“Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people,” Martin reportedly told him at the time. After his bike was stolen, Clay told police officer Joe Martin that he wanted to beat up the thief. Growing up in the segregated South, he experienced racial prejudice and discrimination firsthand.Īt the age of 12, Clay discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate. His birth name was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.Īt an early age, young Clay showed that he wasn’t afraid of any bout-inside or outside of the ring. Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. SPOUSES: Sonji Roi (1964-1965), Belinda Boyd (1967-1977), Veronica Porché (1977-1986), and Yolanda Williams (1986-2016)ĬHILDREN: Maryum, Jamillah, Rasheda, Muhammad Jr., Miya, Khaliah, Hana, Laila Ali, and Asaad He earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and devoted much of his time after to philanthropy. 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 became an Olympic gold medalist in 1960 and the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1964. Muhammad Ali was a boxer, philanthropist, and social activist who is universally regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Wives, Children, and Family Boxing Legacy.Vietnam War Protest and Supreme Court Case.Relationship With Malcolm X and Conversion to Islam.So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs.

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. 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. But I have said it once and I will say it again. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. “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? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.

Muhammad Ali by Muhammad Ali