against white America. He shook his head in wonderment. “How can he talk like that?” Cassius said. “Ain’t he gonna get in trouble?”

“ Ego ,” Norman Mailer, Life , March 1971

Life published Mailer’s essay just days after Ali-Frazier I, aka the Fight of the Century, a fight Frazier won by unanimous decision.

Muhammad Ali begins with the most unsettling ego of all. Having commanded the stage, he never pretends to step back and relinquish his place to other actors—like a six-foot parrot, he keeps screaming at you that he is the center of the stage. “Come here and get me, fool.” he says. “You can’t, ‘cause you don’t know who I am. You don’t know where I am. I’m human intelligence and you don’t even know if I’m good or evil.” This has been his essential message to America all these years. It is intolerable to our American mentality that the figure who is probably most prominent to us after the President is simply not comprehensible, for he could be a demon or a saint. Or both! Richard Nixon, at least, appears comprehensible. We can hate him or we can vote for him, but at least we disagree with each other about him. What kills us about a.k.a. Cassius Clay is that the disagreement is inside us. He is fascinating —attraction and repulsion must be in the same package. So, he is obsessive. The more we don’t want to think about him, the more we are obliged to. There is a reason for it. He is America’s Greatest Ego. He is also, as I am going to try to show, the swiftest embodiment of human intelligence we have had yet, he is the very spirit of the 20th Century, he is the prince of mass man and the media. Now, perhaps temporarily, he is the fallen prince. But there still may be one holocaust of an urge to understand him, or try to, for obsession is a disease. Twenty little obsessions are 20 leeches on the mind, and one big obsession can become one big operation if we refuse to live with it. If Muhammad All defeats Frazier in the return bout, then he’ll become the national obsession and we’ll elect him President yet—you may indeed have to vote for any man who could defeat a fighter as great as Joe Frazier and still be Muhammad Ali. That’s a combination!

“ Lawdy, Lawdy, He’s Great ,” Mark Kram, Sports Illustrated , October 1975

Probably the best-known dispatch from any of Ali’s fights, written after his victory over Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila.

True to his plan, arrogant and contemptuous of an opponent’s worth as never before, Ali opened the fight flat-footed in the center of the ring, his hands whipping out and back like the pistons of an enormous and magnificent engine. Much broader than he has ever been, the look of swift destruction defined by his every move, Ali seemed indestructible. Once, so long ago, he had been a splendidly plumed bird who wrote on the wind a singular kind of poetry of the body, but now he was down to earth, brought down by the changing shape of his body, by a sense of his own vulnerability, and by the years of excess. Dancing was for a ballroom; the ugly hunt was on. Head up and unprotected, Frazier stayed in the mouth of the cannon, and the big gun roared again and again.

“ Ali and His Entourage ,” Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated , April 1988

“Life after the end of the greatest show on earth” is the subtitle on this one, and it profiles the people who surrounded Ali in the prime of his career—his doctor, his bodyguard, and his aide, Gene Kilroy.

Gene Kilroy had no title. Everyone just knew: He was the Facilitator. When Ali wanted a new Rolls-Royce, Kilroy facilitated it. When he wanted to buy land to build a training camp, Kilroy facilitated it. When a pipe burst in the training camp or a hose burst in the Rolls, when Marlon Brando or Liza Minnelli wanted to meet Ali, or Ali wanted to donate $100,000 to save an old-folks’ home, Kilroy facilitated it.

At hotels he usually stayed in a bedroom that was part of Ali’s suite. As soon as they entered a city, he collected a list of the best doctors, in case of an emergency. He reached for the ever-ringing phone, decided who was worthy of a visit to the throne room. He worried himself into a 10-Maalox-a-day habit, facilitating. “Ulcer,” he said. “You love someone, you worry. Watching him get hit during the Holmes fight, I bled like a pig—I was throwing it up in the dressing room. And all the problems before a fight. It was like having a show horse you had to protect, and all the people wanted to hitch him to a buggy for a ride through Central Park.”

The trouble with facilitating was that it left no mark, no Kilroy was here. He has covered the walls of his rec room with 50 Ali photos. He reminisces every day. He watches videos of old Ali interviews he helped facilitate, and sometimes tears fill his eyes. “I wish I had a kid I could tell,” he said. And then, his voice going from soft to gruff: “I’ll get married when I find a woman who greets me at the door the way my dogs do.”

“ Great Men Die Twice ,” Mark Kram, Esquire , June 1989

This is one of several elegiac stories written about Ali in his decline phase, this one angrier than the others about the people surrounding Ali who used him for their own ends.

The public prefers, indeed seems to insist on, the precedent set by Rocky Marciano, who quit undefeated, kept self-delusion at bay. Ali knew the importance of a clean farewell, not only as a health measure but as good commercial sense. His ring classicism had always argued so persuasively against excessive physical harm, his pride was beyond anything but a regal exit. But his prolonged decline had been nasty, unseemly. Who or what pressured him to continue on? Some blamed his manager, Herbert Muhammad, who had made millions with Ali. Herbert said that his influence wasn’t that strong.

Two years after that last fight, Ali seemed as mystified as everyone else as to why he hadn’t ended his career earlier. His was living with his third wife, the ice goddess Veronica, in an L.A. mansion, surrounded by the gifts of a lifetime—a six-foot hand carved tiger given to him by Teng Hsiao-ping, a robe given to him by Elvis Presley. Fatigued, his hands tremoring badly, he sat in front of the fire and could only say: “Everybody git lost in life. I just git lost, that’s all.”

“ Ali Now ,” Cal Fussman, Esquire , January 2007

Muhammad Ali came through the double doors into the living room of his hotel suite on slow, tender steps. I held out my hand. He opened his arms. Ali lowered himself into a wide, soft chair, and I sat on an adjacent sofa. “I’ve come,” I said, “to ask about the wisdom you’ve taken from all you’ve been through.” Ali seemed preoccupied with his right hand, which was trembling over his right thigh, and he did not speak. “George Foreman told me that you were the most important man in the world. When I asked him why, he said that when you walked into a room, it didn’t matter who was there—presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, movie stars—everybody turned toward you. The most famous person in that room was wondering, Should I go to meet him? Or stay here? He said you were the most important man in the world because you made everybody else’s heart beat faster.”

The shaking in Ali’s right hand seemed to creep above his elbow. Both of his arms were quivering now, and his breaths were short and quick.

I leaned in awkwardly, not knowing quite what to do. Half a minute passed in silence. I wondered if I should call for his wife.

Ali stooped over, and now his whole body was trembling and his breaths were almost gasps.

“Champ! You okay? You okay?”

Ali’s head lifted and slowly turned to me with the smile of an eight-year-old.

“Scared ya, huh?” he said.

“ My Dinner With Ali ,” Davis Miller, Deadspin (adapted from piece originally published in Louisville Courier-Journal Magazine ), June 2013

In 1988, Miller spent a day with a 46-year-old Ali, with whom he’d once sparred. Ali play-fought with the writer, did some magic tricks, and signed some autographs, though a prosaic description doesn’t do justice to the dreamy way their day together unfolded. It’s a sweetly odd and affecting story.

I peeked around the corner. He was standing with his back flat against the wall. He saw me, jumped from the room, and tickled me, a guilty-little-kid smile splashed across his features. Next thing I knew, he had me on the floor, balled up in a fetal position, tears flowing down both sides of my face, laughing. Then he stopped tickling me and helped me to my feet. Everybody kept laughing. Mrs. Clay’s face was round and wide with laughter. She looked like the mom of a Celtic imp.

“What’d you think happened to the door?” [his brother] Rahaman asked. I told him I’d figured it was Ali. “Then why you turnin red?” he wanted to know.

“It’s not every day,” I said, “that I go to Muhammad Ali’s, he locks me in the bathroom, then tickles me into submission.”

Everyone laughed again. “Ali, you crazy,” Rahaman said.

Read more in  Slate  about  Muhammad Ali :

• Muhammad Ali Has Died at 74. Here Is One of His Greatest Moments.
• The Time Muhammad Ali Stopped a Man from Leaping to His Death
• The Legendary BBC Interviews Muhammad Ali Would Watch on YouTube in His Final Days

Always The Greatest: Remembering Muhammad Ali

BRIAN TALLERICO:

“I would like for them to say he took a few cups of love, he took one tablespoon of patience, one teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness; he took one quart of laughter; he took one pinch of concern. And, in the end, he mixed willingness with happiness, he added lots of faith, and he stirred it up well. Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime, and he served it to each and every deserving person he met.”

— Muhammad Ali , when asked what he would like people to think about him when he’s gone

Where does one even start when it comes to talking about what Ali meant? Look at that quote above. It’s an athlete who was arguably the best at what he did but he doesn’t even mention boxing. And, to me, that’s one of the elements that made Ali so special. Like a fighter in a ring dodging punches, he was impossible to define with simple descriptors. His influence may have been to illustrate to the world how multi-faceted public figures can be. They can be the greatest of all time at their profession, but they can also be powerful leaders in an anti-war movement, fundraisers for a fight against a cruel disease, civil and religious rights icons, and even playful poets. Ali’s impact is so hard to put into words because he was a man who refused to be simply defined. And he taught generations that they shouldn’t be put in boxes either. Fighters can be peaceful. Athletes can be poets. Men can be beautiful. And only one man can and ever will be Muhammad Ali.

SERGIO MIMS:

Please don’t misunderstand me. Not that I’m bragging, but I have in my lifetime met a lot of famous people. Comes with the job and my interests, but I can honestly say that only one time in my life was I truly intimidated by someone who was famous.

And that person was the one and only G.O.A.T.: Muhammad Ali

It happened many years ago, just shortly after he retired from boxing. Someone I know had gotten an invite for a fashion show for which he was a celebrity judge. Knowing how much he meant to me, my parents, and my grandfather, I decided that somehow I would get Ali to sign the program book for my grandfather and send it to him.

When I arrived for the show, I looked for him. There was Ali, larger than life. Nervously, I slowly approached him. What would he be like? Would he turn me away or ignore me? Would he crash my dreams of who he was?

As I got closer, Ali turned to ME, and extended his hand for a handshake. I shook his hand, and, with voice trembling, asked him if he could sign the program book for my grandfather. Of course he would. He took my pen and asked for me grandfather’s name, which was (no joke) Ebenezer. That made him chuckle, and he joked why didn’t I ask for an autograph for myself as well. After he signed it, he put his hand on my shoulder and said “You tell Ebenezer I said ‘Hello.'”

Somehow, with my legs shaking, I made it back to my seat and spent the rest of the evening watching him while he was watching the gorgeous models on the runway. But that’s the effect he had on me and I assume most people.

For me, growing up, Ali was more than just a famous person, more than the greatest boxer of the past century. He was the living embodiment of black manhood—unbought, unafraid and true to himself.

He said and did what he believed without fear of consequence. He threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the river in protest to the racism he experienced in this country and constantly spoke out against. He converted to Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali and was close friends with Malcolm X. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and refused to enter military service objecting to the war and the U.S. government foreign policies. And he did it all with courage, grace and even humor. He took on the establishment and the powers that be and always wound up victorious. He was like no other.

