The Lion's Roar

By Alan Doshna

Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903)

The life of Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903), son of a prominent and wealthy Kentucky landowner and slaveholder, was profoundly influenced by two incidents from his youth.

One was the senseless lashing of a black boyhood friend by his father’s foreman after a friendly tussle between “Cash” and the other boy. The other was seeing a beautiful young mulatto slave named Mary dragged away from her family and sold, after being acquitted of the murder of a neighbor who attacked and tried to rape her.

These events, fueled by lessons he saw in the Bible, propelled Cassius Clay into a life-long, often solitary battle against slavery in pre-Civil War America. He would end up sacrificing his family, his personal political ambitions and any semblance of a normal life. Clay freed his own slaves and won election to the Kentucky General Assembly where he reached out to the white working class who were suffering terrible financial burdens in competing with the free slave labor of the plantation owners.

His newspaper, The True American, lobbied effectively to curtail slave trading activity. His financial support led to the establishment of what would become Berea College, the first interracial college in America. His speeches in New York churches are said to have led to legislation creating almost a thousand schools and universities for the benefit of illiterate former slaves. Clay became the frequent target of assassination attempts and one of his children, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., was poisoned to death.

Through Mary Todd of Kentucky, who had a schoolgirl crush on the 6’ Clay as a young woman, he met Abraham Lincoln, and would become a founder of the Republican party and help draft the Emancipation Proclamation.

Actor and author Richard Kiel

In his later years, he became even more isolated from his family and social class and his weakness for young women led to his marrying a teenage servant whom he later divorced. At 92 years old, he overcame four men who broke into his mansion to rob and likely murder him. His books and writings were burned by vengeful white aristocrats and even some of his own family members.

Actor and author Richard Kiel, in Kentucky Lion: The True Story of Cassius Clay recalls how the boxer Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammed Ali, was named after Cash Clay. “Some say that Ali’s great grand-father was one of the slaves freed by Clay, long before the 13th Amendment freed all the slaves” (page 295).