Louis, Joe (1914–1981), professional boxer. “We gon do our part, and we will win, because we are on God's side,” Joe Louis intoned on 10 March 1942 at a dinner/show sponsored by the Navy Relief Society. In seven years, Louis had transformed himself in the eyes of white America from a sullen, unlettered, somewhat threatening black boy from the ghetto of Detroit to a transcendent symbol of patriotism and democratic nationalism, something more than a mere sports hero or champion boxer, although this transformation would not have been possible had he not become a champion athlete who dwarfed the competitors of his era. Born in Alabama on 13 May 1914, Joseph Louis Barrow migrated with his family to Detroit in 1926. He took to boxing as a teenager, had a successful amateur career, and turned professional in 1934. He won the heavyweight title in 1937 and successfully defended it twenty-five times before retiring for the first time in 1949. Louis became the most talked about black figure in American popular culture during the depression and World War II. He was virtually a nationalist hero among blacks because his opponents were white. His fights with Primo Carnera, an Italian, in 1935, on the eve of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, and his 1938 rematch against Max Schmeling, the German Nazi who defeated him two years earlier (Louis's only defeat until he returned to boxing after his 1949 retirement), were highly symbolic affairs politically, the latter being the most talked about and anticipated sporting event in American history at that time. Louis was viewed with considerable suspicion by white America when he emerged, largely because it was feared at first that he might be another Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion who broke a long-standing color line when he defeated Tommy Burns for the title in 1908. Breaking a color barrier that had existed in heavyweight championship fights since Johnson's defeat, Louis deliberately and unerringly convinced the white public that he was not in any way like Jack Johnson and became, by the time of America's entry into World War II, one of the most beloved athletic figures ever produced in America. He did this by being generous to his white opponents, avoiding white women publicly, and being demonstrably loyal to his country. He was a striking contrast to such black public figures as Stepin Fetchit, Willie Best, and even Louis Armstrong in not seeming, in any way, to pander to whites as “the good, grinning darky.” Louis has been written about or mentioned in works by Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Chester Himes, Ernest J. Gaines, Amiri Baraka, and many others, and has figured symbolically in numerous books and poems. He is largely seen as an icon of an ur-black nationalism and a heroic figure on the order of John Henry. Louis died in Las Vegas in 1981. The most revealing and honest of Joe Louis's autobiographies is Joe Louis: My Life, coauthored with Edna and Art Rust, Jr., and published in 1981.

Gerald Early

American boxer Joe Louis (1914-1981) was world heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1948. He defended his title 20 times in four years.

Joe Louis, born on May 13, 1914, was the son of an Alabama sharecropper. Joe was close to his large family, particularly to his mother, from whom he inherited a deep religious sentiment. His stepfather moved the family to Detroit in 1926.

As a teen-ager, Joe was the best boxer of his group. He won the National Light Heavyweight Amateur Crown of the Golden Gloves in 1933. As a 19-year-old light heavyweight, Louis whipped everything in front of him. He received his ring name from one of his managers, John Roxborough, who found the name Joe Louis Barrow too long. Jack Blackburn, a very knowledgeable boxing man, was Louis's trainer.

Before he became champion, Louis was beaten once, by Max Schmeling in 1936. The following year he defeated Jim Braddock for the championship. In 1938 Louis met Schmeling again and knocked him out in the first two minutes of the first round. Louis fought boxers like Billy Conn, Tony Galento, Rocky Marciano, and "Jersey Joe" Walcott. He won 19 other title fights. During World War II Louis was drafted, served faithfully, and fought two bouts for Army and Navy Relief.

The curse of many victories in a short period of time was the accumulation of a heavy tax burden. For example, Louis won $349, 228 for his victory over Schmeling and $591, 117 for beating Conn. In his entire ring career he earned $4, 677, 992. But his Federal income taxes were $1, 199, 000; furthermore, when penalties were assessed, taxes became astronomical. In fact, the tax assessors were so strict that they attached $66, 000 in trust funds for Louis's children.