And that was the person I met that night and who I have admired my entire life. A man who lived his life the way he wanted to live—uncompromising and always truthful about what he said and believed.

He was, he is and he always will be The Greatest of All Time.

STEVEN BOONE:

My absolute favorite memory of Muhammad Ali is a stray, quiet moment from the otherwise explosive documentary “Soul Power,” the musical counterpart to “ When We Were Kings .” It’s early morning on Day One of the music festival designed as a counterpart to Ali’s legendary Rumble in the Jungle bout with George Foreman, in Kinshasa, Zaire. But right now Ali is just focusing on pouring at least five spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. He radiates so much energy, you wonder why he needs the caffeine, or the sugar.

He turns and spots someone, his face lighting up. “Stokely Carmichael!” he shouts. The camera pulls back to reveal Kwame Toure, the civil rights icon who had changed his name from Stokely Carmichael and left America to become an official in the government of Guinea, walking up to the champ. “Don’t you burn up nothing over here!” Ali says as they shake hands, both grinning like kids. He turns back to his breakfast companions, eyes gleaming, and takes a sip of his coffee with a spoon, staring down at it while clearly still savoring his own joke. Without even seeing Toure/Carmichael at this point, you just know that he is walking away beaming, too.

Carmichael had been accused of inciting riots in Washington, D.C. right after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, just one of many attempts by the FBI and CIA to neutralize him.

So here he was, six years later, more of an African dignitary than the boyish American revolutionary Ali once knew, but the champ calls him by his birth name. That’s like Toure calling Ali “Cassius Clay.” In that simple choice of address, Ali evokes their shared history: When young Carmichael was fighting American apartheid and imperialism, Ali was in jail for standing up to the same evils.

What I love about this moment is how much intelligence is conveyed in one handshake, one impish smile and one sugary cup of coffee. Even if you don’t know the history surrounding this wisp of a moment, Ali’s embracing, teasing presence makes it universally relatable: two great men acknowledging each other in a casual, down-home way. Ali was a brilliant author in the genre of life itself.

SHEILA O’MALLEY:

I feel so fortunate that I grew up in the era when Muhammad Ali was an omnipresent cultural figure, a regular guest on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” where his banter, humor, improvised rhyme schemes, and gentle yet commanding presence (how did he pull off that combination so effortlessly?) were an onslaught of charm and personality. My love of boxing would come later. I knew he was famous for being a boxer (I picked up on that by osmosis), but what I mostly sensed—and we’re talking at age 6, 7, 8—was that this was a good man, a special man. I knew he was funny and I understood his humor. Malcolm X once said of his protégé and friend, “Though a clown never imitates a wise man, the wise man can imitate a clown.” I totally picked up on that. So many adults seemed incomprehensible to me and he came off as completely transparent. He wasn’t on my level. He was on EVERYONE’S level. Outside of being a boxer, outside of being a man of convictions, political courage, compassion, strength, he was also an entertainer and he took that seriously. He knew what people wanted from him, and he provided it with panache. That is old-school generosity and, unfortunately, a lost art.

There are scenes in Albert and David Maysles’ extraordinary documentary footage of Ali training to fight Larry Holmes in 1980 (now resurrected as “Muhammad and Larry,” an episode in ESPN’s “30 for 30” series) where onlookers and fans (kids, old men, young women, teenage boys) push up against the ring, watching Ali spar with his trainer and other boxers. He had a magic about him. It came from the inside. Beyond his awe-inspiring athleticism and gorgeous 6’3” body, he had a glow that people wanted, needed. You can see it on their faces. What would it be like to be as confident as Ali? What would it be like to have his self-knowledge, humor, competitiveness, kindness? Maybe if people got close enough it would rub off, maybe Ali’s secret would be revealed, the secret of what it is like to be a man who knows who he is, and is present in every moment. We all could use a little more of that.

It was later that I understood what he signified, what he had accomplished as a boxer, as well as the other well-known facts of his life: his actions during the Vietnam War, his name-change, his relationship with Malcolm X. But once I went back and watched footage of him in the ring, I was so struck by his light-footed dodging and weaving, such a startling thing to see in a man so big, so muscular. He made his opponent do all the work; he bided his time; he saved his strength with a dancer’s grace. He was spectacular to watch.

Recently, I read Peter Guralnick’s “Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke ,” and Ali plays a huge part. He and Sam Cooke were dear friends. In March of 1964, they went into the studio together to record a song, “Hey, Hey, The Gang’s All Here.” A couple of days later, the two were interviewed via transatlantic connection by British boxing commentator Harry Carpenter. The mood is jovial and affectionate (Ali starts off by introducing Cooke, adding, “As you can see, he’s like me, awful pretty.”) The two sit close together, and there is such a strong thread of connection between the men that it is visible. The two of them sing the song together, a cappella, and it is one of the most charming, open and fearlessly free performances I have ever seen.

With all of the things Ali did in his life, it was this clip that I first thought of when I heard the news.

JESSICA RITCHEY:

My sister and I were watching the opening ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta with our father. I was enjoying the spectacle, masked figures waving their arms and groups of athletes marching in file under their flags. It came time for the final leg of the Olympic torch race. A woman jogged up the ramp and a man came forward at the top. And my father’s whoop of surprise nearly startled me off the couch. I read the chyron, the man was Muhammad Ali. As he bent to light the cauldron I kept looking at my father. He had walked closer to the little TV set and was crouching down like he wanted to crawl into it. He had a smile of pure delight and admiration. For all the times adults had told me “so and so” was a big deal, I understood clearly from my father’s body language that this time it was true.

This person is important. This person matters.

It was an initial impression that would only be confirmed as I grew up to learn about Ali’s accomplishments and his political activism. How he had a faultless instinct for show business brio while at the same time not caring about making a white establishment comfortable with his abilities and the clear pride he took in them. 2016 has truly become a monster, gobbling up our icons, one after the other. At my worst, I worry the culture is losing people it can’t afford too. But I think a more universal truth is being revealed in these passings. Some people when they’re gone, you know you will not see their like again.

PETER SOBCZYNSKI:

I have never been much of a follower of the sport of boxing—I recognize the amount of skill and strategy on display in a good match but when all is said and done, watching two guys getting their brains beaten into jelly has never been my idea of entertainment—but the greatness of Muhammed Ali was of a type that transcended the ring and touched people around the world. As an athlete, he was without comparison, and even those who did not care for boxing could not help but be impressed with his unheard-of combination of sheer ferocity and balletic grace. Outside the ring, he first impressed as perhaps the first truly media-savvy athlete of the modern age—at a time when most sports stars were expected to be both humble and monosyllabic, he would go off on flights of oral fancy that combined humor, braggadocio and sheer poetry in ways that were a joy to hear. Before long, he would use his gift of verbal dexterity to help demonstrate the courage of his convictions, first when he made the controversial conversion to Islam and then when he proclaimed himself a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam. Considering how universally beloved he would become in later years, it is startling to realize just how hated he was by a good percentage of the population for sticking to his beliefs, but rather than sell them short in order to make things easier for himself, he clung to them at enormous personal cost. That alone would be enough to earn him universal admiration but to then come back and regain everything that he had lost thanks to his incredible athletic prowess ensured his place in the pantheon of sports history. However, by using his fame, his power and, for as long as he could use it, his voice to try to make the world a better place by bringing people together, he truly lived up to his nickname, “ The Greatest .”

Now he is gone and while that would be a sad and distressing event under any circumstances, it is even worse because he has left us during a time in which racial strife and hatred/mistrust of Muslims is making a distressing return. Will another Ali come along to help us see that there is another way beyond the path that we have been stumbling down as of late? Probably not—Ali was a true original and while many have tried to follow in his footsteps, it is doubtful that anyone will ever be able to truly fill them. However, if everyone who has been posting tributes to Ali and his legacy on Facebook and Twitter—even Donald Trump, who tweeted words of praise even though he only last December tweeted “Obama said in his speech that Muslims are our sports heroes. What sport is he talking about, and who? Is Obama profiling?”—would actually practice a little bit of what Ali preached about peace and tolerance in real life instead of simply paying lip service to it via social media, we might not need another because that would be a far more tribute to the man and his legacy. 

GLENN KENNY:

Norman Mailer , no slouch in the ego department himself, eloquently argued that ego was a key component in the success story of Muhammad Ali. And while all professional writers are egocentric by definition, my own ego isn’t so big that I think I can in any way compete with the amazing writing about Muhammad Ali that’s come down through the years of his incredible life and career. Sure, I could tell you about how I looked at Ali in my ‘60s childhood and various “feels” associated with that but seriously, your time would be much better spent reading, for instance:

“Ego,” the essay by Norman Mailer, ostensibly about Ali/Frazier, anthologized in “The Best American Sports Writing of the Century,” edited by David Halberstam. It is one of the last six pieces in that book, all of which are about Ali and one of which is…

Murray Kempton’s seminal “The Champ And The Chump,” about Sonny Liston and the future Muhammad Ali. Kempton’s Manichean portrayal of the two men was arguably wrong-headed (and is refuted to an extent by Nick Tosches provocative biography “The Devil And Sonny Liston”), but it remained fixed in the culture for decades…

Mailer’s book “The Fight” about the Foreman/Ali battle in Zaire; an arguably “indulgent” book but also a remarkable dissection of machismo and racialism and, again, ego…

James Baldwin’s “ An OpenLetter To My Sister, Angela Y. Davis ” only mentions Ali in passing, but is essential reading for understanding the context of Muhammad Ali; and finally…

“Anti-Poetry Night,” by A.J. Liebling, a largely affectionate but occasionally bemused portrait of then-Cassius Clay in spring of 1963. It ends thusly: “Will he ever be heavyweight champion? Time will tell. Will he learn to punch harder? It is a question of time, too. Will he learn to fight inside? Time is all. A young man’s best friend is time.”

PABLO VILLACA:

The upcoming ESPN epic documentary about O.J. Simpson, “ Made in America ,” promotes a very interesting reflection about the role of an idol when it comes to politics and race issues. Although he became a very successful athlete in a time that would make his African-American heritage incredibly important if put to political use, Simpson never saw a reason for “risking” his position and his fame by speaking out against the terrible injustices the African-American community was (and still is) suffering in a daily basis.

Well, that’s one of the key things that differentiate an O.J. Simpson from a Muhammad Ali.

If Simpson was an incredibly talent artist, Ali was Mozart. His genius made a sport based on brutality become a form of Art. His taunts were performance art in its most compelling, his moves on the ring were Gene Kelly-level dancing, his strength and resilience were just plain inspiring. It takes a special form of brilliance, self-confidence and craziness to put yourself in the corner of the ring, extend your arms to the sides, bracing the ropes, and to face an opponent with an exposed face, using merely your agility to avoid a barrage of 21 punches by…dodging.

And still, if he was unique as a boxer, it was his convictions and his character that made him a legend. The conviction to refuse to go to war in the name of what was basically a power play with ulterior political and economic motives; the conviction to use his fame and influence to help his community against the same system that wouldn’t hesitate in sending African-American boys to die in Asia and wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them from dying in America; the conviction to go to jail for what he believed.

THAT’s what makes a true champion.

And the fact he beat Superman himself and also an alien boxer, saving the Earth in process, doesn’t hurt.

OMER MOZAFFAR:

I’ve studied his matches over and over again. The books about him. The movies. Why: because even though he was hated hated hated, he persisted with force and love. For this Muslim kid from the South Side of Chicago, who has so often prayed in his mosque on 47th street, who shook his hands at Eid prayers decades ago, he was sometimes the only reminder that even in the face of the most vicious, most ignorant hate, you persist and you win. Then he was revered. Ultimately, he was adored. Now, I am heartbroken. But, the fight continues.

MATT ZOLLER SEITZ:

Muhammad Ali wholly or partly inspired many fictions featuring Ali or Ali-like characters, but none were as interesting as Ali himself, or for that matter, any randomly chosen still photograph of Ali. In one sense, it was inspiring to see the mainstream, which was understandably preoccupied with stories about people who looked more or less like the people making film and TV shows, becoming fascinated with Ali and wrestling with the implications of Ali’s athletic genius, intellect, artistic temperament, and worldwide popularity.

But it wasn’t until Michael Mann’s excellent, still underrated “ Ali ” came along in 2001–twenty years after Ali had retired from boxing and begun to stammer and shake from Parkinsons’-related problems– that any scripted film could deal with Ali as Ali, rather than as a half-metaphorical being reflecting white attitudes about race back at them, in a kind of cinematic referendum on enlightenment. The 1970 film “The Great White Hope,” which starred James Earl Jones as a black boxing champ in the 1920 who was bedeviled by racism and his own pride, was the first. Although ostensibly the character was based on Jack Johnson , a likewise militant figure who dominated the sport forty years before Ali/Cassius Clay came on the scene, it was also a reaction to Ali’s defiant individuality, political radicalism and unapologetic blackness. Ali would play himself in a mostly regrettable 1978 biopic, and become the subject of innumerable documentaries, the best of which is “When We Were Kings,” about Ali’s 1974 comeback fight against George Foreman in Zaire. Ali’s embrace of his African heritage is treated as the psychic fuel that enabled him to triumph over Foreman, an aloof-seeming fighter that Zaire-based fans saw as a representative of colonial white values. Mann’s film, a more atmospheric, mythic take on the post-draft-board period of the fighter’s life, draws much of its power from re-creating key moments from “When We Were Kings.” The emotional high point is Ali (played by Will Smith in perhaps his greatest screen performance) jogging through shantytown streets as he’s cheered on by local residents and tailed by adoring children.

The first three “ Rocky ” movies were partly about white anxiety over the certainty that they’d eventually be displaced from the center of American life and culture. The underdog is a working class white man. The champ, Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed, is a complacent rich black man whose taunting patter and quicksilver moves were modeled on Ali’s. (Ali talked about what Stallone’s script and Weathers’ performance took from him while watchingRocky II with Roger Ebert .) The “Rocky” version of Ali is, of course, almost entirely divorced from any larger political context, so that he becomes a purely physical threat, an obstacle for Rocky to overcome as he tries to prove he’s somebody. (Stallone wrote the script after seeing a white fighter, Chuck Wepner, aka “The Bayonne Bleeder,” go fifteen rounds against Ali in 1975, a loss that was seen as a victory for the indomitable spirit of the underdog.) And while “black-vs.-white” is a subtext in the first film, as well as the sequels, skin color is rarely remarked upon in dialogue—the better to universalize Rocky as a working stiff just trying to take his best shot at an impossible dream, and make it possible for viewers of any background to imprint their own experience on him and identify with him (and millions did—the first three Rockys are sensationally effective films).

In the third film, Rocky has become Apollo in Rocky I, coasting along on the fumes of his rematch victory in Rocky II and growing soft; the Ali stand-in helps him defeat a frighteningly confrontational black challenger, Mr. T’s Clubber Lang, who sees Rocky as a chump, not a champ. And so, through the magic of writer-filmmaker-star Sylvester Stallone’s populist alchemy, we see a universalized version of a humbled, empathetic Ali helping a white boxer beat a white-paranoia-fueled image of Ali’s radical, confrontational 1960s self—a snarling fast-talking up-from-nothing usurper, telling white America right to its face that it its dominant position was earned through luck and trickery, not merit or divine right. In the fourth “Rocky,” the Ali character dies fighting an emblem of Communist aggression. He sacrifices himself on the altar of the very beliefs that the real Ali gave up boxing to oppose, when he refused induction into the Vietnam War. “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” Ali asked in 1968. In the same year, 1985, that Stallone killed off the Ali character in his fourth Rocky installment, his other great character, the former Green Beret Rambo, re-fought and won the Vietnam War in “Rambo II,” machine-gunning bushels of Vietnamese soldiers (who were caricatured like “Japs” in a World War II war movie) and Soviet advisers (the Rambo films’ stand-ins for Nazis).

The Rocky films are nigh-irresistible entertainment, beloved by an international cross-section of fans. But there’s no denying the wish fulfillment aspect of a white boxer rising to the top after nearly twenty years of the sport being dominated by African-American boxers, the greatest of whom, Ali, was also a polarizing figure, a man who stood in opposition to nearly every political value that Stallone, as a movie star and auteur, reinforced in his screenplays. The Rocky movies change the spelling of Ali’s last name, taking away the “i” and adding an “ly.”

It wasn’t until Ryan Coogler , an African-American filmmaker, took over the franchise with last year’s superb “ Creed ” that the Apollo/Ali character was given his rightful due. Among other things, we learn that Rocky and Apollo’s legendary third match, which happened at the end of “Rocky III” after Apollo taught Rocky how to fight with rhythm and soul (i.e., like a black man)—ended with another loss for Rocky. The film’s handling of this moment exudes humility: when Apollo’s illegitimate son Adonis “Donny” Johnson ( Michael B. Jordan ) asks who won that third match, Rocky replies, quietly and with a touch of wonder, “He did,” as if the idea of any other outcome is so absurd that he’s surprised to hear the question.

Donny, too, is haunted by the image and impact of Creed/Ali, who hangs over every frame of the film, infusing it with his spirit. He shadow-boxes against projected footage of his father, emulating his moves and drawing strength from his image, and during the final fight, he gets up during a ten-count when the champ’s image rushes into his barely-conscious mind. It’s as if a spirit has taken over his body—as if Apollo/Ali has become his unseen second coach. The film’s acceptance of a non-white boxer’s dominance of the sport feels like a long-delayed corrective to a scenario that was a fantasy all the way back in 1976. Rocky resists helping Donny at first but soon relents and is as selfless in his devotion to his late friend’s son as Apollo was to him in “Rocky III.”  The most politically resonant shot in the entire film isn’t from a fight or a training montage, though those are brilliantly realized, but in a long tracking shot following Donny and Rocky into the ring en route to the final showdown. On the back of Donny’s robe it says “Creed.” On the back of Rocky’s it says “Creed’s Team.” The entire film, and especially Rocky, are rooting for a black man’s success. Ali made that possible decades earlier; it just took Hollywood forty years to catch up.

Leave a comment

Related articles.

“Risky Business” Remains One of the Most Daring Films of the ’80s

Experience the Star Trek Movies in 70mm at Out of this World L.A. Event

13 Films Illuminate Locarno Film Festival’s Columbia Pictures Retrospective

Book Excerpt: A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda by Carrie Rickey

Popular reviews.

Space Cadet

For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

Site Navigation

Muhammad ali (1942–2016).

Visit of Muhammad Ali to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History, March 17, 1976. During his visit he donated a pair of gloves and a robe to the museum for the “Nations of Nations” exhibition. Featured in TORCH, April 1976/Smithsonian Institution Archives. Click photo for article. (Photo by Richard K. Hofmeister)

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”–Muhammad Ali

Risk taker, sports figure and fearless social icon, Muhammad Ali, who died on June 4, is ever alive in the hearts of those who know him as the greatest boxer of the 20th century. His quotes and observations, like the one above, are legion. A quote by Shakespeare “To thine own self be true,” fits him well. The path he choose not only immortalized him to sports fans but endeared him to the general public. It was a path that led through the Smithsonian.

In 1976, the Smithsonian acquired Ali’s boxing gloves and robe for an exhibition on the American Bicentennial, “A Nation of Nations.” At the donation ceremony, before a crowd of reporters and cheering spectators, Ali predicted that his Everlast gloves would become “the most famous thing in this building.”

The Smithsonian’s Ali objects artifacts and portraits are a testament to Ali’s life. Muhammad Ali rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most famous men in the world. Ali’s complexity matched the spirit of the tumultuous 1960s. He was at once a boxing titan, a civil rights warrior, an anti-war protester, and a charismatic celebrity.

Over the years the National Portrait Gallery, the National Postal Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture have collected images and memorabilia of the boxer.

On the Portrait Gallery’s third-floor mezzanine is a 1981 painting of Ali from the museum’s permanent collection, “Cat’s Cradle,” by Henry C. Casselli, Jr.

As a tribute to the man on the day of his passing, the Portrait Gallery installed a likeness that makes a statement about Ali the man. The boxer’s image, taken by photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1970, can be found near the north entrance on the first floor.

The charismatic Ali appeared on television, in commercials, and in a film about his life, and he used his worldwide fame for humanitarian efforts as well. Much more than an outstanding boxer, the media star became a symbol of courage, independence, and determination.

A few of many Muhammad Ali-related images and items at the Smithsonian include:

• - Art & Design
• - History & Culture
• - Science & Nature
• Open Access
• Mobile Apps

African American Heritage

Muhammad Ali (January 17, 1942 - June 6, 2016)

Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, Muhammad Ali is consistently ranked as one of the greatest boxers of all time. At the age of 18, Ali traveled to Rome, Italy to participate in the 1960 Olympics. He won the gold medal in light heavyweight boxing and returned to the United States to pursue his professional boxing career shortly thereafter. It was also around this time that Clay became a member of the Nation of Islam , announcing his name as Cassius X, then Muhammad Ali in 1964.

In 1967, Ali had been reigning world heavyweight champion for three years when he publicly refused to be inducted into the American military during the Vietnam War. As a result of his actions, boxing officials decided to punish Ali by stripping him of his titles and suspending him from the game of boxing. During his suspension from 1967-1970, Ali became an activist and toured around the world speaking to civil rights organizations and anti-war groups.

After 1970, Ali regained the title of heavyweight champion after defeating George Foreman in a match known as "The Rumble in the Jungle." He continued fighting until 1981, ending his career with a 56-5 professional record.

Black Power records at the National Archives related to Muhammad Ali consist of the court case ( Clay v. United States ) relating to his refusal of induction for the Vietnam War draft. There are also records of FBI surveillance of Muhammad Ali in various parts of the country and his time spent with the members of the Nation of Islam. Also, a motion picture, sound recordings and several photographs of Ali at State Dinners and meetings with sitting presidents.

Search the Catalog for records on Muhammad Ali       National Archives YouTube Videos on Muhammad Ali  

Social Networks and Archival Context - Muhammad Ali

Selected Photographs from the National Archives

Web Highlights

Record Group 21: District Courts of the United States

Criminal case files, 1908-1973 [houston division of the southern district of texas] national archives identifier 563137.

Record Group 59: Department of State

Country files, 1942-1948 national archives identifier: 2544414.

