50 years later, paper apologises to Ali
For years after boxing great Cassius Clay adopted the Muslim faith and changed his name, his hometown paper refused to call him Muhammad Ali.
Fifty years later, The Courier-Journal, Louisville's daily paper, has apologised for continuing to call him Cassius Clay after he changed his name in 1964. It did not consistently refer to him as Muhammad Ali until 1970.
Ali died on June 3 and an estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of Louisville to say goodbye to the city's most celebrated son during his funeral on Friday.
Executive editor Neil Budde wrote Monday's editorial that chronicled how the paper for years either ignored Ali's preferred name or outright mocked it.
"We won't even try to speculate what the motives of the editors in that era were," he wrote.
"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."
