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.
“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.
“It’s been in Ohio as early as the mid-1850s at least, brought in as an ornamental plant because of its unique foliage and white flowers,” Gardner said. “It was actually planted in people’s landscaping, and it has been spreading.”
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?”