Another source of trouble for Louis was his partnership in a public relations firm. In the early 1960s this firm entered into a contract with Cuba for $250, 000 to promote tourism. Although this was not illegal, it was considered in poor taste to deal with a country with whom the United States did not maintain diplomatic relations. Louis's other business ventures included the Joe Louis Food Franchise, a chain of food shops he opened in 1969 with his erstwhile ring rival Billy Conn. The former champ also served as a celebrity greeter at the Caesar's Palace Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Unfortunately, drugs took a toll on the once indomitable champion in his final years. In 1969, he was hospitalized after collapsing on a New York City street. While the incident was at first credited to "physical breakdown, " Louis later admitted to cocaine use and fears of a plot against his life. The following year, Louis spent five months in the hospital suffering from paranoid delusions. Strokes and heart ailments caused his condition to deteriorate further. He had surgery to correct an aortic aneurysm in 1977 and was thereafter confined to a wheelchair.

Despite failing health, Louis still found time to attend major boxing events. On April 12, 1981, he sat ringside at the Larry Holmes/Trevor Berbick heavyweight championship bout at Caesar's Palace. Hours after the fight, Louis went into cardiac arrest and died at the age of 66.

Louis married Marva Trotter and had two children by her; they were twice divorced. His third marriage, to Rose Morgan, was annulled. He later married Martha Jefferson of Los Angeles. In 1994, the bronzed boxing glove that Louis used to defeat Max Schmeling was donated to the city of Detroit by the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Dubbed "The Glove That Floored Nazi Germany, " it was enshrined in a plexiglass case at the city's Cobo Center, a monument to its wielder's enduring legacy.

Further Reading

Louis's autobiography is My Life Story (1947). His place in sports history is discussed in Nat Fleischer, The Heavyweight Championship: An Informal History of Heavyweight Boxing from 1719 to the Present Day (1949; rev. ed. 1961), and in Lester Bromberg, Boxing's Unforgettable Fights (1962). Louis and other African-American athletes are considered in a survey of the reality of integration in American sports, Jack Olsen, The Black Athlete: A Shameful Story (1968). Chris Mead, Champion (1985) is a full account of the boxer's eventful life. An assessment of Luis's influence within the context of African-American sports history is contained in Arthur Ashe, A Hard Road To Glory (1988).

boxer

Personal Information

Born Joseph Louis Barrow, May 13, 1914, in Lexington, AL; died of cardiac arrest, April 12, 1981, in Las Vegas, NV; son of Munn (a sharecropper) and Lily Barrow; married Marva Trotter, 1935 (divorced); married second wife, 1949 (divorced); married Rose Morgan, 1955 (marriage annulled); married Martha Jefferson, 1959; children: (both with Trotter) Jacqueline, Joe Jr.
Military/Wartime Service: Served in the U.S. Army, 1942-45.

Career

Boxer. Worked odd jobs, hauling ice blocks, sparring at a local gym, and pushing truck bodies at the Briggs Automobile Factory in Detroit, MI, all while a teenager. Won 50 of 59 bouts as an amateur boxer; turned professional, 1934. Youngest boxer (aged 23) of his time to become heavyweight champion, 1937; held heavyweight title longer than any other boxer; defended title 25 times and retired without a defeat as champion; finished professional career with a record of 68-3, with 54 knockouts. Brief stint as a professional wrestler and co-owner of food franchise in the 1960s. Official greeter at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, NV, 1970s.

Life's Work

Joe Louis is widely regarded as the greatest fighter in the history of boxing, and he was the most popular black athlete of his time. Known as the "Brown Bomber," Louis was heavyweight champion of the world for nearly 12 years and was never defeated during his reign. He defended his title 25 times, a total greater than the eight heavyweight champions before him combined. Of those defenses, 21 were won by knockout.

