"Muhammad Ali was much more than a boxer — and that's something, considering he was The Greatest of all time. But strikingly, Ali's most valuable contributions to American culture didn't occur inside the ring but outside of it. He was a heavyweight champion of civil liberties and for civil rights, who sacrificed his boxing title for conscientiously objecting to the Vietnam War and who struggled mightily against white supremacy inside and outside of the United States. He epitomized the principled resistance of the '60s, when many Americans from all walks of life worked to make this nation a more perfect union where freedom and equality weren't aspirational but lived reality. Muhammad Ali, the man, is dead. But Muhammad Ali, the symbol, will live on as an example of how to live a life of dignity in pursuit of justice, no matter the consequences."
Three decades later, Ali was the first recipient of the ACLU Muhammad Ali Champion of Liberty Award for Heavyweights in the Arts, Business, Science and Sports for a life lived championing the ideals reflected in the Bill of Rights.