# Joe Louis Joe Louis was the world heavyweight champion for a record 12 years from 1937 to 1949, successfully defending his title 25 times, both records that still stand today. Known as "The Brown Bomber," his 1938 rematch knockout of German fighter Max Schmeling became one of the most politically charged bouts in history, symbolizing American democracy against Nazi fascism. Louis was a pioneering figure for African-American athletes and remains one of boxing's all-time legends. ## Quick Facts - **Born:** May 13, 1914 - **Birthplace:** LaFayette, United States - **Nationality:** American - **Occupation:** Boxing - **Category:** Athletes - **Also Known As:** The Brown Bomber ## Early life Born on May 13, 1914, in rural Chambers County, Alabama—in a ramshackle dwelling on Bell Chapel Road, located about 1 mile (2 kilometres) off State Route 50 and roughly 6 miles (10 kilometres) from LaFayette—Louis was the seventh of eight children of Munroe Barrow and Lillie (Reese) Barrow. He weighed 11 pounds (5 kg) at birth. Both of his parents were children of former slaves, alternating between sharecropping and rental farming. Louis suffered from a speech impediment and spoke very little until about the age of six. Munroe Barrow was committed to a mental institution in 1916 and, as a result, Joe knew very little of his biological father. Around 1920, Louis's mother married Pat Brooks, a local construction contractor, having received word that Munroe Barrow had died while institutionalized (in reality, Munroe Barrow lived until 1938, unaware of his son's fame). In 1926, shaken by a gang of white men in the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family moved to Detroit, Michigan, forming part of the post-World War I Great Migration. Joe's brother worked for Ford Motor Company (where Joe would himself work for a time at the River Rouge Plant) and the family settled into a home at 2700 Catherine (now Madison) Street in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood. Louis attended Bronson Vocational School for a time to learn cabinetmaking. ## Amateur career The Great Depression severely affected the Barrow family, but Joe still made time to work out at a local youth recreation center at 637 Brewster Street in Detroit. His mother attempted to get him interested in playing the violin. He is rumored to have tried to hide his pugilistic ambitions from his mother by carrying his boxing gloves inside his violin case. Louis made his debut in early 1932 at the age of 17. Legend has it that before the fight, the barely literate Louis wrote his name so large that there was no room for his last name, and thus became known as "Joe Louis" for the remainder of his boxing career (more likely, Louis simply omitted his last name to keep his boxing a secret from his mother). After this debut—a loss to future Olympian Johnny Miler—Louis compiled numerous amateur victories, eventually winning the club championship of his Brewster Street recreation center, the home of many aspiring Golden Gloves fighters. In 1933, Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves Novice Division championship against Joe Biskey for the light heavyweight classification. He later lost in the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions. The next year, competing in the Golden Gloves' Open Division, he won the light heavyweight classification, this time also winning the Chicago Tournament of Champions against Joe Bauer. However, a hand injury forced Louis to miss the New York/Chicago Champions' cross-town bout for the ultimate Golden Gloves championship. In April 1934, he followed up his Chicago performance by winning the light heavyweight United States Amateur Champion National AAU tournament in St. Louis, Missouri. By the end of his amateur career, Louis's record was 50–4, with 43 knockouts. ## Professional career Joe Louis had only three losses in his 69 professional fights. He tallied 52 knockouts and held the championship from 1937 to 1949, the longest span of any heavyweight titleholder. After returning from retirement, Louis failed to regain the championship in 1950, and his career ended after he was knocked out by Rocky Marciano in 1951. Early years Louis's amateur performances attracted the interest of professional promoters, and he was soon represented by a black Detroit-area bookmaker named John Roxborough. As Louis explained in his autobiography, Roxborough convinced the young fighter that white managers would have no real interest in seeing a black boxer work his way up to title contention: [Roxborough] told me about the fate of most black fighters, ones with white managers, who wound up burned-out and broke before they reached their prime. The white managers were not interested in the men they were handling but in the money they could make from them. They didn't take the proper time to see that their fighters had a proper training, that they lived comfortably, or ate well, or had some pocket change. Mr. Roxborough was talking about Black Power before it became popular. Roxborough knew a Chicago area boxing promoter named Julian Black who already had a stable of mediocre boxers against which Louis could hone his craft, this time in the heavyweight division. After becoming part of the management team, Black hired fellow Chicago native Jack "Chappy" Blackburn as Louis's trainer. Louis's initial professional fights were all in the Chicago area, his professional debut coming on July 4, 1934, against Jack Kracken in the Bacon Casino on Chicago's south side. Louis earned $59 for knocking out Kracken in the first round. $59 in 1934 is equivalent to $1,148.60 in 2020 dollars. Louis won all 12 of his professional fights that year, 10 by knockout. In September 1934, while promoting a Detroit-area "coming home" bout for Louis against Canadian Alex Borchuk, Roxborough was pressured by members of the Michigan State Boxing Commission to have Louis sign with white management. Roxborough refused and continued advancing Louis's career with bouts against heavyweight contenders Art Sykes and Stanley Poreda. While training for a fight against Lee Ramage, Louis noticed a young female secretary for the black newspaper at the gym. After Ramage was defeated, the secretary, Marva Trotter, was invited to the celebration party at Chicago's Grand Hotel. Trotter later became Louis's first wife in 1935. During this time, Louis also met Truman Gibson, the man who would become his personal lawyer. As a young associate at a law firm hired by Julian Black, Gibson was charged with personally entertaining Louis during the pendency of business deals. Title contention Although Louis's management was finding him bouts against legitimate heavyweight contenders, no path to the title was forthcoming. While professional boxing was not officially segregated, many white Americans did not l ## World War II Louis fought a charity bout for the Navy Relief Society against his former opponent Buddy Baer on January 9, 1942, which raised $47,000 for the fund. The next day, he volunteered to enlist as a private in the United States Army at Camp Upton, Long Island. Newsreel cameras recorded his induction, including a staged scene in which a soldier-clerk asked, "What's your occupation?", to which Louis replied, "Fighting and let us at them Japs". Another military charity bout on March 27, 1942, (against another former opponent, Abe Simon) netted $36,146. Before the fight, Louis had spoken at a Relief Fund dinner, saying of the war effort, "We'll win, 'cause we're on God's side". The media widely reported the comment, instigating a surge of popularity for Louis. Slowly, the press began to eliminate its stereotypical racial references when covering Louis and instead treated him as a sports hero. Despite the public relations boon, Louis's charitable fights proved financially costly. Although he saw none of the roughly $90,000 raised by these and other charitable fights, the IRS later credited these amounts as taxable income paid to Louis. After the war, the IRS pursued the issue. A group of "ring rookies" at Fort Riley, Kansas. Louis O'Jibway (far left) served as the head coach. Sid Marks (far right) was the assistant coach. John Moore (center rear), was a trainer. Joe Louis (second-from-right) served as supervisor. For basic training, Louis was assigned to a segregated cavalry unit based in Fort Riley, Kansas. The assignment was at the suggestion of his friend and lawyer Truman Gibson, who knew of Louis's love for horsemanship. Gibson had previously become a civilian advisor to the War Department, in charge of investigating claims of harassment against black soldiers. Accordingly, Louis used this personal connection to help the cause of various black soldiers with whom he came into contact. In one noted episode, Louis contacted Gibson in order to facilitate the Officer Candidate School (OCS) applications of a group of black recruits at Fort Riley, which had been inexplicably delayed for several months. Among the OCS applications Louis facilitated was that of young UCLA athletic legend Jackie Robinson, later to break the baseball color barrier. The episode spawned a personal friendship between the two men. Realizing Louis's potential for raising esprit de corps among the troops, the Army placed him in its Special Services Division rather than sending him into combat. Louis went on a celebrity tour with other notables, including fellow boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. He traveled more than 35,000 km (22,000 mi) and staged 96 boxing exhibitions before two million soldiers. In England during 1944, he was reported to have signed as a player for Liverpool Football Club as a publicity stunt. Louis in the Army In addition to his travels, Louis was the focus of a media recruitment campaign encouraging African-American men to enlist in the Armed Services, despite the militar ## Later career and retirement Main articles: Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn II, Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott, and Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott II Louis emerged from his wartime service significantly in debt. In addition to his looming tax bill—which had not been finally determined at the time, but was estimated at greater than $100,000—Jacobs claimed that Louis owed him $250,000. Despite the financial pressure on Louis to resume boxing, his