A newspaper in Louisvile is apologizing because they once refused to refer to famed boxer and activist by his name Muhammad Ali.
The Courier-Journal, a daily paper in Ali’s hometown, spent several years calling Ali by his given name, Cassius Clay, after Ali requested not to be acknowledged as such.
From 1964 to 1970, the newspaper wrote about the athlete and his accomplishments but failed to be respectful of Ali’s adoption to the Muslim faith.
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50 years later, following Ali’s death on June 3rd, The Courier-Journal‘s executive editor Neil Budde issued a statement offering an acknowledgment of wrongdoing.
“We won’t even try to speculate what the motives of the editors in that era were,” he stated. “The CJ was certainly an early champion of civil rights and desegregation. Yet we took what in today’s light is an oddly hostile approach on the specific issue of Ali’s name, which did little to help race relations in a turbulent time.”
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