Was Ali right to ditch Clay?
QUESTION What is known of the original Cassius Clay, who Muhammad Ali thought was a slave owner but was, in fact, an abolitionist?
MuhaMMad ali was originally named after his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. In the early days of his boxing career, he would say: ‘don’t you think it’s a beautiful name?’
In 1964, he joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad ali, renouncing Cassius Marcellus Clay as ‘a slave name’. This did not meet with the approval of his father, who said his son was ‘trying to rub that name out, and I’m trying to make it strong’.
In his autobiography, The Greatest, My Own Story, ali said: ‘If slaveholder Clay’s blood came into our veins along with the name, it came by rape and defilement.’
as for the abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay, ali wrote: ‘he may have gotten rid of his slaves, but held on to white supremacy.’
Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903), nicknamed Cash, was the son of Kentucky Revolutionary War veteran, politician and slave- owner General Green Clay. While at Yale College, a speech by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison had a profound influence on him.
Clay entered the Kentucky legislature in 1835 but was ousted in 1840 for his abolitionist stance. In 1845, he proclaimed himself to be the first to ‘ever beard the monster in his den’ when he founded True american, an anti-slavery newspaper.
understanding the risks, he fireproofed his print works in Lexington, Kentucky, positioned two cannon at the door and hung rifles on the wall. Following a number of attacks, he was forced to move to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then to Louisville, Kentucky, where the paper was renamed The Examiner.
defenders of Muhammad ali’s name change have pointed out that Clay inherited his father’s slaves in 1828 but did not emancipate them until 1844. This has led some to question his abolitionist credentials. however, at that time it was difficult d to free slaves. Some states st made it illegal and while this was not the case in n Kentucky, there was the r requirement that a freed s slave must immediately leave the st state, leaving their family behind. Clay paid his slaves a wage and treated them well.
President Lincoln made Clay his Minister to the Russian court at St Petersburg on March 28, 1861. The Civil War started before he departed and, as there were no Federal troops in Washington, Clay organised 300 volunteers to protect the White house and u.S. Naval Yard from a possible Confederate attack. In Russia, he encouraged Tsar alexander II’s emancipation of 23 million serfs.
Clay died in 1903. Nine years later, herman heaton Clay, a descendant of african-american slaves, named his son in his honour.
Matthew Appleton, Liverpool.
QUESTION Why do some words have two past tense forms (eg leaped/leapt)?
MaNY words in English have more than one spelling. as well as leaped/leapt, past tense conjugations of the same verb include bereaved/bereft, burned/burnt, dreamed/dreamt, dwelled/dwelt, kneeled/ knelt, learned/ learnt, smelled/ smelt, spelled/spelt, spilled/spilt and spoiled/spoilt.
Linguists describe the difference as that between strong and weak verbs, a legacy of the English language’s Germanic origins.
Strong verbs are those whose past tense and participle are derived by altering the vowel of the root, for example ‘sing/sang/sung’. Weak verbs simply add ‘ed’ to the infinitive root.
To simplify the language, some have been dispensed with. ‘Sleeped’ isn’t an acceptable alternative to ‘slept’. ‘Leapt’ and ‘leaped’ are acceptable past tense and past participial forms of the verb leap.
having two forms is useful for poets and songwriters. I dreamed a dream, the stand-out song from the musical Les Miserables, would not work as I dreamt a dream. Maggie Kennedy, Alnwick, Northumberland.
QUESTION If you pour a glass of water into the middle of the Pacific, is it true that a sample collected from any shore the next day contains 10,000 molecules from the original glass?
ThERE is an element of truth underlying this question but you would need to wait a millennium or three, not a day. This is to allow enough time for ocean waters to mix thoroughly.
Where the question is on the right track lies in supposing there could be 10,000 times as many molecules in a litre of water as there are litres in the Pacific.
here’s how the correct numbers may be found and compared: The Pacific covers an area of 161.8 million square kilometres at an average depth of 4.28 kilometres. That’s a volume of 693 million cubic kilometres which, converted to litres, is 693 followed by 18 zeros (there are one million million litres in a cubic kilometre). This implies an awfully high degree of dilution will take place.
Each 18g of pure water contains a number of molecules that, in round figures, is 6,022 followed by 20 zeros. This is known to chemists as avogadro’s Number, and is normally expressed as 6.022×1023. Therefore, a litre of water, which is 1,000g, will contain a number of molecules equal to 3,346 followed by 22 zeros.
Clearly, there are more molecules in the original litre of water than there are litres in the Pacific Ocean. Performing the division shows eventually there will be 48,300 molecules from the original litre in each litre of the Pacific, five times more than is postulated in the question.
David Bradford, Belmonte, Portugal.
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