I loved watching Muhammad Ali fight. But why he changed his name from a very tought and famous southern abolitionist “Cassius Clay” to Muhammad a name from a people who ran the slave trade is very odd…
wiki…
"Cassius Clay was an early Southern planter who became a prominent anti-slavery crusader. Clay worked toward emancipation, both as a Kentucky state representative and as an early member of the Republican Party.[3]
Clay was elected to three terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives,[7] but he lost support among Kentuckian voters as he promoted abolition. His anti-slavery activism earned him violent enemies. During a political debate in 1843, he survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gun. The scabbard of Clay’s Bowie knife was tipped with silver and, in jerking the Bowie knife out in retaliation pulled this scabbard up so that it was just over his heart. Brown’s bullet struck the scabbard and embedded itself in the silver. Despite having been shot in the chest, Clay tackled Brown, and with his Bowie knife removed Brown’s nose and one eye and possibly an ear before he threw Brown over an embankment.[8][9]
In 1845, Clay began publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky. Within a month, he received death threats, had to arm himself, and regularly barricaded the armored doors of his newspaper office for protection, besides setting up two four-pounder cannons inside. Shortly afterward, a mob of about 60 men broke into his office and seized his printing equipment. To protect his venture, Clay set up a publication center in Cincinnati, Ohio, a center of abolitionists in the free state but continued to reside in Kentucky.[3]
Clay served in the Mexican–American War as a captain with the 1st Kentucky Cavalry from 1846 to 1847. He had opposed the annexation of Texas and the expansion of slavery into the Southwest, but had volunteered because of Mexico’s attempt to seize the state, which it still claimed. While making a speech for abolition in 1849, Clay was attacked by the six Turner brothers, who beat, stabbed, and tried to shoot him. In the ensuing fight, Clay fought off all six and, using his Bowie knife, killed Cyrus Turner.[9]"