Becoming Muhammad Ali

Content Warning: This section of the study guide includes discussion of racial violence.

Becoming Muhammad Ali is tied to not only the life of the famous boxer but also the way that his environment and surroundings shaped his life. The novel takes place between 1954 and 1958, though the epilogue explores Ali’s life beyond that point until his death in 2016. The socio-historical context of Cassius Clay’s life undoubtedly had a large effect on his aspirations and actions as an adult. As Granddaddy Herman tells Cassius and Rudy, there are “two Louisvilles / […] / One for whites / and one for blacks” (49).

Lucius “Lucky” Wakely, the fictionalized narrator of each section’s introductions, provides important historical context for the novel. His accounts and “memories” of Cassius are completely fictional, since he himself isn’t real. However, they speak to a larger truth of what it was like for a young Black boy to grow up in the United States in the 1950s. One example of this is the conversation between Lucky, Cassius, and Odessa Clay in which Cassius’s mother explains that “[w]e had to be one way for ourselves and another way for the rest of the world. We couldn’t let white people see what we really thought or how much we really knew. It was the only way to stay safe” (129).

In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ended segregation in schools. Integration makes its only appearance when Cassius asks Teenie how her new school is, and she responds that it’s decent “but the white boys are daft / […] / It means they’re stupid. And sometimes mean / Integration is not so nice” (280). Teenie’s words suggest that policies aimed at improving the lives of students of color were more complicated than they seemed, and Black students continued to experience a great deal of racism now that they were in schools with white students.

Segregation outside the classroom was still rampant, as it was not until 1964 that Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, legally ending segregation. Cassius’s father makes a living painting, and some of the jobs he must take include making signs that are discriminatory against him, including “Whites Only” and “Colored Waiting Room” (39). Others, however, such as “Vote for Progress” and “Segregation Is Immoral,” speak to African Americans’ long freedom struggle and the early days of the civil rights movement, which began in the late 1940s and extended into the 1970s.

However, the event that most shapes Cassius is undoubtedly the death of Emmett Till in 1955. Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. The violence and brutality of his murder—and his mother’s decision to have an open-casket funeral—became a lasting and influential image for the civil rights movement. For Cassius, who was only one year younger than Till when he was killed, the death of the boy had a visceral effect that influenced how Cassius viewed the world.

Finally, this novel demonstrates how, from a young age, Cassius dreamed of a world better than his historical context. Lucky’s narrative sections describe how Cassius saw a future in which he could do anything, regardless of systematic attempts to discriminate against African Americans. For example, during a conversation in which Cassius charismatically suggests that he would be “the best; the most beautiful” president, Lucky comments that “I don’t know what made him think that in a million years a black man could ever be president. In most places around where we lived, black people could hardly even vote!” (168). Lucky speaks to how novel an idea this was, especially given how voter suppression sought to limit Black access to the polls. Yet, Cassius was right; Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and became the nation’s first African American president.