ALI

Submitted by ROBERT M. JOSEPHSON (United States), Nov 29, 2005 at 09:01

Your article was spot-on. A lot of us, in Louisville, Kentucky were very upset and vocally so, when one of our main downtown streets (Walnut) was changed to Mohammed Ali Blvd. Letters to the editor of our newspaper and some protest in the street were to no avail.

Business protests as to the costs of changing letterheads, billing and other documents were not considered to be of merit. There are pictures of Louisville people on buildings etc. all over the city and one of them is Ali. It is amusing to see people give his picture the one-finger salute when they pass one. Me included. The Ali Center on the river is at a corner that I pass every day, and it is not a project that the majority of the public seem to support. It was paid for by a combination of funds, mostly from the "usual" suspects.

Ali often, when he is in town, visits the Brandise Hall of Justice and sits on the first floor greeting people who come up to him for a handshake. He responds to them with a look of dull listlessnes in his eyes.Many people question why he is so honored in our town when his lack of charity or any other assistance to his own people is common knowledge.

Ali didn't only refuse to serve, he refused to appear for induction. I was the Judicial Asst. to Hon Lawerence Grauman who heard his case and deemed him a Consience Objector, to the dismay of many. When I asked him why he let Ali off the hook insted of jailing him as a draft dodger, he told me that he felt he had to use the evidence most favorable to the Defendant.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".