Statement from President Barack Obama and First Lady
Michelle Obama on the Passing of Muhammad Ali
Michelle Obama on the Passing of Muhammad Ali
Muhammad
Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you.
He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d “handcuffed
lightning, thrown thunder into
jail.”
But
what made The Champ the greatest – what truly separated him from
everyone else – is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the
same thing.
Like
everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But
we’re also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him,
if just for a while; for how
fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.
In
my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves
on display, just under that iconic photograph of him – the young champ,
just 22 years old, roaring
like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was
taken to understand who he was – still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic
Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead
him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the
peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a
name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and
the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square
Garden.
“I
am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize.
But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my
religion, not yours; my goals,
my own. Get used to me.”
That’s
the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on
the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what
was right. A man who
fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was
hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would
cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies
on the left and the right, make him reviled,
and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his
victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.
He
wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be
careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith
evolved. But his wonderful, infectious,
even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes – maybe
because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his
physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace
and reconciliation around the world. We saw a
man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot,
visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling
them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a
torch, and fight his greatest fight of all
on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that
ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.
Muhammad
Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all
better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his
family, and we pray that the
greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace.
Source: The White House, Office of the Press Secretary
