Muhammad Ali: The Dream

The Clays of Louisville are an old Kentucky family. Not rich, maybe, like the folks who play pool in the Pendennis Club and chew mint leaves on the veranda at Churchill Downs. But the Clays have been there for six generations—ever since their ancestors worked as slaves on the plantation of Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was Lincoln's Minister to Russia. They like the name, and they like Louisville, and they have a red brick house with five rooms, all of them on one floor. It's got wall-to-wall carpeting in every room and a picture painted right on the white plaster wall in the living room.