He was originally named in honor of a white abolitionist.

Muhammad Ali was originally named in honor of a white abolitionist. After adopting Islam, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, claiming that his original name was "a slave name" and that he "didn't select it and I don't want it." He explained that his new name is "a free name," which means "beloved of God." Cassius Marcellus Clay, the name Ali inherited from his father, was really given to his father in memory of Cassius M. Clay, a devoted abolitionist who received his Yale degree in 1832. Following Ali's passing on June 3 at the age of 74, Judith Schiff, chief research archivist of the Yale University Library's Manuscripts and Archives, informed Yale News of the connection. No Southern figure was as active in the anti-slavery case as Clay, according to Anson Phelps Stokes, who wrote about the Yale-educated abolitionist in "Memorials of Eminent Yale Men," according to Schiff.

Clay was a survivor, just like the heavyweight champion who bore his name. He was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives three times before his opinions on slavery cost him the favor of his constituents. He escaped an attempt on his life in 1843 while participating in a political debate. The most well-known of his publications, "Slavery: The Evil — The Remedy," was released in the same year. In the slave-owning town of Lexington, Kentucky, he published the antislavery newspaper True American between 1845 and 1846. His newspaper office's reinforced doors had to be barricaded for protection after he started receiving death threats. A mob broke into his office and seized his printing equipment in August 1845; the temporary suppression of the publication made Clay a hero in the anti-slavery movement.