'From rejected to revered': thousands pay respects to Muhammad Ali

The two-day remembrance began on Thursday with a traditional Islamic prayer service at the Freedom Hall arena. Before he died last week at 74, Ali himself had requested that the service be open to all. So alongside Ali’s famous friends such as Sugar Ray Leonard, Lennox Lewis, Don King and others, more than 14,000 admirers attended.

A black Cadillac hearse, with a police escort, brought Ali’s body to the service with his widow, children, and two ex-wives.

Imam Zaid Shakir, a leading US Muslim scholar, greeted the crowd with an introduction that encompassed Ali’s open worldview: "We welcome all of you here today. We welcome the Muslims, we welcome the members of other faith communities, we welcome the law enforcement community,” he said.

"We welcome our sisters, our elders, our youngsters. All were beloved to Muhammad Ali.”

After the service the civil rights campaigner and former presidential candidate the Rev Jesse Jackson went to the Muhammad Ali Center, where a memorial sprang up in the hours after Ali’s death and has since grown into a mountain of flowers, photos, cards and drawings.

Jackson kneeled to sign a banner proclaiming Ali "the Greatest Forever”.

Ali’s most impressive accomplishment, Jackson said, was to exercise "the proper use of fame.”

"He turned scars into stars. Instead of getting bitter, he got better,” Jackson said. The minister grew up in South Carolina, the son of a professional boxer, and said Ali had always inspired him – especially his penchant for rhythm and rhyme.

"You’ve got to be southern to talk that stuff,” Jackson said, smiling.

As a young man Jackson was an aide to Martin Luther King, Jr, and he recalled 4 April 1967, when King was in a New York City hotel preparing to give a famous speech against the Vietnam war, "and in walked Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali”. It was a bold statement for Ali, who was then at the pinnacle of his athletic career.

Just a few days later Ali would upend that career, and much of the world’s opinion, when he refused to be drafted by the US Army.

"But he went from being reviled and rejected to being revered,” Jackson said.

On Friday Ali’s main public memorial will take place at the KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville. Organizers said on Thursday they expected the sports arena – named after the KFC restaurant chain and its parent company – to be fully packed, with at least 15,000 attendees. The entire floor of the arena, they said, would be reserved for celebrities and other notable people from Ali’s life.

Speakers at Friday’s service will range from former president Bill Clinton to comedian Billy Crystal. Some high-profile foreign leaders – Jordan’s King Abdullah, and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan – were cut from the program at the last moment, to make room for two other, as yet unnamed, speakers, according to Ali family spokesman Bob Gunnell.

The US Secret Service is organizing security at the center, and planned to sweep for bombs ahead of the service. Throughout downtown Louisville, police and security vehicles jostled Thursday with tour buses full of fans. The heavy security presence reinforced the sense that Ali’s ability to rile opponents did not end with his death, especially in a time of increased attacks on mosques and Muslims after terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, and during a presidential campaign in which a leading candidate has suggested banning all Muslim immigrants for a time.

Before the service, starting about 9 am local time, Ali’s hearse will lead a procession throughout Louisville that will visit some of the places that bear his name: the Ali Center museum, his childhood home, and the boulevard named for him. The route takes in Broadway, where Cassius Clay, as he was then known, joined a parade celebrating his gold medal when he returned from the 1960 Olympics, to a city that greeted him as a hero, but remained divided on racial lines.

Jesse Jackson harkened back to that victory at the Olympics in Rome, when he talked about the procession. "Last time he took that route he had a gold medal but couldn’t buy a hamburger at diners in downtown Louisville,” he said. "But he used his mastery in the ring to reject the inequality among humanity.”

The funeral service will start about 1pm central time, and will be live-streamed on the Ali Center’s web site.