Well knock me down ... Muhammed [Ali] has Irish roots

Irish Independent ^ | February 8, 2002 | Gordon Deegan

[aculeus]

A SEARCH by genealogists has confirmed the unlikely Irish heritage of boxing legend Muhammed Ali.

Staff at the Clare Heritage Centre at Corofin have discovered that the three-times world boxing champion's great grandfather was Abe Grady who was born in the town Ennis in the 1840s.

According to genealogist Antoinette O'Brien, Abe - who hailed from the Turnpike area of Ennis - emigrated to the US in the 1860s from Cappa Harbour, near Kilrush in west Clare.

Some time after arriving in the US, Abe Grady settled in Kentucky, where he married an African-American woman. It is understood that their son also married an African-American woman and one of their daughters was Ali's mother, Odessa Lee Grady.

In the 1930s, Odessa married Cassius Clay Snr and they settled in Louisville, Kentucky before their son Cassius Clay Jnr was born in 1942.

The Heritage Centre carried out the research as part of a programme on Ali's Irish links for TG4.

© Irish Independent

[skateman]

This threat had been posted earlier. But I repeat my assertion: Gassius Cassius could not be Irish. The Irish are not known to be traitors and cowards.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I don't think you could call Gassius a coward.

No one who gets in the ring is a coward.