Louis possessed neither great speed of foot nor craftiness in the ring. What he did wield, however, were two fists that moved with jackhammer quickness and landed with incredible power. He also wore a deadpan expression while fighting that never changed as he dispatched his opponents. Louis's 68 victories as a professional boxer (he lost only three times) included 54 knockouts, and five of his knockouts occurred in the first round.

Joseph Louis Barrow's starting point on his road to fame could hardly have been more humble. He was born in a sharecropper's shack in Lexington, Alabama, one of eight children. His father, Munn, was committed to a mental institution when Louis was two. Two years later the family was told that Munn had died, although in 1938 it was discovered that he was still alive. When Louis was seven, his mother, Lily, married Patrick Brooks, a widower with five children of his own.

Money was scarce in Louis's extended family. The children slept three to a bed, and young Joe walked barefoot to school. In search of jobs in the growing automobile industry, the family moved to Detroit. Louis's inadequate schooling down South landed him in a class with much younger children up North. His resulting embarrassment made him withdraw, and he developed a stammer. For many years he kept to himself and talked little.

After teachers told Louis's parents that their son would have to make a living with his hands--a prophetic statement, to be sure--he attended Bronson Trade School to study carpentry. When his stepfather was put out of work, Louis helped out with odd jobs. His hauling of ice blocks for an ice-wagon driver gave him massive shoulder muscles, which he put to work as a sparring partner at a local gym. He quit school at age 17, then got a job pushing truck bodies at the Briggs Automobile Factory for a dollar a day as he continued honing his boxing skills. As quoted by James Cox in the Smithsonian, Louis's son, Joe Jr., recalled: "My aunts and uncles told me they were absolutely flabbergasted when he [Joe Louis] became a boxer because he was so quiet and peaceful. He was the most tranquil kid on the block."

Louis's boxing talent developed rapidly and made him a winner in 50 of 59 amateur bouts, with 43 knockouts. In 1933 he won the National light-heavyweight Golden Gloves crown, then won the light-heavyweight finals in the National Amateur Athletic Union (NAAU) tournament the next year. Louis turned professional in 1934 under the management of John Roxborough, a black Detroit businessman and king of the illegal numbers rackets in the city's black neighborhoods, and Julian Black, a black Chicago-based mortician who was also involved in illegal gambling. Roxborough dropped the Barrow from Louis's name because he thought Joe Louis Barrow was too long for the pro.

Meanwhile, Julian Black hired Jack Blackburn, a top Midwest trainer with whom Louis developed a close friendship. Seeing that Louis had no speed, Blackburn taught him the flat-footed shuffle that became a Louis trademark. Moving around the ring was so foreign to Louis that in training he practiced stepping to diagrams drawn on the ring floor, like someone learning the cha-cha.

The status of blacks in boxing had been dealt a severe blow by the controversial Jack Johnson, who held the world heavyweight title from 1908 to 1915. Johnson invited the wrath of whites by chattering away to opponents in the ring and gloating after he knocked them down. At the time, the white public was also outraged by his romancing of white women in public. Due to this sensitivity to the Johnson legacy, Louis felt obligated to set an exemplary standard and live down every black stereotype. His managers gave him strict instructions on how to act in public, insisting that he never drink, smoke, or be seen alone with a white woman. He was also told never to exult when he was victorious over white opponents and never to grin or show any emotion in front of the press.

The word was spread that Louis was a shy man who was loyal to his country, didn't rock the boat, and read the Bible every night. Actually, the image was only partially true. Although he was modest, generous, and didn't drink or smoke, Louis allegedly liked the night life, spent money recklessly, and had romantic liaisons with both black and white women. However, he was discreet in these activities and received no bad publicity.

