KUED Programs

"MUHAMMAD ALI: MADE IN MIAMI" explores the critical role that Miami played in the evolution of one of the significant cultural figures of our time: Muhammad Ali (nee Cassius Clay). The film chronicles Cassius Clay's arrival in Miami in the fall of 1960 (fresh from earning a gold medal in the Rome Olympics), his life in Overtown -- a neighborhood that was considered "Harlem South" and a vibrant center of black entertainment and commerce -- and his affiliation with the famed Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach. Over the course of the next few years -- coinciding with the height of the national civil rights movement -- Clay evolved both professionally and politically, piling up victories in the ring and adopting the black separatist teachings of the Nation of Islam. As "MUHAMMAD ALI: MADE IN MIAMI" makes clear, it was in this period that Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali.