Because he released them to the world.
Advertisement
President Bill Clinton saluted him as a “universal soldier for humanity”.
“He dared to love black people at a time when black people had trouble loving themselves” Cosby said before loudly chided those who once gave up on the champ.
“Muhammad Ali was America – brash, defiant, pioneering, joyful, never exhausted, always game to test the odds, ” wrote President Obama in a letter read by senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett.
The three-hour ceremony was part prayer meeting, part political rally and part comedy club.
Friend John Ramsey described how he watched with Ali at ringside during the 2000 Olympics as an American won a fight – and how Ali insisted on going to the locker room afterward to cheer up the loser. Every single solitary one of us have gifts of mind and heart.
Crystal recalled how Ali “was amusing, he was attractive, he was the most flawless athlete in the world – and those were his own words”.
“We will not tolerate politicians or anyone else putting down Muslims and blaming Muslims for a few people”, said Lerner. Bobby Kennedy were killed.
And Crystal recalled that when Ali invited him to go running one morning on a golf course, and Crystal said he couldn’t go because the club didn’t admit Jewish members.
They came with T-shirts bearing Ali’s likeness, hats declaring him the greatest of all time, handmade signs with his quotes.
The cortege passed by sites that were important to “The Champ”: his childhood home, the Ali Center, the Center for African American Heritage – which focuses on the lives of blacks in Kentucky – and along Muhammad Ali Boulevard before arriving at the Cave Hill Cemetery for a hero’s burial.
But the ecumenical service featured messages from a Catholic priest, two rabbis and the leaders of two Indian tribes. It was long – about three hours – but there were moving tributes and remembrances throughout the service.
Video Raw: As Motorcade Rolls, Fans Chant “Ali!”
But Ali later earned global respect as a civil rights activist who preached religious tolerance, and for his public battle with a disease that ravaged his once powerful body.
Some foreign dignitaries attended but Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who went to a Muslim funeral for Ali on Thursday, cut short his visit to Louisville and did not take part in Friday’s event as planned.
Obama said that a sportswriter afterward asked a restroom attendant if he bet on the fight. “The way to honor him is to be like him today”, Lerner said, railing against anti-Muslim bigotry, drone attacks, the gap between rich and poor, and racist policing.
“Muhammad fell in love with the masses and they fell in love with him”, she said.
In particular, CNN shows the main thoroughfare of Broadway in downtown Louisville at a standstill while citizens flank the limousine procession in long lines as far as the eye can see.
Muhammad Ali made his final journey through his hometown Friday – past the little pink house where he grew up and the museum that bears his name – as thousands of mourners along the route pumped their fists and chanted, “Ali!” He was from Louisville, but his name and his faith made him one of us. “He decided he would never be disempowered”, Clinton said.
We got to see and hear what one of the most well-known and influential figures of the past two centuries himself considered his true legacy, and how he wants to be remembered. Look at that. He may not be able to run across a ring anymore, may not be able to dodge everybody and exhaust everybody anymore, and he’s bigger than ever, because he is a free man of faith, sharing the gifts we all have’.
Comedian Billy Crystal said: “Thirty-five years after he stopped fighting, [Ali was] still the champion of the world”.
“He was pretty frail, but he was still out there, shining a light on Parkinson’s”, she said. He told how Ali – the “most famous Muslim in the world – once came to a synagogue to help him raise money for a performing arts program in Israel in which Israelis and Palestinians and Muslim artists work together on the stage”.
Advertisement
“It doesn’t happen without him”, Crystal said.
