WASHINGTON – For Muhammad Ali, the idea of being a humble athlete — someone pre-packaged and palatable for white America — was never an option. Instead, he demanded respect not only as a ...

But just like Prince, Ali never viewed his own race or religion as a shortcoming. He was a man who stood tall in the midst of criticism and embraced being Black and Muslim.

A poster featuring a pixelated image of Muhammad Ali and Pelé embracing after Pelé's final soccer match in 1977. Ali signed, dated, and wrote an aphorism at the bottom of the poster. Credit Line ...

"So Muhammad Ali becomes this person who is unapologetically, you know, at times unforgivably black," Joseph says. "But in a way that young people, especially African-Americans and the culture ...

Cassius Clay transformed into Muhammad Ali post-victory, denouncing his birth name as a "slave name" linked to white ...

In her 1987 book On Boxing, Joyce Carol Oates tied the spectacle of modern boxing—two black men battering each other in a ring surrounded by a predominantly white audience—to how white slave ...

Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) with Malcolm X in New York City in 1964. (Photo: John Peodincuk/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) One aspect that rang true, however, was the deep, conflicted ...

In 1974, Muhammad Ali told Michael Parkinson and a stunned chat show audience that the white man of America was "the blue-eyed, blond-headed Devil" ...