In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

630 The Kentucky Anthology Muhammad Ali, with Richard Durham from The Greatest: My Own Story One man who needs no introduction is Muhammad Ali, a man of strength, intelligence , cunning, and principle who rose from a black ghetto in West Louisville to become not only one of the best-known athletes of the century but ultimately a global spokesman for peace, tolerance, and reconciliation. In The Greatest: My Own Story (1975), the autobiography he wrote with his friend Richard Durham, Ali recalls the pride he felt after winning an Olympic gold medal in 1960 and how, after an episode of racism and intimidation in his hometown, his feelings turned to shock, pain, and bitterness. This excerpt concludes with his violent encounter with a motorcycle gang and a thug named Frog, whose deeds cause Ali to commit a desperate act. h So what I remember most about the summer of 1960 is not the hero welcome , the celebrations, the Police Chief, the Mayor, the Governor, or even the ten Louisville millionaires, but that night when I stood on the Jefferson County Bridge and threw my Olympic Gold Medal down to the bottom of the Ohio River. A few minutes earlier I had fought a man almost to the death because he wanted to take it from me, just as I had been willing to fight to the death in the ring to win it. It had taken six years of blood, blows, pain, sweat, struggle, a thousand rounds in rings and gyms to win that medal, a prize I had dreamed of holding since I was a child. Now I had thrown it in the river. And I felt no pain and no regret. Only relief, and a new strength. I had turned pro. In my pocket was my agreement with the ten Louisville millionaires, our “marriage contract” for six years. I felt as sure as day and night that I would one day be the World Heavyweight Champion. But my Olympic honeymoon as a White Hope had ended. It was not a change I wanted to tell the world about yet. I would be champion. My own kind of champion. The honeymoon had started when my plane touched down at Standiford Field. They opened the door and my mother rushed up to hug me. Then my brother Rudy and Dad. I had been gone for twenty-one days, the most time I’d been away since the day I was born. 630 Muhammad Ali, with Richard Durham 631 Then came the celebrations: the long police escort all the way downtown ; black and white crowds on the streets and sidewalks; WELCOME HOME CASSIUS CLAY signs from my classmates at Central High; the Mayor telling me the Olympic Gold Medal was my key to the city; plans under way for me to have my picture taken with President Eisenhower. Time magazine saying: “Cassius never lets his Gold Medal out of his sight. He even sleeps with it.” They were right. I ate with it, and wouldn’t stop sleeping with it even though the sharp edges cut my back when I rolled over. Nothing would ever make me part with it. Not even when the “gold” began to wear off, leaving a dull-looking lead base. I wondered why the richest , most powerful nation in the world could not afford to give their Olympic champions real gold. One Kentucky newspaper described my medal as “the biggest prize any black boy ever brought back to Louisville.” But if a white boy had brought back anything better to this city, where only race horses and whiskey were important, I hadn’t heard about it. In later years, when I fought and did exhibitions around the world, in Zurich, Cairo, Tokyo, Stockholm, London, Lima, Dublin, Rio de Janeiro, I was given welcomes and celebrations that were much greater, more colorful. But when you’ve been planted like a tree in one town, and suddenly become recognized and acclaimed by the other trees, it is unlike any other experience you are likely to have. In fact, I’d written a poem about it on the plane, “How Cassius Took Rome,” which I sent to the black newspapers and later recited to my classmates, a poem expressing my love for Louisville. And although I was still hit with some of the same race hostility I’d known all my life, my spirits were so high I felt whoever was against me would change. Even those whose resentment...

Share