Record Group 60: Department of Justice (DOJ)

Case files and enclosures relating to cassius clay, jr. (muhammad ali) national archives identifier 22930205, subject files of the assistant attorney general, 1958-1993 national archives identifier 1489028.

Record Group 111: Office of the Chief Signal Officer

Motion picture films from the army library copy collection, 1964-1980 national archives identifier 25061.

Record Group 220: Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards

Newspaper clippings name files, 1978-1979 national archive identifier 559563.

Record Group 306: US Information Agency (USIA)

Sound recordings relating to “studio one” broadcasts, 1955-2003 national archives identifier 564649.

Record Group 412: Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA)

Documerica: the environmental protection agency’s program to photographically document subjects of environmental concern, 1972-1977 national archives identifier 542493.

GRF-0059 - White House Central Files Name Files (Ford)

White house central files name files, 8/1974-1/1977 national archives identifier 564463.

White House Central Files Subject Files on Recreation and Sports, 8/1974-1/1977 National Archives Identifier 564245

GRF-0126 - Sheila R. Weidenfeld Files (Ford)

Sheila weidenfeld’s general subject files, 1974-1977 national archives identifier 644396.

GRF-WHPO - White House Photographic Office (Ford)

Gerald r. ford white house photographs, 8/9/1974-1/20/1977 national archives identifier 1756311.

GWB-WHPO - Records of the White House Photo Office (George W. Bush)

Photographs related to the george w. bush administration, 1/20/2001-1/20/2009 national archives identifier 5962237.

HICK: John R. Hickman Audio Collection

Sound recordings of historical radio broadcasts, world war ii government documentaries, and popular radio shows, 1906 - 1993 national archives identifier 1487762.

HRST - Hearst Metrotone News, Inc. Collection

News of the day motion picture newsreel films, 10/1963- 12/1967 national archives identifier 95102.

JC-WHPO - Records of the White House Press Office (Carter)

Black media mass mailing files, 1977-1981 national archives identifier 6210723.

JC-WHSP - Carter White House Photographs Collection

Carter white house photographs: presidential, 1/20/1977-1/22/1981 national archives identifier 173341.

WJC-AG-PO - Vice Presidential Records of the White House Photograph Office (Clinton)

Vice presidential photographs, 1/20/1993-1/20/2001 national archives identifier 7349218.

WJC-WHPO - Photographs of the White House Photograph Office (Clinton)

Photographs relating to the clinton administration, 1/20/1993-1/20/2001 national archives identifier 594653.

We need your support today

Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Muhammad Ali was more than just a boxer: 9 profiles on his life and legacy

by Victoria M. Massie

Muhammad Ali died Friday at the age of 74. While he’s remembered as one of the best heavyweight champions the world has ever seen, boxing was only one aspect of his life. As he wrote in his 2004 memoir, The Soul of a Butterfly :

I would love to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, who was humorous, and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him, and who helped as many people as he could. As a man who stood up for his beliefs no matter what. As a man who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if all that’s too much, then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.

He lived his life dancing around the boxes people tried to put him in. As the world mourns, here are a few profiles that captured Ali’s complexity:

The showman

Ali’s bravado was legendary, but for those who interviewed him, boasting opened the doors to a deeper understanding of how Ali lived up to being the great athlete he proclaimed himself to be:

1) Tom Wolfe pointed out in an October 1963 profile in Esquire that being a showman was a carefully crafted performance:

Cassius [Clay] lets you know in a wide assortment of ways that his big talk is an act. He says it straight out. He says it obliquely with the bit about “You better not lemme go.” He says it ironically, and perhaps unconsciously, when he sits in a $160-a-day hotel suite, looking out over city lights, and cajoles a battery of hip New York girls into standing up and being counted on the side of beans and bread as apostrophized by an alley singer nobody ever hear of. But it is also true that now he has had the view from the top of the mountain, as the phrase goes. It is doubtful that he is going to be able to settle, psychologically, for anything less. He is only twenty-one years old, but the latter-day career of Cassius Clay is going to be one of the intriguing case histories of American boxing or show business or folk symbolism or whatever it is that he now is really involved in.

2) Photographer Gordon Parks noted years later, in the September 1966 issue of Life , that Ali’s act wasn’t just for the public. At a time when he was called a “traitor” for refusing to fight in Vietnam and an anti-white bigot for declaring his unwavering love for black people, his bravado was a source of reassurance for himself too:

“Hey, Angelo, could I have whipped Jack Johnson in his time?” “Baby, you could have taken anybody in everybody’s time.” “And that’s the beautiful truth, brother,” Rahaman, his sparring partner, cut in. Such questions, such answers, I realized meant more to him than I had originally imagined. Muhammad seemed to encourage it all. Often he had asked me, “Why would a big magazine like yours want to do a story on me? Am I really that big? Do people really want to know about me?” He expected affirmative answers and he nearly always got them. He clearly needed these assurances against the bad publicity he was getting.

3) In 1998, David Remnick made a similar point in the New Yorker :

Nearly all the writers regarded Clay’s bombast, in prose and verse, as the ravings of a lunatic. But not only did Clay have a sense of how to fill a reporter’s notebook and, thus, a promoter’s arena; he had a sense of self. The truth (and it was a truth he shared with almost no one) was that he knew that, for all his ability, for all his speed and cunning, he had never met a fighter like Sonny Liston. In Liston, Clay was up against a man who did not merely beat his opponents but hurt them, damaged them, shamed them in humiliatingly fast knockouts. Liston could put a man away with his jab; he was not much for dancing, but then neither was Joe Louis. When he hit a man in the solar plexus, the glove seemed lost up to the cuff; he was too powerful to grab and clinch; nothing hurt him. Clay was too smart, he had watched too many films, not to know that. “That’s why I always knew that all of Clay’s bragging was a way to convince himself that he could do what he said he’d do,” Floyd Patterson told me many years later. “I never liked all his bragging. It took me a long time to understand who Clay was talking to. Clay was talking to Clay.”

The magician

Ali was a master of illusion. He danced around his opponents. But he was also known for his magic tricks.

4) In his 1989 feature “My Dinner With Ali,“ Davis Miller wrote:

You ever seen any magic?” [Ali] asked. “You like magic?” “Not in years,” I said. He stood and walked to the back of his RV, moving mechanically. It was my great-grandfather’s walk. He motioned for me to follow. There was a sad yet lovely, noble and intimate quality to his movements. He did about 10 tricks. The one that interested me the most required no props. It was a very simple deception. “Watch my feet,” he said, standing maybe eight feet away, his back to me and his arms perpendicular to his sides. Then, although he’d just had real trouble walking, he seemed to levitate about three inches off of the floor. He turned to me and in his thick, slow voice, said, “I’m a baadd niggah,” and gave me the old easy Ali smile.

5) David Maraniss, a bit taken aback by Ali’s magician act, wrote in his 1997 Washington Post profile why magic was such an integral part of Ali’s legacy:

What is going on here? In part it is just Ali amusing himself with magic tricks that he has been doing over and over for many years for anyone who comes to see him. But he is also, as always, making a more profound point. He has transferred his old boxing skills and his poetry and his homespun philosophy to another realm, from words to magic. The world sees him now, lurching a bit, slurring some, getting old, trembling, and recalls that unspeakably great and gorgeous and garrulous young man that he once was. He understands that contrast. But, he is saying, nothing is as it appears. Life is always a matter of perception and deception.” Poets and philosophers contemplate this, and boxers know it intuitively. (Ali ghost boxing before the Foreman fight: “Come get me, sucker. I’m dancin’! I’m dancin’! No, I’m not here, I’m there! You’re out, sucker!”) Back when he was Cassius Clay, he pretended that he was demented before fighting Sonny Liston because he had heard that the only cons who scared big bad Sonny in prison were the madmen. By acting crazy, he not only injected a dose of fear into Liston, he took some out of himself. Life is a trick.

The comedian

Humor was an undeniable part of Ali’s charm, especially in his social commentary.

“Comedy is a funny way of being serious,” he said in Esquire . “My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.”

6) One example is Ali’s story of encountering racism at a Louisville diner after returning with an Olympic gold medal in Esquire :

I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn’t eat. Thought I’d put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, “We don’t serve niggers here.” I said, “That’s okay, I don’t eat ‘em.” But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.

The people’s champion

Ali was keenly aware of injustice and fearlessly outspoken about it.

7) Film critic Roger Ebert gives the example of when the two watched 1979’s Rocky II together:

“A great move,” [Ali] said. “A big hit. It has all the ingredients. Love, violence, emotion. The excitement never dulled.” What do you think about the way the fight turned out? “For the black man to come out superior,” Ali said, “would be against America’s teachings. I have been so great in boxing that they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.”

8) In a 2009 essay, President Barack Obama remembers how this strength ultimately made Ali “a force for reconciliation and peace around the world”:

We admire the man with a soft spot for children, who, while visiting a hospital in Philadelphia many years ago, picked up a boy with no legs. Gazing into the child’s eyes, Ali said, “Don’t give up. They’re sending men into space. You will walk someday and do this,” and proceeded to do the famous Ali Shuffle with the giggling boy in his arms. We admire the man who has never stopped using his celebrity for good — the man who helped secure the release of 14 American hostages from Iraq in 1990; who journeyed to South Africa upon Nelson Mandela ’s release from prison; who has traveled to Afghanistan to help struggling schools as a United Nations Messenger of Peace; and who routinely visits sick children and children with disabilities around the world, giving them the pleasure of his presence and the inspiration of his example. And we admire the man who, while his speech has grown softer and his movement more restricted by the advance of Parkinson’s disease, has never lost the ability to forge a deep and meaningful connection with people of all ages. Asked why he is so universally beloved, he holds up a shaking hand, fingers spread wide, and says, “It’s because of this. I’m more human now. It’s the God in people that connects them to me.”

9) The late poet Maya Angelou wrote in Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World that his steadfast commitment to morality was the ultimate testament to his greatness:

Muhammad Ali was not just Muhammad Ali the greatest, the African-American pugilist; he belonged to everyone. That means that his impact recognizes no continent, no language, no color, no ocean. It belongs to us all, just as Muhammad Ali belongs to us all. It wasn’t only what he said and it wasn’t only how he said it; it was both of those things, and maybe there was a third thing in it, the spirit of Muhammad Ali, saying his poesies -- “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” I mean, as a poet, I like that! If he hadn’t put his name on it, I might have chosen to us that! He can be compared to any great man or woman. He can be compared to anybody in the world and not be found wanting. He can be compared to Mahatma Gandhi and to Marie Curie because he belonged to everybody. It wouldv’e been nice, I think, it he belonged only to African Americans, but it was never so with him. As a practicing Muslim, he also belonged to the Baptists, and so Baptist preachers would preach about him. So, of course, he could be compared to Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, or Mr. Mandela because he is a person of such confidence in his morality. Other people will say that he had this expertise, that he was agile and wonderful, physically, but I think of the moral man. A moral person can be compared to any moral person in the world.

Most Popular

• Georgia’s MAGA elections board is laying the groundwork for an actual stolen election
• Zelenskyy’s new plan to end the war, explained
• Your guide to the Brittany Mahomes-Donald Trump drama, such as it is
• What the heck is “corn sweat” and is it making the Midwest more dangerous?
• Kids Today: Your guide to the confusing, exciting, and utterly new world of Gen Alpha

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Culture

How the once-maligned retailer quietly became a closet staple — and a stock market giant — once again.

