The Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Restoration Society (CRS) will celebrate athlete activism and the civil rights movement with the unveiling of the eighth Cleveland Civil Rights Trail historical marker—honoring the athletes involved in the groundbreaking 1967 Ali Summit, held in support of then-heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. 

The Summit represented the emergence of Civil Rights activism, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and professional athletes' political involvement nationally and locally.

The public unveiling will take place at Cleveland Browns Stadium’s South Plaza today, Friday, Sept. 8 at 4 p.m.

Expected to be on hand for the events are Cleveland Browns alumni Walter Beach and John Wooten, Civil Rights Trail historians Jim Robenalt and Aaron Fountain, historians and members of the Civil Rights Trail Committee, Cleveland City Council members, and Gerin Veris of the Ohio History Connection, among others. 

The previous seven sites unveiled so far on the Cleveland Civil Rights Trail include Cory United Methodist Church; Cleveland City Hall in honor of Carl Stokes; Glenville High School; the intersection at East 79th Street and Hough Avenue to mark the Hough Uprising; Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church; Olivet Institutional Baptist Church; and a location near the former home of Dorothy and John Pegg in the Ludlow neighborhood of Cleveland and Shaker Heights.  

Before the Ali Summit marker unveiling, the Browns organization will host an invitation-only discussion on the Cleveland Civil Rights Trail: Voices of Change, Leaders Then & Now. 

The Cleveland Civil Rights Trail is supported through a grant from the African American Civil Rights grant program, administered by the National Park Service.