The Ali Center: What He Wanted It to Be

Muhammad Ali and his wife Lonnie Ali founded the Muhammad Ali Center here on the Louisville riverfront, and it opened on November nineteenth, two thousand five, at a cost of eighty million dollars. Ali himself was involved in every decision about what the center would be.

He was clear about what he did not want. He did not want a boxing museum. He had won the heavyweight championship of the world three times, he had been the most recognizable athlete on the planet, and he was not interested in a building that turned his life into a trophy case. He wanted a humanitarian institution. He wanted it organized around six values he had articulated over his lifetime: respect, confidence, conviction, dedication, giving, and spirituality.

The center is six stories and nearly a hundred thousand square feet. It has exhibits about the Civil Rights movement, about his draft refusal, about his conversion to Islam, about his work with Parkinson's disease research, and about his global humanitarian activities. It includes an orientation film, a children's wall where visitors can post their hopes and dreams, and two art galleries.

Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in nineteen eighty-four. He continued making public appearances for the next three decades, though his speech became increasingly difficult. He lit the Olympic cauldron at the Atlanta Games in nineteen ninety-six, visibly affected by the disease, to an audience that had not known how ill he had become. He died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June third, two thousand sixteen, at age seventy-four. He is buried in Louisville, in Cave Hill Cemetery.

The center, in its insistence on being more than a sports memorial, is probably the most accurate representation of what he thought his life was actually about.