My generation was taught to change the system. That lesson came at a cost.

The pods across the pond feel a lot less toxic.

The singer’s new album, Short n’ Sweet, is full of the sexy clown wordplay she’s known for.

Cocaine, UFC, politics, and the former president’s podcast bro tour, explained.

Kamala Harris was the main event, but fans, the internet, and the media fell for rumors of a Beyoncé concert.

How Muhammad Ali influenced the Civil Rights Movement

Muhammad Ali galvanised the Civil Rights Movement by appealing to people who otherwise agreed on little politically.

The death of Muhammad Ali provides us with an opportunity to reflect on his impact on the freedom struggle that has come to be known as the Civil Rights Movement.

Muhammad Ali’s influence on the black organisers who formed the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement was distinctly positive and remarkably broad-based. His power as a heroic symbol bridged the entire span of the movement’s ideological spectrum. In ways that nobody else could, Ali appealed simultaneously to people and organisations who otherwise agreed on little politically. In the words of one organiser, Bob Moses, “Muhammad Ali galvanised the Civil Rights Movement.”

Keep reading

‘mma brought me closer to god’: biaggio ali walsh, muhammad ali’s grandson, dutch boxing hero who fought ali still riding punches in bulgaria, the black game changers of us sport, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Almost every major civil rights organisation and leader at one time or another praised Ali and defended his decision to resist the Vietnam War.

Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Muhammad Ali

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) James Bevel rated him as “one of the great Americans”. The Congress of Racial Equality’s (CORE) Floyd McKissick said: “Ali was one of the greatest living Americans because he is one of the few people who lives by his convictions.”

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) printed bumper stickers that said “We’re the greatest” in an obvious nod to Ali’s catchphrase. Stokely Carmichael, the Trinidadian-American political activist, called him “my hero”.

But Malcolm X was perhaps the first to realise that Ali’s magnitude registered far beyond his home country. In his famous autobiography, Malcolm declared that Ali “captured the imagination and support of the entire dark world”.

Even Martin Luther King Jr sent him a telegram saying: “I look forward to talking with you some time in the future.”

Arthur Ashe, the tennis player-turned-activist, remembered that Ali was “admired by a lot of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, who were sometimes even a little bit jealous of the following he had”.

And this is just a short list of contemporary leaders in the black freedom struggle who expressed their on-the-record admiration for Ali.

It is not an overstatement to say he was almost universally liked by the activists of the 1960s and 1970s.

READ MORE: The life of Muhammad Ali

The Nation of Islam  

An impressive aspect of Ali’s appeal to these freedom fighters is that it occurred despite Ali’s membership in the Nation of Islam, led by Elijah Muhammad, which was for years the African American organisation that was by far the most vehemently critical of the Civil Rights Movement.

Early on, when Ali first won the heavyweight title, some civil rights leaders and activists were upset by his joining of the Nation. Roy Wilkins, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said that Ali “may as well be an honorary member of the [racist] white citizen councils”.

The SNCC’s Julian Bond, who would come to greatly admire Ali, said that his membership in the Nation of Islam “was not something many of us particularly liked”.

But even though Elijah Muhammad demanded political non-participation from his adherents, preventing them even from voting, Ali directly bolstered various civil rights demonstrations through appearances and words of support. Ali reached out to the movement as it reached out to him, thus bridging a gap that even Malcolm did not.

Leading the way in civil rights  

Also noteworthy about Ali’s place in the civil rights era is that he was among the black freedom struggle’s vanguard. Ali incorporated strategies, tactics and worldviews into his operations that would later be adopted by much wider constituencies.

We were down there in these small, hot, dusty towns in an atmosphere thick with fear, trying to organise folk whose grandparents were slaves ... And here was this beautifully arrogant young man who made us proud to be us and proud to fight for our rights. by  Lawrence Guyot, a Mississippi civil rights organiser

His criticism of the Vietnam War and his initial resistance to the draft in 1966 took place about a month after the release of the SNCC’s antiwar manifesto, which was a first of its kind for the movement. Thus, Ali’s public stance against the war took place a full year before Martin Luther King Jr’s.

Before most black power organisations were beginning to incorporate economic platforms into their everyday agendas, Ali had formed a promotional corporation called Main Bout Inc, which would earn the majority of revenues from his title defences and, for the first time, allow African Americans to enjoy the lion’s share of profits from the world’s heavyweight championship, then the most lucrative prize in sports.

Crucial to Ali’s connection to civil rights workers was their shared sense of urgency. Activists who were putting everything on the line, including their lives, could relate to Ali, who risked just about everything he had when he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War. As Mississippi organiser Lawrence Guyot put it: “We were down there in these small, hot, dusty towns in an atmosphere thick with fear, trying to organise folk whose grandparents were slaves … And here was this beautifully arrogant young man who made us proud to be us and proud to fight for our rights.”

Yes, Ali had his occasional black critics, among them the pioneering baseball player Jackie Robinson, but the overwhelming political sentiment among African Americans was that Ali was to be admired and defended. Thus, when people talk about the transformation of Ali’s image in the US, they mean his image among white people. Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, Ali’s reputation among African Americans has been just fine.

READ MORE: Was Muhammad Ali the greatest of all time?

This rehabilitation of Ali is similar to the case of King, who in the years before his death in 1968 was unfavourably viewed by two-thirds of white Americans. Only in the 1980s, after his murder and a long fight led by his widow and her political allies, was King honoured with a national holiday in the US.

Often, the African American community is decades ahead of whites in its political outlook, even when such viewpoints are reviled by a majority that will one day adopt them. Ali is perhaps the clearest example of this long-standing American phenomenon.

Meet the Greatest

Boxer, humanitarian, social activist: meet the people’s champion. explore the life of muhammad ali..

• Around the World
• Famous Friends
• Spirituality
• In His Corner
• The Timeline
• Boxing Timeline
• Humanitarian Timeline

Visit the Museum

The definitive muhammad ali experience. plan your visit, bring your group, shop in our retail store or host your event at the ali center..

• Ticket Prices
• Getting Here
• Groups and Field Trips
• Host an Event

At the Ali Center

The latest in greatness. what’s on at the ali center, from temporary and permanent exhibits to upcoming events., legacy in action, programs dedicated to mobilizing muhammad ali's legacy of promoting respect, inspiring change, and advancing social justice..

• Youth Leadership
• University Programming
• Community Engagement
• Learning Hub
• Collections and Archive
• DEIA Training
• Signature Annual Events

Support Greatness

Be a part of helping us inspire and celebrate the world’s changemakers through transformative experiences and training. here’s how..

• Corporate Support
• More Ways to Give
• Get Tickets

In His Own Words

• Celebration of Life
• Six Core Principles
• Ali the Artist
• Clay Family Photo Collection

Muhammad Ali was known for his quick wit and quips, read some of his greatest in and out of the ring.

"I’m young, handsome, fast, pretty, and can’t possibly be beat!"

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it.”

“To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.”

“I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.”

 “I’ve wrestled with alligators,  I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning and thrown thunder in jail.  You know I’m bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick!”

“I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.”

“It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am.”

“I’m the greatest, I’m a bad man, and I’m pretty!”.

"I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want."

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”

“You lose nothing when you fight for a cause… In my mind the losers are those who don’t have a cause they care about.”

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

“I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.”

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'"

“I never thought of losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.”

“Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.”

“Inside or a ring or out, ain’t nothing wrong with going down. It’s staying down that’s wrong.”

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth."

“I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.”

“I try not to speak about all the charities and people I help, because I believe we can only be truly generous when we expect nothing in return.”

“Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.”

“I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.”

“I wanted to use my fame and this face that everyone knows so well to help uplift and inspire people around the world.”

“To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.”

"Think well of all, be patient with all, and try to find the good in all."

“Silence is golden when you can’t think of an answer.”

“Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”

“Throughout my life, I never sought retribution against those who hurt me because I believe in forgiveness. I have practiced forgiving, just as I want to be forgiven.”

“ Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

"What you’re thinking is what you’re becoming."

“Others may know pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. It has no more importance than a shadow following a man.”

“Rivers, ponds, lakes, and streams – they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as all religions do – they all contain truths.”

“Allah is the Greatest. I’m just the greatest boxer.”

“I’m no leader; I’m a little humble follower.”

“The only thing that matters is submitting to the will of God.”

The Man Behind The Quotes

Learn more about Muhammad Ali and his legacy.

Shop the Museum

What are you looking for.

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

The Best Writing About Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was the greatest boxer of all-time, and he also inspired some of the best sports writing ever, from the likes of Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and George Plimpton. Some of the best pieces about Ali aren’t available online, but many are. Here, a required reading list in the wake of Ali’s   passing .

A.J. Liebling, “Poet and Pedagogue” The New Yorker , March 3,   1962

The poet, still wrapped in certitude, jabbed, moved, teased, looking the Konzerstuck over before he banged the ivories. By nimble dodging, as in Rome, he rendered the hungry fighter’s attack quite harmless, but this time without keeping his hypnotic stare fixed steadily enough on the   punch-hand.

Murray Kempton, “The Champ and the Chump” The New Republic , March 7,   1963

He fought the first round as though without plan, running and slipping and sneaking punches, like someone killing time in a poolroom. But it was his rhythm and not Liston’s; second by slow second, he was taking away the big bouncer’s dignity. Once Liston had him close to the ropes — where fighters kill boxers — and Clay, very slowly, slipped sideways from a left hook and under the right and away, just grazing the ropes all in one motion, and cut Liston in the eye. For the first time there was the suspicion that he might know something about the   trade.

Tom Wolfe, “The Marvelous Mouth” Esquire , October, 1963

If Cassius really wants to go into his act, if he is in front of a crowd he thinks will really appreciate its Pantagruelian overtones, he turns on a pair of 150-watt eyes and suddenly becomes a star. That is the only way I can think of to describe it. It is in the eyes and in the facial muscles around the eyes, an ability to come alive upon   demand.

George Plimpton, “Miami Notebook: Cassius Clay and Malcolm X” Harper’s , June 1964

Clay’s place was on the mainland, in North Miami, in a low-rent district-a small plain taterwhite house with louvered windows, a front door with steps leading up to a little porch with room for one chair, a front yard with more chairs set around and shaded by a big ficus tree with leaves dusty from the traffic on Fifth Street. His entire entourage stayed there, living dormitory-style, two or three to a   room.

LeRoi Jones, “In the Ring” The Nation , June 29,   1964

Clay is not a fake, and even his blustering and playground poetry are valid; they demonstrate that a new and more complicated generation has moved onto the   scene.

Gordon Parks, “The Redemption of the Champion” Life , September 9,   1966

He woke up one afternoon and simply began talking about his childhood: “I used to lay awake scared, thinking about somebody getting cut up or being lynched. Look like they was always black people I liked. And I always wanted to do something to help those people. But I was too little. Maybe now I can help by living up to what I’m supposed to be. I’m proud of my title and I guess I want people to be proud of   me.”

