Muhammad Ali that year, before converting to Islam after 1961. At age 22, in 1964, he won the world heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston in a major upset. He then changed his name from Cassius Clay, which he called his "slave name", to Muhammad Ali. He set an example of racial pride for African Americans and resistance to white domination during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1966, two years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali further antagonized the white establishment by refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs, and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War.
S. Wajid Ali In these difficult days, his sons looked after him regularly. His younger brother Mr. S. Shamsher Ali visited him every day. His first wife Ayesha Khatun often visited him. Finally, at 9 o' clock of Sunday, 10 June 1951, he died at his 48, Jhowtolla residence. He was buried beside the grave of his last wife Mrs. Badrunnessa Ali at Gobra graveyard in Calcutta, where he had bought the place for himself when she died in 1931, 20 years earlier. Bounded by marble railings, his tombstone bears dates of his birth and death. He is honoured every year in a