During his string of 22 wins without a loss in his first year as a pro, Louis was dubbed the "Brown Bomber of Detroit." U.S. media coverage during the 1930s revealed a racist streak that permeated society. Journalists of that time often nicknamed African Americans with a reference to color or a black stereotype, and Louis was called everything from "Shufflin' Joe" to the "coffee-colored kayo king." Many articles discussed the fighter as if he were an animal from the African jungle. Cartoonists depicted him with huge lips, and he was quoted in an exaggerated "Uncle Remus" dialect.

Fight promoter Mike Jacobs put the national spotlight on Louis by arranging a bout for him against former champion Primo Carnera at Yankee Stadium. Louis sent Carnera to the floor in the sixth round in 1934, then dropped former champion Max Baer in 1935. Mere hours before the Baer bout, the fighter married Marva Trotter, a 19-year-old Chicago stenographer. At age 21, Joe Louis was the most famous African American in the United States.

One of the most well-known bouts in boxing history was Louis's first fight against the German Max Schmeling in 1936. Schmeling knocked out Louis, even though the "Brown Bomber" was a 10-to-1 favorite. The victory was trumpeted by Adolf Hitler's Nazis as proof of Aryan superiority over blacks. Racism reared its ugly head in the States, too, as hundreds of Americans sent congratulatory telegrams to Schmeling. Many sportswriters, especially those in the South, reported that Louis was finished, nothing but a flash in the pan. Embarrassed and angered by the defeat, Louis whipped himself into better shape and won seven bouts over the next eight months. Then, on June 22, 1937, he knocked out heavyweight champion James J. Braddock and became the new world champion. Just 23 years old, Louis had become the youngest man ever to hold the heavyweight crown.

Meanwhile, a second bout with Schmeling was scheduled for 1938. With the Nazi menace looming more ominously on the international horizon, this grudge match became a symbol of good versus evil. Cox wrote in the Smithsonian that "Louis-Schmeling II was no longer just a championship boxing match. It was a prelude to World War II." President Roosevelt actually met with Louis and told him how vital it was to triumph this time. The "Bomber" was ready. Overwhelmed from the opening bell, Schmeling was knocked out by his swarming opponent in the first round.

As Louis's popularity soared in the 1930s, he became an important model for the black struggle against white injustice. Chris Mead wrote in Champion: "To downtrodden blacks, Louis came to be a hero of fierce revolutionary proportions--a black man who trounced white men in hand-to-hand combat before a national audience." Some thought that Louis was an "Uncle Tom" and not involved enough in the fight for equality for people of color, but the champion contributed generously to many black causes. He also helped integrate football and baseball teams in army camps while serving in the military and refused to sit in segregated camp buses.

While still winning in the ring, Louis ran into personal problems that he couldn't punch out of his life. His marriage began failing, and he lost thousands of dollars betting on the golf course. Throughout his career, he was continually buying expensive gifts for friends and family and supporting a large entourage of freeloaders. To make matters worse, his managers took 50 percent of his winnings, while all training expenses were taken out of Louis's share. Louis didn't clear up his debts with the government until the mid-1960s.

In 1941 Roxborough, still managing Louis, was put in jail for two-and-a-half years for running his numbers operation. Then in 1942, Louis's beloved trainer Blackburn died of heart disease. As he absorbed these blows, Louis was blindsided by the government's demand for $117,000 in back taxes. To escape this financial hole, he began his so-called "bum-of-the-month" campaign. From December of 1940 through 1941, he took on one challenger every month. No heavyweight champion had ever undergone such a punishing schedule. The going wasn't entirely easy, as Louis almost lost to Billy Conn in a tough fight at the Polo Grounds. When journalists told Louis before the fight that Conn was too quick for him, Louis uttered his famous line, "He can run but he can't hide."

After he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, Louis staged 96 boxing exhibitions for his fellow soldiers. But he was in even worse financial shape after his discharge. When he announced his retirement and gave up his title on March 1, 1949, a few months before turning 35, he owed income taxes of well over $1 million that were compounded by penalties and interest. This financial distress brought Louis back into the ring for an attempted comeback in the early 1950s, but age had finally caught up with him. Consecutive losses to Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano closed the book on his boxing career. He tried pro wrestling, then got involved in sports and commercial promotions. In 1969 Louis and his former victim Billy Conn set up the Joe Louis Food Franchise Corporation in an attempt to operate an interracial chain of food shops. During his last years he was an official "greeter" at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Louis collapsed on a Manhattan street in 1969 and was hospitalized for a "physical breakdown." Later he said that the collapse resulted from cocaine use and that he had been plagued by fears of a murder plot against him. In 1970 the former champ was hospitalized for five months due to paranoid delusions. His health worsening, Louis suffered a number of strokes and heart problems in his final decade. He was confined to a wheelchair in 1977 following surgery to correct an aortic aneurysm. Death from cardiac arrest came to him in 1981 at the age of 66, mere hours after he attended the heavyweight championship fight between Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick at Caesar's Palace.

Joe Louis remains among the best loved and most talented boxers in the history of the sport. His popularity helped pave the way toward breaking the color barrier in other sports as well--including Jackie Robinson's legendary entry into major league baseball. As Arthur Ashe wrote in A Hard Road to Glory, "Much of the goodwill for black athletes generated in the dozen years leading to the end of the war was due to the positive image that Louis had created."

Awards

Golden Gloves light-heavyweight champion of Detroit, 1933; National Amateur Athletic Union (NAAU) light-heavyweight champion, 1934; heavyweight champion of the world, 1937-49; elected to boxing's Hall of Fame, 1954; honored with a U.S. postage stamp honoring the 55th anniversary of his victorious rematch with Max Schmeling, June 22, 1993.

Further Reading

Books

• Ashe, Arthur R., Jr., A Hard Road to Glory, Warner, 1988, pp. 11-18.
• Bromberg, Lester, Boxing's Unforgettable Fights, Ronald Press, 1962.
• Fleischer, Nat, The Heavyweight Championship: An Informal History of Heavyweight Boxing from 1719 to the Present Day, Putnam, 1949, revised, 1961.
• Louis, Joe, My Life Story, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1947.
• McGowen, Deane, essay in The New York Times Book of Sports Legends, edited by Joseph J. Vecchione, Times Books, 1991, pp. 171-183.
• Mead, Chris, Champion, Scribners, 1985.
• Nagler, Barney, Brown Bomber, World Pub., 1972.

Periodicals

• Life, June 17, 1940, pp. 48-50.
• Smithsonian, November 1988, pp. 170-196.
• Sports Illustrated, September 16, 1985, pp. 82-100.
• Time, November 25, 1985, pp. 117-118.

— Ed Decker

For more information on Joe Louis, visit Britannica.com.

(1914-1981), boxer. The son of Alabama sharecroppers, Joe Louis, during his reign as heavyweight champion of the world from 1937 to 1949, stood as a shining symbol of mythical and real American traits like racial unity, national strength, and unlimited opportunity. Through a rare combination of shattering events, an acceptable demeanor, expert handling, sympathetic press coverage, great pugilistic talent, the American obsession with sports, and the peculiar symbolism of the heavyweight boxing champion, Louis became the most popular black in America and one of the most popular of all Americans.

Although Louis established a phenomenal fistic record--he successfully defended his championship twenty-five times in twelve years (four of which were spent in the army)--what helped immortalize him was the context in which his fights took place. In his 1935 defeat of the giant former heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, who was viewed as Benito Mussolini's emissary, Louis represented blacks who identified with "little" Ethiopia in its struggle against the bullying Italian aggressor. By becoming the first black to hold the heavyweight championship in twenty-two years with his victory over James J. Braddock in 1937, Louis lifted the spirits of the black masses in the midst of the Great Depression. At the same time he gained white acceptance because of his "humility" and willingness to avoid the provocative behavior of the previous black champion, Jack Johnson, who had antagonized white America by not "knowing his place." By "destroying" German Max Schmeling in their second encounter in 1938, as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to power, Louis provided some assurance that America's best could beat the best that Germany had to offer. Louis continued to win white approval thereafter by joining the army, although he never saw combat.