Leonard Shecter, “The Passion of Muhammad Ali” Esquire , April, 1968

He now is free to talk. He used to be free to fight and he was something to see, the speed of him and the beauty of his motion, his huge, smooth body gliding in a ballet of boxing, his white ring shoes becoming a furry flurr. He was perhaps the best anybody has ever seen, because he had the modern athlete’s body, as swift as it was large, and no boxer ever had one like it before. But then a sergeant in a Houston Selective Service office asked him to take a step forward and he refused because, he said, he was a minister of the Muslim faith in the Nation of Islam. The boxing commission revoked his title as heavyweight champion of the   world.

Norman Mailer, “Ego” Life , March 19.   1971

What kills us about a.k.a. Cassius Clay is that the disagreement is inside us. He is fascinating — attraction and repulsion must be in the same package. So, he is obsessive. The more we don’t want to think about him, the more we are obliged to. There is a reason for it. He is America’s Greatest   Ego.

Hunter S. Thompson, “Last Tango in Vegas” Rolling Stone , May 4,   1978

That is Muhammad Ali’s world, an orbit so high, a circuit so fast and strong and with rarefied air so thin that only ‘The Champ,’ ‘The Greatest,’ and a few close friends have unlimited breathing rights. Anybody who can sell his act for $5 million an hour all over the world is working a vein somewhere between magic and madness   …

Vic Ziegel, Ali, Spinks, and the Battle of New Orleans New York , October 2,   1978

Muhammad Ali, on the other hand, was taking care of business. He so desperately wanted to become the first boxer to win the heavyweight title three times that he decided on a strategy he had previously abandoned: He   trained.

Gary Smith, “Ali and His Entourage” Sports Illustrated , April 25,   1988

The first signal of decline was in Ali’s hands. Pacheco began injecting them with novocaine before fights, and the ride went on. Then the reflexes slowed, the beatings began, the media started to question the doctor. And the world began to learn how much the doctor loved to   talk.

Davis Miller, “My Dinner With Ali” Louisville Courier-Journal Magazine , January 1989

“ You ever seen any magic?” he asked. “You like   magic?” “Not in years,” I   said. He did about 10 tricks. The one that interested me the most required no props. It was a very simple deception. “Watch my feet,” he said, standing maybe eight feet away, his back to me and his arms perpendicular to his sides. Then, although he’d just had real trouble walking, he seemed to levitate about three inches off of the floor. He turned to me and in his thick, slow voice said, “I’m a baadd niggah,” and gave me the old easy Ali   smile.

Mark Kram, “Great Men Die Twice” Esquire , June 1989

Not all, exactly; getting old is the last display for the bread-and-circuses culture. Legends must suffer for all the gifts and luck and privilege given to them. Great men, it’s been noted, die twice — once as great, and once as men. With grace, preferably, which adds an uplifting, stirring, Homeric touch. If the fall is too messy, the national psyche will rush toward it, then recoil; there is no suspense, no example in the   mundane.

Joyce Carol Oates, “The Cruelest Sport” The New York Review of Books , February 13,   1992

… Ali would have to descend into his physical being and experience for the first time the punishment (“the nearest thing to death”) that is the lot of the great boxer willing to put himself to the test. As Ali’s personal physician at that time, Ferdie Pacheco, said, [Ali] discovered something which was both very good and very bad. Very bad in that it led to the physical damage he suffered later in his career; very good in that it eventually got him back the championship. He discovered that he could take a punch. The secret of Ali’s mature success, and the secret of his tragedy: he could take a punch.

William Nack, “The Fight’s Over, Joe” Sports Illustrated , September 30,   1996

For the next five rounds it was as if Frazier had reached into the darkest bat cave of his psyche and freed all his pent-up rage. In the sixth he pressed and attacked, winging three savage hooks to Ali’s head, the last of which sent his mouthpiece flying. For the first time in the fight, Ali sat down between rounds. Frazier resumed the attack in the seventh, at one point landing four straight shots to the body, at another point landing five. In the ninth, as Ali wilted, the fighting went deeper into the trenches, down where Frazier whistles while he works, and as he landed blow upon blow he could hear Ali howling in pain. In his corner after the 10 th , Ali said to Pacheco, “This must be what dyin’ is   like.”

Cal Fussman, “Ali Now” Esquire , October, 2003

There are very few people in the history of the planet who could make everybody in the world stop for a moment, forget their differences, smile, and applaud in unison. Perhaps Ali was the only one left. I wondered if there’d be anyone   after.

This post has been updated with additional   pieces.

• the sports section
• muhammad ali

Most Viewed Stories

• J.D. Vance Blames Staff for Disastrous Doughnut-Shop Visit
• What Trump Said in His Vulgar and Unhinged Truth Social Spree
• What We Know About the Trump Campaign’s Arlington National Cemetery Incident
• The Bitter Feud at the Heart of the Paleontology World  
• The Right-Wing Crusade Against DEI Isn’t Actually Working

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

• J.D. Vance Blames Staff for Disastrous Doughnut-Shop Visit By Margaret Hartmann
• What Trump Said in His Vulgar and Unhinged Truth Social Spree By Margaret Hartmann
• What We Know About the Trump Campaign’s Arlington National Cemetery Incident By Nia Prater
• The Bitter Feud at the Heart of the Paleontology World   By Kerry Howley
• The Right-Wing Crusade Against DEI Isn’t Actually Working By Kevin T. Dugan

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications

African American Studies

• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Muhammad Ali

Introduction, general overview.

• Films Overview
• Journal, Newspaper, and Magazine Articles and Recordings

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Black Muslims
• Black Radicalism in 20th-Century United States
• Blacks in the American Military
• The Lynching of Emmett Till
• Toni Morrison

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Dorothy Dandridge
• Harriet Ann Jacobs
• Jesse Jackson
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Muhammad Ali by Charles Lemert LAST REVIEWED: 21 March 2024 LAST MODIFIED: 21 March 2024 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0127

Muhammad Ali (b. 1942–d. 2016) was a professional boxer who has been called the Greatest Boxer of all time and was named, by Time , Sport’s Illustrated , and Life magazines, the Greatest Athlete of the 20th century. He was brash enough after first winning the heavyweight box title in 1964, to shout then and thereafter, “I am the Greatest!” Shortly after defeating Sonny Liston, he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, and as a member of the Nation of Islam he enjoyed a close personal friendship with Malcolm X. His most famous fight was in 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire, known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” when he knocked out the heavily favored George Foreman. This win was significant for two reasons. First, it came after a prolonged absence from boxing when he was exiled from the sport for refusing to enter the draft for the American war in Vietnam, famously saying: “I Ain’t Got No Quarrel with Them Viet Cong.” Second, the fight in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo introduced him to African people, thus making Ali into a global race figure. He was in this moment, and for some years after, the most famous person in the world. He was not a writer, but he was an amazing oral poet who influenced hip hop music. Ali was able to compose plain verse in the moment. Some he wrote out before. Once, while speaking to the graduating class at Harvard University, students shouted for a poem. He answered spontaneously: “Me/We.” George Plimpton called this the shortest poem in literary history. Ali’s public persona was always associated with entertaining. His moniker “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee” was a near perfect figurative description of his boxing skills. He could in fact dance brilliantly about the ring to confuse opponents, but when he saw an opening, he could sting with lighting fast punches. In his last years after boxing, frail with Parkinson’s Syndrome, his Islamic faith inspired millions—especially when, his face frozen and arm trembling, he lit the Olympic Flame at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. At the same time, Ali was humble enough in the end to beg forgiveness for abandoning Malcolm X in 1964. Overall Muhammad Ali was many things at once. As a result, he has been studied in many books and other media. He was as much a cultural icon as an athlete.

Books are the main resource for scholars. Ali himself did not write a book as such, except for a brief but moving memoir with his daughter, Ali and Ali 2004 , and a long early memoir, Ali and Durham with Morrison 1975 . Otherwise, there are good biographies of high intellectual merit, notably Remnick 2015 and Oates 1987 . Montville 2018 focuses on key moments in Ali’s life and on his war protest, and Mailer 2013 on the fight in Kinshasa. Marqusee 1999 considers Ali in relation to the culture of the 1960s. The most current and widely praised biography is Eig 2018 . Early 1998 is a collection of essays by literary notables. Oates 1987 astutely writes on boxing. These books are selected from among a seemingly endless list of books on Ali. They are selected, of course, for their quality but also because together they fill in biographical gaps that no single book could cover well enough.

Ali, Muhammad, and Hana Ali. The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life’s Journey . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Written with his daughter Hana, this is a charming memoir. Short but pithy chapters present Ali’s important emotional, religious, and political feelings and thoughts, including: “The Day I Met Islam” and “My Philosophy, On Boxing.” In the concluding section, “Troubled Times,” his political views are explicit, as in “Islam and September 11” and “Afghanistan.” Hana often contributes touchingly, as in “The Soul of a Butterfly” where tells of her father’s generosity to a stranger on a country road.

Ali, Muhammad, and Richard Durham, with Toni Morrison. Muhammad Ali: The Greatest, My Own Story . New York: Random House, 1975.

A biography of Ali’s early years—his Olympic Gold Medal in 1960, his winning the title by defeating Sonny Liston in 1964, his religious conversion, his refusal to fight in Vietnam, his exile from boxing from 1967 to 1971, after which the Supreme Court unanimously declared him an honest conscientious objector, and to the title fight with Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Hardly comprehensive, but the book is a vivid, therefore reliable source on Ali’s memories of his early life.

Early, Gerald. The Muhammad Ali Reader . New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

Indispensable for scholars. Offers thirty-three original essays by an array of writers—Jackie Robinson, Floyd Patterson, Ali himself, Gary Wills, Hunter S. Thompson, many more. Wole Soyinka offers a long prose poem that ends: “When we were kings, and lords of rhyme and pace / The enchantment is over, but the spell remains.” Each is edited from previously published sources. Early is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Eig, Jonathan. Ali: A Life . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

This book has been widely praised for its nuanced detail about Ali’s life. Joyce Carol Oates for example: “As Muhammad Ali’s life was an epic of a life so Ali: A Life is an epic of a biography.” The author displays knowledge of Ali and appreciates his special personal qualities, without pulling punches on his brash arrogance and more than a few other negative qualities. The best biography of Ali.

Hauser, Thomas. Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

This 1991 book remains an important biography made current by long quoted passages that make it a scholar’s source book. Hauser notes: “This book is not an attempt to mythologize Ali. It is an attempt to show him for what he is with good qualities and flaws.” This purpose is painfully true especially in Hauser’s account of Ali continuing to fight for money after being broken physically in the last Frazier fight in 1975.

Lemert, Charles. Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of Irony . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003.

“Trickster in the cultural of irony” is a cultural argument about Ali’s persona. “I Don’t Have to Be What You Want Me to Be” tricks the image of the jokester by another deeper self—one who was a serious opponent of the war in Vietnam and in Kinshasa became the global Black man. One unusual feature of the book is its ten-page timeline of Ali’s biography set against major world events of the day.

Mailer, Norman. The Fight . New York: Random House, 2013.

