“Cassius Clay is my slave name.”

It’s hard to explain to kids nowadays how momentous it was in 1964 when the American boxer from Kentucky declared his name is Muhammad Ali.

It’s hard to explain what it meant when Muhammad Ali, in 1967, refused to go to Vietnam, saying, “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father…. How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

It’s hard to explain how astonishing it was when Ali, exonerated by the Supreme Court in 1971, came back to the ring and became champion again in 1974, at age 32.

But kids nowadays will hear the joy in Ali’s rhymes:

“I’ve done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”

Kids will look at YouTube videos of his fights and see the artistry and toughness. Kids will hear of his passing, and see things on social media that explain how amazing he was.

But it’s up to us who were there, who remember for reals, to try to explain the enormity of who he was.

Let’s do that.