Maryum Ali, Muhammad Ali’s oldest daughter, said she knew her father was famous from the time she could walk and talk, but it wasn’t until she was a teenager that she understood the impact her dad had on the world.
During a past interview with CNN’s Jason Carroll, Maryum Ali described an incident at a diner when a man came up to her father and denounced his KKK upbringing, because he new Muhammad Ali was a great man.
“I love you and you’re a black man, and you’re an exceptional man. And I knew black people weren’t inferior because of you,” the man told her father.
Maryum Ali said she was about 13 or 14 at the time and the moment left a big impression.
“That was the moment that I really understood what my father meant to people,” Maryum Ali said.
Although she said her father understood and earned his place in history, during some of his more humble moments, he still sometimes asked her, “Will they remember me?”
