BY AARON MILLER
Tens of thousands of hard core fans and supporters, flocked to Louisville from all over the world to pay last respects to Muhammad Ali a week after The Champ had died. A Nigerian from Venice Beach spent time telling everyone around him how much Ali meant to him.
The crows assembled to mourn and celebrate the life of the city’s most famous icon, the three-time heavyweight champion of the world who made a big mark in the world.
Contacts of the eye of media.com, from the Huffington post said there were tens of thousands of people who lined Bardstown Road, south of the city, for the start of a 19-mile processional that snaked through Louisville.
Another 50,000 approximately, waited for the processional along Muhammad Ali Boulevard and Broadway downtown. City workers in orange “I Am Ali” T-shirts were spread throughout town. Buses changed their displays to read “Ali — The Greatest.” Banners marking his death flew from lampposts. Tributes were visible on theater marquees and in shop and restaurant windows across town.
A banner declaring him as “Louisville’s Ali” hung from the side of the Louisville Gas & Electric building downtown, visible to travelers on both Interstates 64 and 65. It has been there for more than a decade, but its message was particularly poignant now: For the week following his death, the city and its most famous athlete had become inseparable.
Ali’s activism and outspokenness in the past, sharply divided opinions of him in his hometown. And , but the city was united to celebrate Ali in the week following his death. Not many from the older white generation liked Ali because of the ease with which he sometimes spitted racially charged undertones. However, his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war for a country he saw as treating people unequally, eventual won him universal respect even amongst those who hated him.
Ali represents legendary accomplishments, and and national heroism. This is why everybody gathered once again to commemorate the special life of a man with qualities that only comes once in a generation.Out of the world of division and conflict, from which Ali came, was birthed a world of unity and joy to mark the life of someone special. The tens of hard core fans who flocked to Louisville to pay their final respects to Mohammed Ali are a reflection of the enormity of respect people had for him as a whole. Ali was so dynamic as a young black American of the 60’s and 70’s, that he got everybody’s full attention and interest whenever he spoke. He always said what was on his mind, to a fault in fact. But now that strength of character added to his legendary accomplishments in the ring, is the reason so many still adulate him till this day, even in death. The thousands of supporters that flocked to Lousville, had an unforgettable time, according to reports of how the day went.