long-awaited rematch against Billy Conn had to be postponed to the summer of 1946, when weather conditions could accommodate a large outdoor audience. During the build up Louis was asked "Will you chase him if he runs backwards", this prompted the champion to respond with now the famous line: "He can run, but he can't hide". On June 19, a disappointing 40,000 saw the rematch at Yankee Stadium, in which Louis was not seriously tested. Conn, whose skills had deteriorated during the long layoff, largely avoided contact until being dispatched by knockout in the eighth round. Although the attendance did not meet expectations, the fight was still the most profitable of Louis's career to date. His share of the purse was $600,000, of which Louis's managers got $140,000, his ex-wife $66,000 and the U.S. state of New York $30,000. Joe Louis with Jean Anderson, Chicago, 1947 After trouble finding another suitable opponent, on December 5, 1947, Louis met Jersey Joe Walcott, a 33-year-old veteran with a 44–11–2 record. Walcott entered the fight as a 10-to-1 underdog. Nevertheless, Walcott knocked down Louis twice in the first four rounds. Most observers in Madison Square Garden felt Walcott dominated the 15-round fight. When Louis was declared the winner in a split decision, the crowd booed. Louis was under no illusion about the state of his boxing skills, yet he was too embarrassed to quit after the Walcott fight. Determined to win and retire with his title intact, Louis signed on for a rematch. On June 25, 1948, about 42,000 people came to Yankee Stadium to see the aging champion, who weighed 213½ pounds, the heaviest of his career to date. Walcott knocked Louis down in the third round, but Louis survived to knock out Walcott in the eleventh. Louis would not defend his title again before announcing his retirement from boxing on March 1, 1949. In his bouts with Conn and Walcott, it had become apparent that Louis was no longer the fighter he had once been. As he had done earlier in his career, however, Louis would continue to appear in numerous exhibition matches worldwide. In August 1949 Cab Calloway rendered homage to the "king of the ring" with his song Ol' Joe Louis. Comeback Main articles: Ezzard Charles vs. Joe Louis and Joe Louis vs. Rocky Marciano Louis, circa 1950 At the time of Louis's initial retirement, the IRS was still completing its investigation of his prior tax returns, which had always been handled by Mike Jacobs's personal accountant. In May 1950, the IRS finished a full audit of Louis's past returns and announced that, with intere ## Timeline ### 1914 — Born on May 13, 1914, in rural Chambers County, Alabama—in a ramshackle... Born on May 13, 1914, in rural Chambers County, Alabama—in a ramshackle dwelling on Bell Chapel Road, located about 1 mile (2 kilometres) off State Route 50 and roughly 6 miles (10 kilometres) from LaFayette—Louis was the seventh of eight children of Munroe Barrow and Lillie (Reese) Barrow ### 1914 — Born in Lafayette Joseph Louis Barrow born in Lafayette, Alabama. ### 1916 — Munroe Barrow was committed to a mental institution in 1916 and, as a result,... Munroe Barrow was committed to a mental institution in 1916 and, as a result, Joe knew very little of his biological father ### 1920 — Around 1920, Louis's mother married Pat Brooks, a local construction... Around 1920, Louis's mother married Pat Brooks, a local construction contractor, having received word that Munroe Barrow had died while institutionalized (in reality, Munroe Barrow lived until 1938, unaware of his son's fame) ### 1926 — In 1926, shaken by a gang of white men in the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family... In 1926, shaken by a gang of white men in the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family moved to Detroit, Michigan, forming part of the post-World War I Great Migration ### 1932 — Louis made his debut in early 1932 at the age of 17 Louis made his debut in early 1932 at the age of 17 ### 1933 — In 1933, Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves Novice Division championship... In 1933, Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves Novice Division championship against Joe Biskey for the light heavyweight classification ### 1934 — Professional Debut Makes his professional debut, winning by KO. ### 1934 — In September 1934, while promoting a Detroit-area "coming home" bout for Louis... In September 1934, while promoting a Detroit-area "coming home" bout for Louis against Canadian Alex Borchuk, Roxborough was pressured by members of the Michigan State Boxing Commission to have Louis sign with white management ### 1935 — Trotter later became Louis's first wife in 1935 Trotter later became Louis's first wife in 1935 ### 1937 — Heavyweight Champion Defeats James J. Braddock to become heavyweight champion at age 23. ### 1938 — Defeats Max Schmeling Knocks out Max Schmeling in the first round in their rematch, a fight with immense political symbolism against Nazi Germany. ### 1949 — Retirement Retires after 25 consecutive title defenses — a record that still stands. ### 1981 — Death Joe Louis dies at age 66 in Las Vegas. --- Source: https://peoplebio.info/p/joe-louis