Norman Mailer can be a literary wise-guy, but this is the best book on the Ali-Foreman fight. Mailer presents the dark side against the bright side that is usually emphasized. He followed Ali from his training through many weeks in Zaire—a time extended because of Foreman’s facial cut. Mailer has arrestingly described Ali’s physical presence. “There is always a shock in seeing him again. Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. ”

Marqusee, Mike. Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties . London: Verso, 1999.

Though at times over the top (Ali as a Gatsby), this book is an interesting essay on Ali in respect to events and major figures of the 1960s. In its conclusion, for example, the comparison of Ali with Michael Jordan of the 1990s, as America’s greatest athlete, Marqusee puts Jordan down for his capitalistic greed. Ali is imperfect, yet Marqusee ends with: “That his example of moral witness, border crossing solidarity, belong not to sixties nostalgia, but to the common future of humanity.”

Montville, Leigh. Sting Like a Bee: Mohammad Ali vs The United States of America 1966–1971 . New York: Anchor Books/Random House, 2018.

A strong, if a bit too flowery, narrative of the history of Ali’s life and troubles from his first refusal of the draft in 1966 to the Supreme Court’s decision in 1971 to clear him on the basis of the sincerity of his conscientious objection. Begins with a sympathetic story of his funeral in Louisville and his growing up there. The best book on an important chapter in Ali’s life.

Oates, Joyce Carol. On Boxing . London and New York: Bloomsbury, 1987.

Comprises three essays—“On Boxing,” “Mike Tyson,” “The Cruelest Sport.” The third attends more to Ali while remaining true to its titular topic, boxing itself. The Ali section is mostly an explication de texte of Hauser’s books. Sill it is filled with aperçus that only a justly famous writer can compose, as: “The secret of Ali’s success, and the secret of his tragedy: he can take a punch .”

Remnick, David. King of The World . New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 2015.

David Remnick’s book is elegant and clear, while focusing on Ali more than boxing. “Old Men by the Fire” touchingly describes his last years and cuts to the heart of Ali’s fall from grace in the terrible error of fighting too long. Remnick tells of Ali’s deep faith in Allah that caused him to confess his sin of abandoning Malcolm X. This quite easily is the best short book on Ali.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About African American Studies »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• “Acting White” and Oppositional Culture in Education
• African American Deathways
• African American Doctors
• African American Humor
• African American Language
• African American Masculinity
• African American Sculpture and Sculptors
• African American Writers and Communism
• African Americans in Cincinnati
• African Americans in Europe
• African Americans in Los Angeles
• Afro-Latinos
• Afro-Pessimism
• Agriculture and Agricultural Labor
• Alice Walker
• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
• American Military, Blacks in the
• American Negro Theatre, The
• Anglo-African Newspaper, The
• Animal and African American History, The
• Antislavery Movement
• Apollo Theater
• Assimilation
• Atheism and Agnosticism
• Baldwin, James
• Baraka, Amiri
• Bearden, Romare
• Black Baptists
• Black Classicism in the United States
• Black Codes and Slave Codes
• Black Disability Studies
• Black Press in the United States, The
• Black Theology
• Black Women Writers in the United States
• Blackface Minstrelsy
• Blacks in American Electoral Politics
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• Bureau Of Refugees, Freedmen, And Abandoned Lands (BRFAL)
• Butler, Octavia
• Chesnutt, Charles W.
• Chicago, African Americans in
• Chicago Renaissance
• Civil Rights Movement
• Delany, Martin R.
• Dominican Republic, Annexation of
• Douglass, Frederick
• Equiano, Olaudah
• Federal Government, Segregation in
• Federal Writers’ Project
• Fiction, Urban
• Fisk Jubilee Singers
• Fitzgerald, Ella
• Food and African American Culture
• Forman, James
• Francophone Writing
• Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, The
• Gates, Jr., Henry Louis
• Gospel Music
• Health and Medicine
• Higher Education, Black Women in
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United...
• HIV/AIDS from an African American Studies Perspective
• Holiday, Billie
• Hopkins, Pauline
• Incarceration
• Interracial Marriage
• Johnson, James Weldon
• Liberation Theology
• Meredith March against Fear
• Middle Class, Black
• Moore, Audley
• Morrision, Toni
• Mourning and African American Ritual
• Muhammad Ali
• Muslims, Black
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion
• National Urban League
• Native Americans and African Americans
• Negro League Baseball
• New African Diaspora
• Newton, Huey P.
• No Child Left Behind
• Pan-Africanism
• Parks, Rosa
• Peters Wheatley, Phillis
• Political Resistance
• Print Culture
• Queer Practices and African American Culture
• Reconstruction in Literature and Intellectual Culture
• Reparations and the African Diaspora
• Revolutionary War and African Americans, The
• Robeson, Paul
• Rodney King and the Los Angeles Uprising of 1992
• Scottsboro Trials
• Settler Colonialism and African Americans
• Simone, Nina
• Slavery, Visual Representations of
• Smith, Bessie
• Social Science and Civil Rights
• “Soul!” (Famous!) TV Program with Ellis Haizlip
• Speculative Fiction
• Suburbanization
• The Black Aesthetic
• Theater and Performance in the 19th Century
• Theater in the 20th Century
• Till, Emmett, The Lynching of
• Tricksters in African, African American, and Caribbean Fol...
• Underground Railroad
• United States House of Representatives, African Americans ...
• Urbanization
• Vietnam War
• Visual Arts
• Voodoo, Its Roots, and Its Relatives
• Wells, Ida B.
• Whitehead, Colson
• Woodrow Wilson, Administration of
• World War II
• Wright, Richard
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [185.66.15.189]
• 185.66.15.189

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

Muhammad Ali: A Reading List

David remnick, george plimpton, gerald early, and more.

Judging by the frequency and reverence with which he spoke of them, my father had two heroes—his grandfather and Muhammad Ali. I learned about both men through his telling, though with Ali, the tell included an embarrassing dose of show, with the old man backpedalling, circling around me, tossing cumbersome jabs in the direction of nothing in particular. (“I’m like Ali, boy!”) He was fully aware of the ridiculousness of all this, the tongue-and-cheek uselessness of these boxing lessons. But it was a favorite gag, proof of his affection. And while he’s always held his grandfather in great esteem, it was Ali who animated him, who lit something in the both of us when we saw him on television or revisited his triumphs through storytelling. With Ali, it’s safe to say that my father’s hero became my own.

Writing about my father is, in its own way, a tribute to Ali. One of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, one of the loudest enigmas of American culture, he was also, simply, an avenue between a father and son. And this impulse to begin a tribute to the boxer with a passage about my father underscores another truth about Ali’s influence: For writers, he compels expressiveness, encourages flourishes. Boxing was already the richest literary sport before Cassius Clay arrived; the anecdotes of trainers and fighters from the post-war era alone are hard to beat. But when talking about Ali, when writing about him, you cannot help but try to rise to his occasion. He attracted as many superlatives as he proved. He evoked as much hyperbole as he lived up to. No other athlete—arguably no other figure of the 20th century—has been the subject of as much media as Ali, from film to television to tribute albums to comic books to public-service announcements. But best of all, Ali was the subject of some terrific books.  

King of the World , David Remnick (1998)

Ali’s impact on America was, of course, multi-layered. His brash persona as Cassius Clay, the phenom from Louisville who won Olympic gold for the U.S. in 1960, grew increasingly complicated as he became more closely affiliated with the Nation of Islam. Remnick’s narrative focuses on Ali’s early influences and transformation from a baffling pariah into a piper-like political radical. Remnick is an enviably gifted historian, graceful without adornment, for whom clarity is a kind of lyricism.

Many writers who covered Ali were motivated to use the first tool—voice—to render him. The art of King is its framing. The core humiliation of a stolen bike leads to afternoons after school at the gym, and that basic principle of answering an insult is the subtle pulse underneath the story of a great athlete who answered a call to social justice he thought was obvious, one for which sport itself was exhibit A, and in doing so grabbed the role as “the lead actor in his own improvisational American drama.”

Shadow Box , George Plimpton (1977) and The Fight , Norman Mailer (1975)

It may seem obsessive to read two books about the same fight twice, but Plimpton and Mailer together provide disparate but complementary personalities covering the same epic event, two bright angles on the same moment. This is the most satisfying way to read these books, as a kind of match-up.

In Shadow Box , Plimpton, an easy, disarming storyteller, composed a kind of boxing bildungsroman as he immersed himself in the sport, beginning at New York’s Stillman’s Gym for three rounds against light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore (who Plimpton befriends after getting beat up by him for a Sports Illustrated  article), ambling through intersections of boxing and literature, and ending at Kinshasa’s 20 th  of May Stadium after one of the most shocking upsets in the history of sports. With both Moore and Ali, Plimpton ignored Hemingway’s advice to never fall in love with your subjects. But in doing so, Plimpton never seems to have compromised his talent (and responsibility) for rendering them completely. And in Ali’s case, you had to work hard to be neutral on the subject:

Norman Mailer once told me that he felt men didn’t like to look at Clay—he emphasized just about everything they were not, and it cranked up all sorts of antagonisms they were ashamed to admit to—much as one avoided looking at a beautiful girl at a cocktail party for fear of a disruption of equanimity. I never could quite understand Mailer’s notion. In Clay’s presence, such as at those press conferences, I always found myself staring at him, my jaw slightly agape, and always a smile in the works somewhere, because so much of him came out in little digs and flourishes that we had to be on our toes to catch. (87)

Mailer’s The Fight is a kind of analytical descent into the madness of spectacle, against which he studies Ali as archetype, as political reckoning, as the searching “psychologist of the body.” If Plimpton’s voice feels open, elegantly conversational, Mailer’s prose is wrought, sweaty, each paragraph a three-way wrestling match between syntax, trope, and ego. But the man loved action, worshiped the physical, and was supreme at transmitting the thrilling stuff, as when he describes Ali’s rope-a-dope technique of letting Foreman punch himself out:

And Ali, gloves to his head, elbows to his ribs, stood and swayed and was rattled and banged and shaken like a grasshopper at the top of a reed when the wind whips, and the ropes shook and swung like sheets in a storm, and Foreman would lunge with his rat at Ali’s chin and Ali go flying aback out of reach by a half-inch, and half out of the ring, and back in to push at Foreman’s elbow and hug his own ribs and sway, and say just further, and lean back and come forward from the ropes and slide off a punch and fall back into the ropes with all the calm of a   man swinging in the rigging. All the while, he used his eyes. (196)

Thomas Hauser’s Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times and The Muhammad Ali Reader , edited by Gerald Early

Until another 500-plus page compendium comes along to replace it, Hauser’s oral history will stand as the most comprehensive account of Ali’s life and influence. The simplicity and scale of the conceit are what make it so satisfying: the best takes from interviews with a couple hundred people who either knew Ali or contemplated him, in an effort to assemble a portrait of a champion who “reflected and shaped the social and political currents of the age in which he reigned,” warts and all.

