I spoke with Remnick about his recollections of Ali and about his book. These were daily scenes, the racial arrangements of Louisville. There were two Louisvilles and, in America, two Americas.” It was a childhood in which Cassius saw his mother turned away for a drink of water at a luncheonette after a hard day of cleaning the floors and toilets of white families. Blyden Jackson, a black writer from Louisville, who was in his forties when Clay was growing up, wrote, “On my side of the veil everything was black: the homes, the people, the churches, the schools, the Negro park with Negro park police. There were white schools, white country clubs, white businesses. At movie theatres like the Savoy, whites sat in the orchestra, blacks in the balcony most other theatres were for whites only, and so were the stores downtown. Not quite as virulent as in Jackson or Mobile, but plenty bad. Louisville, when Cassius was growing up in the nineteen-forties and fifties, was a Jim Crow city. In an essay published Saturday, Remnick reflected on Ali's childhood, growing up poor in Louisville. It’s called "King of the World," written by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. It chronicles Ali’s rise from boxer to world icon and the people who influenced him. One of the most highly praised works was published in 1998. Numerous books have been published over the decades about Muhammad Ali, who will be laid to rest this week in his hometown of Louisville.
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