Muhammad Ali - Early Life

Early Life

Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. The older of two boys, he was named after his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., who was named after the 19th century abolitionist and politician of the same name. His father painted billboards and signs, and his mother, Odessa O'Grady Clay, was a household domestic. Although Cassius Sr. was a Methodist, he allowed Odessa to bring up both Cassius and his younger brother Rudolph "Rudy" Clay (later renamed Rahman Ali) as Baptists. He is a descendant of pre-Civil War era American slaves in the American South, and is predominantly of African-American descent, with Irish and English ancestry.

Clay was first directed toward boxing by Louisville police officer and boxing coach Joe E. Martin, who encountered the 12-year-old fuming over a thief taking his bicycle. He told the officer he was going to "whup" the thief. The officer told him he better learn how to box first. For the last four years of Clay's amateur career he was trained by legendary boxing cutman Chuck Bodak.

Clay won six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, two national Golden Gloves titles, an Amateur Athletic Union National Title, and the Light Heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Clay's amateur record was 100 wins with five losses. Shortly after his return home from Rome following the Olympics, Ali would claim in his 1975 autobiography that he threw his medal into the Ohio River after he and a friend of his were being refused service at a "whites-only" restaurant, and fighting with a white gang. However, two years later, in the 1977 biopic, The Greatest, a film scene depicting the medal-throwing incident only has Ali being forced out of the diner due to his race quickly cutting to the scene where Clay threw the medal into the river in disgust. Ali brought up the latter story of events in later years in interviews. Both stories have been heavily debated and several of Ali's friends from photographer Howard Bingham and Bundini Brown disputed this story calling it false, with Brown later telling Sports Illustrated writer Mark Kram, "Honkies sure bought into that one!"

It was stated that Ali kept his medal until "the gold rubbed off". This incident is not mentioned in Thomas Hauser's own official biography of Ali, who confirmed that Ali was refused service at the diner but said he lost his medal a year after he won it. Ali later received a replacement medal at a basketball intermission during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he lit the torch to start the games.