According to the film, Ali was said to be haunted by the image of Till’s mutilated corpse, which his mother allowed to be photographed in an open casket at his funeral.Īli, then known as Cassius Clay, won the 1960 Olympic light heavyweight gold medal. There was a lot of racism at that time.”įrom his humble beginnings in Louisville, Kentucky, Burns charts the rise of a promising – if unvarnished – athlete, who was inspired by the civil rights movement of the time.īorn Cassius Clay in 1942, Ali was almost the same age as Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. He had death threats placed upon him because a lot of people didn’t like him,” she says. One of Ali’s daughters, Rasheda, told CNN Sport that her father’s life was far from the fairytale that today’s generation might assume it to be. That he belonged to everyone from the start. He told CNN Sport, “One of the greatest misconceptions about Ali is that White people loved him from the start.
“The biggest misconception about Muhammad Ali is that everybody loved him,” explains ESPN’s Howard Bryant, who is featured in the film. A larger than life character who was beloved. The latter-day image of Ali is that he was flamboyant, loquacious and audacious. There isn’t a button that he doesn’t push, either deliberately or accidentally – and he’s so amazing.”īut the crux of Burns’ narrative is that he wasn’t always revered, in fact, for many years in the United States, Muhammad Ali was dismissed, feared and even despised. Sports and the role of sports and society, Black athletes and race and religion and faith and politics and war. “He intersects with all of the things that not only were the most important issues of that day, but of our day as well,” Burns told CNN Sport, “He’s so much bigger than boxing. His remarkable life story is once again in the spotlight, the subject of “Muhammad Ali” – an expansive, four-part, eight-hour documentary by the renowned filmmaker Ken Burns, airing on PBS. And you don’t even know it.”īetween 19, Ali fought 61 professional heavyweight bouts in a glittering career that made him a global icon, but arguably his biggest fights were outside of the ring. “Someday, you’re going to be able to walk with your head high and not beg for a job. Muhammad Ali scoops up his baby daughter Maryum and explains a concept that she couldn’t possibly understand at such a tender young age: “Your daddy is fighting for you,” he is reported as saying in 1968.
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