A Baptist preacher joined other community leaders June 5 in a Louisville, Ky., mosque for an interfaith service memorializing the boxing icon and world humanitarian Muhammad Ali.
“He was a miracle worker in the ring, where he used his fists violently to cut down opponents, but what set him apart was the way in which he poured out his heart through non-violent action and deeds to fight for a better world, and he indeed succeeded in making our world a better place,” Jason Crosby, pastor of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, said at the Louisville Islamic Center event honoring the champ who died Friday after a 32-year bout with Parkinson’s disease at age 74.
Crosby said news of the champion’s death brought back memories from his childhood of play sparring in the family garage with a neighborhood friend while pretending to be to the Louisville native and world heavyweight champ. Crosby, who was born in Louisville and raised in Covington, Ky., remembered delivering Ali’s trademark line: “I’m a bad man, but I’m the champ, and I’m still pretty.”
Jason Crosby
“He inspired me — a fellow Louisvillian, but he came from a very different walk of life — to love myself and to enjoy myself,” Crosby said. “I can’t imagine what that meant to young black boys in his hometown in West Louisville.”
“Talk about empowerment for a people. That gift was lost with his death.”
The interfaith service was one of a number of events in the city honoring the hometown hero who went from being one of the nation’s most polarizing figures to one of its most beloved. Crosby remembered as a teenager watching Ali light the Olympic torch at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta feeling “great pride to be a native of Louisville and to know that young people from this place can rise up to do incredible things.”
“Who is going to carry that torch?” Crosby wondered. “Who is now going to carry that light forward? If someone doesn’t, other voices will creep in and create a different narrative.”
“No one can fill those shoes,” he concluded. “They are too big to fill. No one can replace that heart. It was too strong. No one can replace that voice. It was too magnificent. But we together through events like this, continuing to build relationship with one another, that’s one small way we can continue to fulfill a dream and vision that he pursued and made a reality in this community and beyond. So may we go forth and carry the torch so that his legacy remains a part of our lives and a part of our world.”
Ali’s body returned to Louisville Sunday from Phoenix, where he died days after being hospitalized with a respiratory issue. The immediate family will hold a private ceremony Thursday. Friday morning an imam will lead a Muslim prayer followed by a motorcade and public service at the Yum! Center in downtown Louisville. Tickets for the event ran out quickly, but it will be webcast live by the Muhammad Ali Center starting at 2 p.m.
Scheduled speakers include Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Church, in Louisville and president of Simmons College of Kentucky. Cosby, a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently led his church to affiliate with the Kentucky Baptist Fellowship and launch a partnership with suburban churches and the state Cooperative Baptist Fellowship chapter to increase economic opportunities for African-Americans in West Louisville.