Just how far have race relations gone in the past five-plus decades?
Consider what is happening in Louisville, Ky., the city where a baby named Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. came into this world.
It is getting ready for one of the most awe-inspiring salutes imaginable for the man that baby became.
Louisville didn’t react this way around, oh, 1960, when Cassius Clay came home from Rome with an Olympic gold medal in boxing. He returned from the Olympics and was met with overt racism in his home town.
This young black athlete who had ingratiated himself to the foreign press and to the other international athletes who gathered for the Olympics did not find such warmth when he came home.
His struggle for acceptance began.
That young man eventually grew into a gigantic figure on the world stage. He won the heavyweight professional boxing championship in 1964. Clay converted to Islam and changed his name.
He became Muhammad Ali.
Ali experienced plenty of wrath for becoming a Black Muslim. Then came his refusal to be inducted into the armed forces, citing his religious belief and his role as a Muslim minister. He couldn’t in good conscience serve his country during a time of war, in Vietnam.
More wrath came his way.
The boxing authorities stripped him of his title. They denied him the right to earn a living. He was banned from boxing.
Then he became an iconic figure on university campuses during his three-plus years in boxing exile. He spoke out against the Vietnam War, against the racism that pervaded the nation and against injustice.
Then he became the world’s most famous person.
The court overturned his conviction for draft evasion. He returned to the ring. He won the heavyweight title twice more.
He retired from boxing in 1981 and in 1984 was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Muhammad Ali died Friday at the age of 74.
Louisville, the city of his birth and the city where his neighbors formerly scorned him, now is preparing to say farewell to its most favorite son.
Crowds are gathering at Ali’s boyhood home. People are flocking to Louisville. The mayor will speak at Ali’s funeral. So will former President Bill Clinton, who was among 80,000 spectators in the stadium who wept in the summer of 1996 as Ali emerged to light the Olympic flame in Atlanta. The noted comedian Billy Crystal also will eulogize The Champ.
The city isn’t the same today as it was when Cassius Clay entered it. It’s a much better place that will bid farewell on Friday to Muhammad Ali.
The Champ would revel in the sendoff he’s about to receive.