Ali did recant a lot of his hateful speech as he aged. But I still don't regard as some sort of hero after the damage he did to race relations back in the sixties. He lied about his past and things he did. For one thing he never did throw his Olympic medal into the Ohio River like he claimed.
And a lot of his hateful words were ignored by the press which was pretty liberal even back then. He was on record for stating that any person, black or white, who was involved in an interracial marriage should be killed. Total silence from the press.
Wilt Chamberlain didn't think too highly about Ali's intelligence after sitting next to him and conversing with him on a cross country flight. He said if you got him away from boxing or religion, he, Ali, wasn't very bright.
I think Ali was an easily led person. Too bad...he could have been a true American athletic hero. Instead, he went down the wrong path.