Odessa Clay - Early Life

Early Life

She was born in Hopkins County, Kentucky, one of six children of John Lewis Grady and Birdie B. Morehead. Her paternal grandfather was a white Irishman named Abe Grady, who emigrated to the United States from Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, soon after the Civil War and married a daughter of Lewis and Amanda J. "Mandy" Walker of Todd County, Kentucky. Her maternal grandfather, Tom Morehead, was the son of a white Morehead and a slave named Dinah. Morehead served in the 122nd USCT.

Odessa Clay grew up in a segregated society in which African Americans were denied many of the rights and privileges of white Americans. African Americans faced discrimination in finding jobs. Clay's parents separated when she was young, and her mother worked as a domestic, taking care of the household chores and the young children of a white family. Clay was raised partly by her aunt. When she became an adolescent, she dropped out of school and also found work as a domestic. Then, when she was sixteen years old, she met twenty-year-old Cassius, whom everyone referred to as "Cash". They soon married and settled into their own house in Louisville, Kentucky. The Clays' marriage was troubled. Ali told boxing promoters, "She's afraid of him".