19 on PBS, follows the arc of a man whose life intersected with many of modern America’s most profound changes - and who was also not as widely revered in his prime as he is now.

“Muhammad Ali,” a four-part documentary series that premieres Sept. Nearly three decades later, Burns his oldest daughter, Sarah and her husband, David McMahon, have stitched together a sweeping portrait of Ali’s impact from more than 40 years of footage and photographs. But it was just without going over and shaking hands, of course, not asking for an autograph or anything like that.”īy that point, Ali was in the clutches of Parkinson’s disease - hence the silence from a man who for many decades couldn’t stop talking: about his own beauty and skill, about how ugly and untalented his opponents were, about the injustice Black people across America had faced for hundreds of years. “This wordless conversation I have the script in my head, I heard his voice in my mind. “There was almost no movement on both of us except that kind of opening, that love that happens when you just feel unashamed and unembarrassed by the persistent gaze,” Burns said recently. The two men stared at each other silently for longer than most strangers would - celebrities or not. Muhammad Ali was sitting in a booth nearby. He ducked into a coffee shop for some hot tea, and after paying, one of the 20th century’s most ardent historians turned from the counter and locked eyes with perhaps its most towering icon. One day in the mid-1990s, Ken Burns had a cold while he was in Los Angeles to raise money for his next documentary.

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