Muhammad Ali

  • Family History

    Family History

    Since this story first aired, the site of freedom seeker’s Archer Alexander’s burial has been listed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom….

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  • UNDERGROUND

    UNDERGROUND

    A short YouTube video shares Archer Alexander’s historic run for freedom on the Underground Railroad…

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  • Juneteenth is a celebration of Freedom

    Look closely at the look on Archer Alexander’s face. Have you seen this memorial before? It was dedicated in 1876, with over 25,000 black people attending and its original name is the Freedom Memorial. It was entirely paid for by thousands of formerly enslaved black people.

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  • LOUISA

    LOUISA

    …and I send yourself my best Love, I am your affectionate wife, wrote Louisa Alexander to her husband Archer Alexander in November 16, 1863

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  • MUHAMMAD ALI’S GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDFATHER

    Archer Alexander is the great-great-great grandfather of Muhammad Ali.

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  • Cassius Clay

    Cassius Clay

    Muhammad Ali’s great-great-great grandfather Archer Alexander can be seen today on the controversial Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., that was dedicated to Lincoln by the formerly enslaved in 1876. Why? Well that’s another story…

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  • A Woman in the Shadow

    A Woman in the Shadow

    Louisa was born around 1810 to a woman enslaved by John McCluer, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian elder in Rockbridge County, Virginia, who was also her father. When McCluer’s daughter Nancy married James Alexander in 1820, Louisa would meet Alexander’s enslaved man named Archer Alexander. Louisa and Archer would marry …

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  • Free At Last

    Free At Last

    After a life of enslavement, on September 24th, 1863, Archer Alexander was free at last! Nine months earlier, the freedom seeker had made a run for freedom that had nearly cost him his life. In January, Archer was visiting his wife Louisa at Naylor’s Store, where she was enslaved, when he overheard his owner and…

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  • Muhammad Ali’s Ancestor was once in St. Louis Slave Pen

    In March of 1863, Muhammad Ali’s ancestor Archer Alexander was brutally beaten and thrown in the St. Louis slave pens, to be sold south.

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  • Save the Emancipation Memorial in DC

    It is said that those that do not know their history, are doomed to repeat it. Let us all rise up, by learning the truth of our history. Our ancestors, fought side by side to put an end to slavery. There are those of us that are willing to stand side by side, to once…

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  • The Genealogy of a Slave

    The search for that special slave known as Archer Alexander has begun and needs to be found. Only then can that “true” story, as Keith Alexander calls it, be really known. Not easy when you are trying to find the genealogy of a slave. This is what is known as thorough and exhaustive research, for…

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