The cast includes familiar players—sportswriter Bert Sugar; Ali’s official photographer, Howard Bingham; his cut man, Ferdie Pacheco—and terrific outliers—President Gerald Ford, Cheryl Tiegs, and singer/actor Kris Kristofferson, whose anecdote—deceptively simple and concisely vivid—seems typical of the hundreds shared here, this time on the subject of Ali’s appreciation of what it meant to be famous:

Muhammad never begrudged the intrusions. There were times he’d be so weary from the demands people made on him that he’d nod out and fall asleep in the middle of an interview. But he never let a person go by without an autograph if that was what the person wanted. He told me once, ‘You don’t realize how much it means to these people. A lot of them have never met anybody famous.’ And he told me how, when he was a little boy, his father took him to a tree that Joe Louis had leaned against in Louisville, and he realized how much that could mean to someone. (362)

The pleasure of an oral history like Hauser’s is the intimacy it projects, the unguarded (but never unedited) forthrightness of its participants, and the art with which their voices are assembled. An anthology like The Muhammad Ali Reader , on the other hand, has the power of a great retrospective exhibition, artists at the height of their powers, all of whom seized the opportunity to translate the actions of a hero in their time.

Again, the usual sportswriting suspects make for good company. But Early also showcases how attractive Ali was to writers inclined to do a close reading by including contributions from playwright Wole Soyinka, cultural historian Garry Wills, Renaissance-lit professor (and MLB Commissioner) A.B. Giamatti, and, of course, Joyce Carol Oates (whose passion for the sport still, curiously, surprises many of her fans).

In 2005, publisher Benedikt Taschen took his shtick for scale and produced one of the most expensive books of the 20th century— Greatest of All Time , which, depending on the edition you ordered, came in silk, in a box, even with a Jeff Koons inflatable sculpture. One of my favorite assignments was to write an essay about GOAT when it was first published (even the review copy was 20 x 20 inches; the only actual edition I could find was on the sixth floor of Macy’s as a prop in home furnishings).

With more than 3,000 photographs splashed across 800 pages, GOAT is about as cinematic as a book gets. It’s the finest archive of Ali’s two most prolific photographers, Howard Bingham and Neil Leifer, whose giant images are buttressed by text ranging from interviews to essays to newspaper clips.

What’s fascinating about GOAT is the truth it tells about pictures—that format matters. Many familiar images from famous fights—versus Floyd Patterson,  for instance—are transformed by the size, and in particular by the way in which a book this size must rest when you read it. His body lengthens and is foreshortened by the angle; he seems almost architectural. And this, of course, is the goal of the book as a whole: to reinforce the mythic while dissecting it.

Fame, wealth, titles: even combined, these accomplishments don’t warrant a syllabus. Ali’s longevity as a subject of study comes from that quality in him that welded these attributes into a larger purpose, what Oates—one of the best portraitists of boxers because she is one of the most dedicated students of character—described in a recent tribute as “this spiritual greatness… that seemed to have emerged out of a far more ordinary, even callow personality.” Great books may yet be written about him. In the meantime, any student of the American character would do well to start here.

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Previous Article

Next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Five Reasons Why Writers Should Move to Kansas City

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

Advertisement

Supported by

Books of The Times

Review: For Muhammad Ali, an Endless Round of Books

• Share full article

By Michiko Kakutani

• June 23, 2016

He said it best, of course: He was “the astronaut of boxing” who “handcuffed lightning,” threw “thunder in jail”; the dazzling warrior “with iron fists and a beautiful tan”; “the greatest fighter that ever will be” who could “run through a hurricane” and not get wet.

But Muhammad Ali shook the world with more than his electrifying speed and power in the ring. He also shook the world with the power of his convictions: his determination to stand up to the rules of the Jim Crow South, and to assert his freedom to invent himself — “I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”

“I am America,” he proudly declared, decades before the Black Lives Matter movement. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.” He stood with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for freedom and social justice. And he stood up against the Vietnam War, refusing to be drafted in 1967 on religious grounds as a conscientious objector — a decision that would cost him his boxing title, three-and-a-half years of his career at the peak of his powers, tens of millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements, and for many years, his popularity.

These acts of conscience are part of the reason that older fans, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who eulogized Ali, were so deeply affected by his death. As his wife, Lonnie, noted, he also died at a moment when “we face uncertainty in a world and divisions at home as to who we are as a people.” It’s a moment when racism has infected the presidential race, when many politicians lack the courage to stand up for their own convictions, when radical jihadists have been trying to subvert the peaceful vision of Islam embraced by Ali.

Ali’s willingness to speak truth to power outside the ring and his embodiment of many of the political and cultural changes that rocked America in the 1960s are also reasons so many fans spent the weeks after his death watching old videos and reading books about him, of which there are a multiplying number.

Ali was a larger-than-life, novelistic figure: not only an incandescent athlete dancing under the lights but also a showman, poet, philosopher, performance artist, statesman and hip-hop pioneer, a man compared to Whitman, Robeson, Malcolm X, Ellington and Chaplin. Writers were magnetized by his contradictions: the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time), who vanquished some of the baddest men on the planet but became one of the world’s most revered humanitarians; a deeply religious man who loved practical jokes and practically invented trash talk; “a radical even in a radical’s time,” as President Obama put it, who became so beloved by Americans across the political spectrum that he was featured in a DC Comics book in which he teamed up with Superman to save the world.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction & Top Questions

Names and sources

Early years, from mecca to medina.

• ʿAlī and Islam to the death of Muhammad
• ʿAlī and the first caliphs
• ʿAlī’s caliphate and last years
• The futuwwāt
• Metaphysics
• The Nahj al-balāghah

How was ʿAlī influential?

What was ʿalī’s early life like, how did ʿalī die, what was ʿalī’s legacy.

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Encyclopaedia Iranica - Alī ibn Abū Ṭālib
• History Today - Caliph Ali Assassinated
• Jewish Virtual Library - Biography of Ali ibn Abi Talib
• World History Encyclopedia - Biography of Ali ibn Abi Talib
• Table Of Contents

ʿAlī, Muhammad ’s cousin and son-in-law, was the fourth caliph and first imam (in Shiʿism ) of the Muslim ummah (community). A faction of the ummah asserted that he and his descendants (known as Ahl al-Bayt ) were the only rightful successors to Muhammad. This faction is known as the Shiʿah, short for shīʿat ʿAlī (”ʿAlī’s faction”).

ʿAlī was the son of Abū Ṭālib, Muhammad ’s uncle and adopted guardian. After Abū Ṭālib became impoverished, young ʿAlī was taken in by Muhammad. At age 10, ʿAlī became the second person to accept Islam , after Khadījah , according to tradition. From then, he was a dedicated servant of the early Muslim ummah (community).

After ʿAlī became caliph , some of his erstwhile supporters resented his willingness to negotiate his status with Muʿāwiyah and his forces, believing such concession to be a repudiation of his duty to fight against rebels. ʿAlī was struck in the head with a poisoned sword by a member of this movement (known as the Khārijites ).

ʿAlī remains a highly regarded figure among Muslims, though the nature and authority of his right to lead is at the heart of the only major split in Islam (into the Sunni and Shiʿah branches). Regardless of sect, his teachings are highly esteemed, and his descendants ( sayyids and sharifs ) remain respected members of Islamic society.

ʿAlī (born c. 600, Mecca, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—died January 661, Kufa , Iraq) was the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad , the Prophet of Islam , and fourth of the “rightly guided” ( rāshidūn ) caliphs , as the first four successors of Muhammad are called. Reigning from 656 to 661, he was the first imam (leader) of Shiʿism in all its forms. The question of his right to the caliphate (the political-religious structure comprising the community of Muslims and its territories that emerged after the death of Muhammad) resulted in the only major split in Islam, into the Sunni and Shiʿi branches.

ʿAlī is known within the Islamic tradition by a number of titles, some reflecting his personal qualities and others derived from particular episodes of his life. They include Abū al-Ḥasan (“Father of Ḥasan” [the name of his eldest son]), Abū Turāb (“Father of Dust”), Murtaḍā (“One Who Is Chosen and Contented”), Asad Allāh (“Lion of God”), Ḥaydar (“Lion”), and—specifically among the Shiʿah—Amīr al-Muʾminīn (“Prince of the Faithful”) and Mawlāy-i Muttaqiyān (“Master of the God-Fearing”). The title Abū Turāb, for example, recalls the time when, according to tradition, Muhammad entered a mosque and, seeing ʿAlī sleeping there full of dust, said to him, “O father of dust, get up.”

Except for Muhammad, there is no one in Islamic history about whom as much has been written in Islamic languages as ʿAlī. The primary sources for scholarship on the life of ʿAlī are the Hadith and the sīrah literature (accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s life), as well as other biographical sources and texts of early Islamic history. The extensive secondary sources include, in addition to works by Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims, writings by Christian Arabs, Hindus, and other non-Muslims from the Middle East and Asia and a few works by modern Western scholars. However, many of the early Islamic sources are coloured to some extent by a bias, whether positive or negative, toward ʿAlī.

ʿAlī’s life, as recorded especially in the Sunni and Shiʿi texts, can be divided into several distinct periods separated by major events. The son of Abū Ṭālib and his wife Fāṭimah bint Asad, ʿAlī was born, according to most older historical sources, on the 13th day of the lunar month of Rajab, about the year 600, in Mecca . Many sources, especially Shiʿi ones, record that he was the only person born in the sacred sanctuary of the Kaaba , a shrine said to have been built by Abraham and later dedicated to the traditional gods of the Arabs, which became the central shrine of Islam after the advent of the religion and the removal of all idols from it. ʿAlī was related to the Prophet through his father and mother: Abū Ṭālib was Muhammad’s uncle and became his guardian when the boy’s father died, and Fāṭimah bint Asad acted as the Prophet’s mother after his biological mother died. When ʿAlī was five years old, his father became impoverished, and ʿAlī was taken in and raised by Muhammad and his wife Khadījah . At age 10 ʿAlī became, according to tradition, the second person after Khadījah to accept Islam. Although ʿAlī’s father refused to give up his devotion to traditional Arabic polytheism , he accepted ʿAlī’s decision, telling him, “Since he [the Prophet] leads you only to righteousness, follow him and keep close to him.”

The second period of ʿAlī’s life, lasting slightly more than a decade, begins in 610, when Muhammad received the first of his revelations , and ends with the migration of the Prophet to Medina in 622. During this period ʿAlī was Muhammad’s constant companion. Along with Zayd ibn Ḥāritha, who was like a son to the Prophet, Abū Bakr , a respected member of the ruling Quraysh tribe of Mecca, and Khadījah, he helped to form the nucleus of the earliest Meccan Islamic community. From 610 to 622 ʿAlī spent much of his time providing for the needs of believers in Mecca, especially the poor, by distributing what he had among them and helping them with their daily chores.

Both Sunni and Shiʿi sources confirm the occurrence in 622 of the most important episode of this period. Muhammad, knowing that his enemies were plotting to assassinate him, asked ʿAlī to take his place and sleep in his bed; Muhammad then left Mecca secretly with Abū Bakr and reached Medina safely several days later (his arrival marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar). When the plotters entered Muhammad’s house with drawn daggers, they were deeply surprised to find ʿAlī, whom they did not harm. ʿAlī waited for instructions and left sometime later with Muhammad’s family. He arrived safely in Qubā on the outskirts of Yathrib, which soon became known as Mādinat al-Nabi (“City of the Prophet”) or simply Medina , on the instructions of the Prophet. According to some sources, he was one of the first of the Meccan followers of Muhammad to arrive in Medina.