An American Original

Country boy. Braggart. Jester. Rebel. Daredevil. Heroic champion athlete. Muhammad Ali symbolizes so much of our unconscious American identity and so much of what it is about us that has universal appeal.

In Ali, who almost always had a white trainer, we see the frontiersman in buckskin learning from the Indians how to best handle the dangers of the woods. In his chanting of doggerel before fights and speaking of himself as "so pretty" and "the greatest," he was heir to the charismatic insolence and humor that have always defined our national bad boys.

Considered laughable when challenging "the big ugly bear" Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in 1964, Ali turned out to be as surprising as the troops who wore rags on their feet and followed George Washington to take down the British Empire and turn the world upside down.

In his trash talking to his opponents, the press and anyone else who would listen, he connected things as seemingly opposite as Davy Crockett's braggadocio and the aggressive posturing of the black streets and locker rooms where he grew up. His startling wit was as exhilarating as those flying pies in American slapstick movies.

At the point when he scandalized the world of sports by talking about race in ways he could not have done as a boy in the South, Ali connected to the runaway slave who came North and joined up to rally people against slavery. When he was used by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam to spout racist rhetoric and promote a homemade version of Islam, he showed his vulnerability to cults, but he later revealed his strengths by walking away. Perhaps Ali's greatest American-rebel moment was when he refused to go into the military service: he rang a chord going all the way back to the Civil War, when some whites refused to defend slavery for slave owners who had no respect for them either.

His achievements as a great athlete, a media figure and a political symbol paved the way to his being selected to light the Olympic torch in 1996 in Atlanta. He had revealed over and over that he had the discipline, courage and elegance vast enough to prove him right when he screamed, "I'm the greatest."

Not only did he take the belt from Liston, he regained his championship by defeating George Foreman in Zaire despite an earlier 3 1/2-year absence from the ring. In Manila in 1975, he and the magnificently noble Joe Frazier fought the greatest heavyweight fight of all time, 14 rounds of explosive leather, pure will and muscle until Frazier's eyes swelled closed and he could not meet the bell.

And finally, in his relationship with the Jewish sportscaster Howard Cosell, Ali realized the ongoing dream of our society--and perhaps of the world--that people of different colors and religious backgrounds can disagree, taunt each other, support each other and at almost every point so purely recognize the humanity of each other that a transcendent friendship can emerge.

Everything he did was big, when he was right, when he was wrong, when he embarrassed us, when he inspired us. That, finally, is why he remains a king of the world.

Essayist Stanley Crouch is the author of the novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome