The story of how young Cassius Marcellus Clay wound up in boxing has been told time and time again. It reads as if it a movie script. However, this story is better than fiction. Clay was born on January 17, 1942 in Louisville, Ky. Growing up, Clay understood his place in the framework of the country he was a black child of the middle class. But Toni Morrison, who worked on Ali's autobiography as a young editor, noted that was not the best situation in which to be raised. Because not only was he middle class, "but black middle class, black southern middle class, which is not white middle class at all." (1)
On an October afternoon in 1954, a 12-year-old Clay attended an annual convention of the Louisville Service Club at the Columbia Auditorium
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Less than two months after the 1960 Olympics, Clay, still only 18, signed a professional contract with the Louisville Sponsoring Group, made up of 10 local businessmen. The group agreed to pay him $10,000 cash and a guaranteed $4,000 a year for two years. Any money Clay made above the guarantee would be split 50-50 with the sponsors, who agreed to take care of all travel and training expenses. In a prepared statement that called Cassius Clay "one of the nation's outstanding young athletes," the group summed up how Louisville felt about the fighter's amateur career, and the hopes it held for his future: "Each of the 10 members of the group has admiration for Cassius Clay as a fine young man and confidence in his ability as a boxer. The principal purpose of the group is to provide hometown support for Cassius' professional career and to aid him in realizing the maximum benefits from his efforts." …show more content…
He was seen as a thug due to his upbringing on the streets of St. Louis and the time he spent in jail for armed robbery. Clay entered the fight as a prohibited underdog. Even those in his own camp were unsure with how Clay would perform worried more about serious injury than whether their fighter would win. However, Clay's trainer the legendary Angelo Dundee believed that styles make fights and that Clay had the style to beat Liston. Dundee was right. Clay's fancy footwork and dizzying combinations baffled the suddenly plodding and slow-footed Liston for six rounds. At one point, Clay recalled, "I hit him with eight punches in a row until he doubled up. I remember thinking something like, Yeah, you old sucker! You try to be all big and bad!' He was gone. He knew he couldn't last I missed with a right that would have dropped him. But I jabbed and jabbed at that cut under his eye, until it was wide open and bleeding worse than before. I knew he wasn't due to last much longer." Just before the bell rang to end the sixth, Clay hit Liston with two powerful left hooks. Many are still wondering how the champ made it to the corner. However, in between rounds Liston told he corner, "That's it." While they didn't understand it at the time,
After a friend introduced Joseph to boxing at Brewster's East Side Gymnasium, he fell in love with it. To keep his mom from finding out about his boxing, he shortened his name to Joe Louis, eventually she found out. A couple years later with his success in the amatuer boxing scene, Joseph met John Roxborough who became his lifelong manager. As a result of joining forces with John Roxborough, Julian Black was hired as a fight promoter and Jack Blackburn as Joseph’s trainer. His first fight was scheduled on July 4, 1934, where he kayoed his opponent Jack Kracken. Hereafter until the end of 1935, Joseph had already been in 14 fights. Those 14 fights helped Joseph rack up nearly $370,000 in prize money.
The author then mentions many industry concerns about blacks being enthusiastic to enter into boxing due to the triumph of Johnson, which would result in a shortage of laborers. On the other hand, Jim Nasium, a black writer counseled many young blacks to take up boxing as a serious profession. He believed that it is the boxing ring where blacks could face whites on an equal basis. There were many reports
When the father slaps his son, he is doing it out of fear that his son will be better than him. He is scared that there will always be someone better than him. He used violence so that it would not seem like his son was better than him. Inside he was starting to realize that his son is better than him. He did not want those three hundred people to think that he was not the best. Crutcher writes, “Three-year three-sport letterman at Coho High School in the mid-1950s and number two wrestler at 177 at the university of oklahoma after that. Number two is mysteriously absent from his version.” In the father’s wrestling career he was always number two, and not the best. He is scared of that, especially if it is his son who is better than him. This proves that the father is a fearful character because he is scared of being weak, and not being the
"Jesse Owens." Notable Black American Men, Book II. Ed. Jessie Carney Smith. Detroit: Gale, 1998. U.S. History in Context. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
Born on April 12, 1777, Henry Clay was raised in Hanover Country, Virginia. His father, a Baptist minister who went by the name Sir John, owned 22 slaves, which made him part of the “planter” class, (class of men who owned 20 or more slaves). Henry’s father died when he was 4 years old, and left Henry an inheritance of 2 slaves. Henry was the 7th born of of 9 children. He grew up in an above average house, and his mother owned 18 slaves and 474 acres of land after her husbands death.
