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Researchers Trace Boxing Legend Muhammad Ali's Roots to Ireland
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Muhammad
Ali
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DUBLIN, Feb. 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Irish genealogists announced Friday that their research indicates that former World Heavyweight Boxing champion Muhammad Ali has Irish roots.
Researchers at the Clare Heritage Center in southwest Ireland said they have evidence that a great-grandfather of the three-time world champion hailed from the county town of Ennis, close to the west coast of Ireland.
Antoinette O'Brien, a genealogist at the center, told news agencies that Ali's great grandfather, Abe Grady, immigrated to the United States from County Clare in the 1860s, settled in Kentucky and married an African-American woman.
Their son also married an African-American, and one of that couple's daughters, Odessa Grady, married Cassius Clay in the 1930s. They settled in Louisville, Kentucky, where their son, Muhammad Ali, born as Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., was born in 1942.
The younger Cassius changed his name to Muhammad Ali when he converted to Islam under the banner of the Nation of Islam after winning the world heavyweight title against Sonny Liston in February 1964.
"Birth records don't go back far enough to confirm Abe's birth but we've established that Abe's father John - Ali's great-great grandfather - had a house in Ennis in 1855," O'Brien said.
"There's no doubt that Abe was Ali's great-grandfather. Based on evidence from the U.S., we're led to believe he was from Ennis and that his father was called John Grady. At that time there was only one John Grady living in Ennis."
The research was carried out for an Irish television company making a program to mark the 30th anniversary of Ali's visit to Ireland in 1972, when he fought Al "Blue" Lewis at Dublin's Croke Park stadium.
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