Two Fighters Named Clay

I've written in the past that despite my opposition to the Antifa and BLM types tearing down statues that mark our historical and cultural heritage there are some statutes that I think should be pulled down. I wrote about one of them here.

I also think there are some people who may not be honored with a statue but should be. One of these is a man whose name, despite being unwisely spurned by a world-famous athlete, will sound familiar to almost any American reader of mature years.

The name is Cassius Clay, and Michael Medved gives us a portrait of this very colorful and courageous abolitionist in a piece in the Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt:

Born in 1810, Clay defied his slave-owning and influential Kentucky family when he became an abolitionist during his student days at Yale. A speech by William Lloyd Garrison, the fiery advocate for emancipation, struck him “as water to a thirsty wayfarer.” Returning home after graduation in 1832, he won four terms in the state Legislature despite his unpopular antislavery views.

Clay’s second cousin (and occasional political sponsor) was the state’s most celebrated citizen: Henry Clay, the House speaker and longtime senator.

Clay didn't just argue for abolition and then flee the wrath of his fellow Kentuckians. He was a fighter:

While other antislavery agitators fled the South to escape intimidation and violence, Clay used his inherited wealth to set up an uncompromising abolitionist newspaper in Lexington, named True American. After fighting off a mob of 60 who tried to smash his printing presses, Clay installed two cannons to protect his premises.

He also funded Berea College, a Christian institution that became the first college in the South to welcome black students and women.

Though Clay might have continued in the role of philanthropist and humanitarian, his combative nature pushed him toward provocation and confrontation. Henry Clay’s biographers David and Jeanne Heidler wrote of Cassius: “A venomous pen was his first weapon of choice, a bowie knife his second, and because he was so effective with the one, he found it wise to have the other handy.”

After a heated public debate in 1843, a hired killer assaulted him and aimed a shot directly to his chest. While struggling to remove the bowie knife from the leather scabbard he carried on his belt, Clay unintentionally pulled up the sheath over his stomach. The would-be assassin’s bullet struck the scabbard and lodged itself into the silver blade, before Cash used the knife to slice off his assailant’s nose and an ear.

Six years later, the pro-slavery Turner Brothers—six of them—attacked Clay with cudgels and knives during a public meeting at Foxtown, stabbing him repeatedly in the back before Thomas Turner, the group’s leader, pulled out his revolver. The trigger jammed three times, giving Clay the chance to gut another brother, Cyrus, with his knife, a fatal blow that dispersed his attackers.

                                                      Cassius Marcellus Clay

It's astonishing that this man who risked his life in the anti-slavery cause is not more widely known. Medved tells us more about his military service and personal life and then concludes with this:

[The] “Lion of White Hall” remained active and embattled into extreme old age. To deal with ever-present threats on his life, in his 80s he added two pistols to the bowie knife as part of his personal armament. When he died at 92, his survivors listed the cause of death as “general exhaustion.”

To honor the memory of the famous and fearless abolitionist, one Herman Heaton Clay, whose ancestors had been enslaved by the Clay family, named his own son Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. The young man became world-famous 22 years later with an astonishing, underdog boxing victory against heavyweight champion Sonny Liston.

Shortly thereafter the young fighter jettisoned the name of the old fighter who had inspired his father, and chose to call himself Muhammad Ali, an affirmation of his newfound Muslim faith.

Without any acknowledgment of the daring, dangerous commitment to emancipation that characterized the life of his namesake, the new champ disparaged Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. as “a slave name.” He said: “I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it. . . . Why would I keep my white slave master’s name visible and my black ancestors invisible, unknown, unhonored?”

Surely Ali didn't know the kind of man his father named him for. I like to think that had he known who Cassius Clay was he'd have been proud to bear the name. As it is, Clay the abolitionist is himself almost invisible, unknown and unhonored.