In 1960, a group of local businessmen in Louisville, Kentucky, backed amateur boxer Cassius Clay, protecting him from the underworld of boxing. Three days later he would win his first professional fight, and later changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
The group offered Muhammad Ali a $10,000 signing on fee, a guaranteed salary of $4,800, and covered all his expenses, in return for 50% of his fight purse.
One of then group members, William Sol Cutchins, remarked in 1963,
“If anyone had told me a year ago that Cassius would develop into an international figure, I would have said he was smoking marijuana,”
Ali maintained lifelong friendships with many of the members. They helped him try to find a way to avoid the Vietnam draft while protecting his public image. And when group member Faversham had a severe heart attack, Ali drove from Chicago, through the night, to visit him in a Louisville hospital.