Remnick goes into some detail about Ali's private live, including his religious conversion, his connection with Malcolm X, and his brief marriage to and divorce from Sonji Roi. He lets us in behind-the-scenes on some sports-writers, as well as on Norman Mailer, Angelo Dundee (Clay/Ali's trainer), and the bout between world champion Floyd Patterson and contender Sonny Liston. His primary focus, however, is on Clay/Ali's fight with Liston after Liston defeated Patterson.
To determine what factors Brown had to overcome to become a success, we must look at what was against him. He was a black man in a white dominant society. The only factor that could have made Brown being black any worse was if he grew up in the South. He shows us this through his parents they moved from the South to Harlem to escape its prejudices. Like many black families Brown’s parents wanted to be the first Northern urban generation of Negro’s. He showed the kind of Southern black mentality his parents had with the jobs they took and the way they reacted to his quitting of what they called good paying jobs....
James Braddock took his father’s lessons to heart when he practiced fighting in the old schoolyard before he reached his teenage years. He practiced for several years to be an amateur fighter. When Braddock first started boxing he avoided professional competitions for two years. Instead, they froze the title, which means Braddock earned money touring the country giving public appearances and boxing exhibitions. In 1926, he entered the professional boxing circuit in the light heavyweight division.
The grandson of a slave, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia; he was the youngest of five children. Jackie grew up very poor, but little did he know that his athletic ability would open the doors for his future. After his father deserted the family when Jackie was six months old, his mother, Mallie Robinson, moved the family to California in search of work. California also subjected blacks to segregation at that time, but to less of a degree than in the Deep South. The young Jackie defused his anger over this prejudice by immersing himself in sports. He displayed extraordinary athletic skills in high school, excelling at football, basketball, baseball, and track. After helping Pasadena Junior College win the Junior College Football Championship, Robinson took his athletic ability to the University of California at Los Angeles and became a top collegiate running back in 1939.
Due to his extreme popularity he opened the door to public radio. For these reasons, Jack Dempsey was influential to the 1920’s and even to this very day. William Harrison Dempsey, better known as Jack Dempsey, was born on June 24, 1895. He was born in Colorado but became a “nomadic traveler” when he began his boxing career in the small rickety towns of his home state (“Biography”). At the age of sixteen, Dempsey started training to box.
During the years of the 1930’s, the Scottsboro Boys and Tom Robinson went to court due to an alleged rape of a white female. Throughout the events that took place in both cases, Harper Lee repeatedly presented examples of racism and prejudice. Between the court cases of both Tom Robinson and “The Scottsboro Boys,” many of the featured characters’ actions and reactions were similar in responding to the weak evidence.
Malcome X once said “Clay is the finest Negro athlete I have ever know, the man who will mean more to his people than any athlete before him. He is more than Jackie Robinson was, because Robinson is the white man’s hero.” While Jackie Robinson and Cassius Clay were seen as two different, opposing sides of the Civil Rights Movement, they each used their spotlight and fame as athletes in the public eye to make their political stance during this time. Malcolm X makes a bold statement with his ideas, but Jackie Robinson made just as much if not more of a political statement that impacted America during this time even more than Muhammad Ali. Branch Rickey’s great experiment, Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo. The year Jackie was born was 1919 to a family of farmers. His Mother name is Mallie Robinson. She raised Jackie and four other of her children. They were the only black family around and people gave them a hard time about living around them since they were the only black family on the block. Jackie was the very first black baseball player ever to join the white man’s league.
The first African American to play Major League baseball once said, “a life is not important, except in the impact it has on other lives”; this was, of course, Jackie Robinson. Similar to Muhammad Ali, he faced problems head on a...
Today, with the dominance of black players in professional sports, it seems unfathomable that a mere 50 years ago, not only were black athletes absent in all mainstream sporting arenas, it was simply not an option and even illegal in some states. His legacy is the inspiration he gives to athletes and people of all color. Robinson is heroic, in part, because of the excellence of his athletic achievement and equally important, for his political commitment to racial equality.