Despite his remarkable achievements and tremendous popularity, Louis may be as important for what he did not accomplish as for what he did. Like many heroes he has been credited for much that he did not do. Commentators, for example, have overstated his impact on racist attitudes and practices. There is little evidence that Louis's success or that of other black athletes translated into a general acceptance of blacks or recommended them for roles outside sport.

Where Louis did change attitudes was among blacks. His position at the top of his sport, his celebrity status, and his public image helped bolster the confidence of a people whose heroes were rarely accorded white attention or respect. In the difficult time of war his decision to cooperate with and become a symbol of a government that was far from fair to him and his people offered a constructive, albeit imperfect, course of action.

In the end, Joe Louis was another edition of the American myth of the self-made man--that anyone who is industrious, patriotic, and moral can rise from the very bottom to the top of society where wealth, power, and fame await him. As with Louis, not all self-made men are as they appear to be. Not only did he have a lot of help; his wealth was more illusory than real.

For all his greatness as a boxer and a symbol, Louis, in reality, was simply human. Two words best describe his personal life, excessive and irresponsible. Louis lived far beyond his means, supported far too many charities, and lost a small fortune to golf hustlers alone. Worse was his notorious penchant for adultery, which cost him a loyal and loving wife. At the end of his boxing career, Louis had neither money nor family and faced an insurmountable federal tax debt, which the irs forgave after considerable legal and political pressure. In his twilight years Louis struggled with a drug problem and served as a "greeter" at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, where he shook hands with common folk, gambled with house money to lure others, and played golf with high rollers before failing health incapacitated him. Yet, Louis's interment at Arlington National Cemetery indicates his place in myth and history; for, right or wrong, this is the public record on which society judges its heroes.

Bibliography:

Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977); Chris Mead, Champion-Joe Louis: Black Hero in White America (1985); Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (1988).

Author:

Jeffrey T. Sammons

See also Spectator Sports.

(Joseph Louis Barrow) (lū'ĭs), 1914–81, American boxer, b. Lafayette, Ala. His father, a sharecropper, died when Louis was four years old, and in 1926 his stepfather took the family to Detroit, where Louis became interested in boxing. At 18 he began an amateur career in the ring. After winning (1934) the National Amateur Athletic Union light heavyweight title, Louis turned professional. In a meteoric rise, Louis—with magnificent physique, lightning punches, and stolid calmness—fought his way from the ranks of beginners to become (1937) the world heavyweight champion by knocking out James J. Braddock in the eighth round at Chicago. In 1938 he knocked out Max Schmeling—who had been the only man ever to defeat Louis (by a 12-round knockout in 1936) in professional boxing—in the first round in New York City. By the time he announced his retirement from the ring in 1949, Louis, often called the “Brown Bomber” by his admirers, had won 60 bouts, 51 by knockouts, and defended his title a record 25 times, scoring 21 knockouts. Louis came out of retirement in 1950, lost a decision to Ezzard Charles, and was knocked out (1951) by Rocky Marciano, after which he retired. In 71 professional bouts Louis was defeated only three times.

Bibliography

See his autobiographies (1947, 1978); biographies by C. Mead (1985) and R. Bak (1996); L. A. Erenberg, The Greatest Fight of Our Generation: Louis vs. Schmeling (2005); D. Margolick, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink (2005).

An African-American boxer of the twentieth century, who held the world championship in the heavyweight class from 1937 to 1949.

Louis was called the “Brown Bomber” and was a source of racial pride for America's blacks.

Quotes:

"Everybody wants to go heaven, but nobody wants to die."

"Every man's got to figure to get beat sometime."

"He can run but he can't hide."

"He can run. But he cant hide."