Joe Louis

Born: May 13, 1914
Lexington, Alabama
Died: April 12, 1981
Las Vegas, Nevada
African American boxer

African American boxer Joe Louis was world heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1948. He defended his title twenty times in four years.

Early years

Joseph Louis Barrow, born on May 13, 1914, was the seventh of eight children of Munroe Barrow and Lily Reese. His father was an Alabama sharecropper and died when Joe was four. His mother took in washing to support her family. Joe was close to his large family, particularly to his mother, from whom he inherited a deep religious sentiment. His mother married Patrick Brooks, with children of his own, when Joe was seven, and the family moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1926.

After Brooks lost his job, Joe and his brothers shined shoes, ran errands, and sold newspapers before and after school to help out the family. Joe also worked as an assistant to an ice-wagon driver. He later said that carrying heavy ice helped him to develop his big shoulder muscles.

As a teenager, Joe was the best boxer of his group. At nineteen he won the National Light Heavyweight Amateur Crown of the Golden Gloves in 1933.

Louis 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. He taught Louis how to punch and worked with him to develop his body coordination.

Early matches

Before Louis became champion, he 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 including Billy Conn, Tony Galento, Rocky Marciano (1923–1969), and "Jersey Joe" Walcott (1914–1994). He won nineteen other title fights.

During World War II (1939–45; a war fought between the Axis powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allies: England, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union) 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. When penalties were assessed, taxes became astronomical.

Business ventures

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 former ring rival Billy Conn. The former champ also served as a celebrity greeter at the Caesar's Palace Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Final years

Unfortunately, drugs took a toll on the once indomitable (not able to be beaten) 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 (irrational anxiety and fear toward others). Strokes and heart ailments caused his condition to worsen. He had surgery to correct an aortic aneurysm (abnormal widening of a blood vessel) 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 and Trevor Berbick heavyweight championship bout at Caesar's Palace. Hours after the fight, Louis went into cardiac arrest (a heart failure) and died at the age of sixty-six.

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 Louis's enduring legacy.

Jack Johnson

John Arthur Johnson (March 31, 1878 - June 10, 1946), better known as Jack Johnson and nicknamed the "Galveston Giant", was an American boxer and arguably the best heavyweight of his generation. He was the first black Heavyweight Champion of the World, 1908-1915.


Early life

Jack Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas to Henry and Tiny Johnson, former slaves, who both worked blue-collar jobs to earn enough to raise six children and teach them all how to read and write. Jack Johnson had only five years of formal schooling. He is reputed to have fought his first fight, a sixteen round victory, at aged fifteen. He turned professional around 1897, fighting in private clubs, and by age 18 was earning more in one night than his father earned in an entire week

In 1901, Joe Choynski came to Galveston to train Jack Johnson. Choynski, an experienced boxer, knocked Johnson out, and the two were arrested for "engaging in an illegal contest" and jailed for 23 days. (Although boxing was one of the three most popular sports in America at the time, along with baseball and horse-racing, the practice was officially illegal in most states, including Texas.) Choynski began training Johnson in jail.

Johnson developed a more patient style than was customary in that day: playing defensively, waiting for a mistake, and then capitalizing on it. It was very effective, but it was criticized in the press as being cowardly and devious. By 1902, Johnson had won at least 27 fights against both white and black opponents.


Boxing career

He won his first title on February 3 1903, beating 'Denver' Ed Martin over twenty rounds for the Colored Heavyweight Championship. His efforts to win the full title were thwarted as World Heavyweight Champion James J. Jeffries refused to face him. Blacks could box whites in other arenas, but the heavyweight championship was such a respected and covetted position in America that blacks were not deemed worthy to compete for it, even though a boxing contest, by definition, proves the worth (or unworth) of a competitor in a highly visible manner. Johnson was only able to fight former champion, Bob Fitzsimmons, in July 1907 and knocked him out in two rounds.
He eventually won the World Heavyweight Title on December 26 1908 when he fought the World Heavyweight Champion, Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, after following him all over the world, taunting him in the press for a match. The fight lasted fourteen rounds before being stopped by the police. The title was awarded to Johnson on a referee's decision as a T.K.O, but he had severely beaten the champion. During the fight, Johnson had mocked both Burns and his ringside crew. Every time Burns was about to go down, Johnson would hold him up again, punishing him more. The camera was stopped just as Johnson was finishing off Burns so that nobody could actually see Johnson becoming the champion.
As title holder, Johnson had to face a series of fighters billed by boxing promoters as "great white hopes", often as exhibition matches. In 1909 he beat Victor McLaglen (who later became a hollywood star), Frank Moran, Jack O'Brien, Tony Ross and Al Kaufman.
He also founght the middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel. Ketchel knocked him down so he was supporting himself on his hand, but Johnson almost immediately got up and knocked Ketchel cold.
On July 4, 1910 in front of 22,000 people, he defeated James J. Jeffries, a champion who had earlier turned him down, with a K.O. in the fifteenth round. The fight earned Johnson $115,000, and silenced critics who had belittled Johnson's previous victory over Tommy Burns as empty, claiming Burns was a false champion since Jeffries had retired undefeated. His victory sparked race riots and certain states banned the filming of Johnson's victories over white fighters.
But on April 5, 1915 the 37-year-old lost his title to Jess Willard in Havana, Cuba. With a crowd of 25,000 for the scheduled 45 round fight Johnson was K.O.'d in the 26th round. The temperature was 105 in the ring. Some claimed that Johnson threw the fight but Willard said "if he was going to throw the fight I wished he'd done it sooner." Johnson circulated a photo of himself with his hand above his head, claiming that the floor was too hot to the touch and he was shielding the sun from his eyes, as proof that he was not knocked out. But he didn't show the next photo in the sequence that had him flat on his back and his arms on the canvas.
He fought a number of bouts in Mexico before returning to the U.S. on July 20, 1920 and surrendering to Federal agents for allegedly violating the Mann Act against "transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes" by sending his white girlfriend, Belle Schreiber, a railroad ticket to travel from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Chicago, Illinois. This is generally considered an intentional misuse of the Act, which was intended to stop interstate traffic in prostitutes. He was sent to the United_States_Penitentiary%2C_Leavenworth to serve his sentence of one year and was released on July 9, 1921. There have been recurring proposals to grant Johnson a posthumous Presidential pardon.
According to legend, Johnson attempted to buy passage on the Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912 but was denied because of his race, thus gaining the "last laugh" on the racists when it sank. This story is commemorated in the song "Titanic" by Leadbelly and a "toast", "Shine and the Titanic," by Arthur "Arturo" Pfister, of New Orleans, Louisiana.


Later days

He continued fighting, but age was catching up with him. After two losses in 1928 he participated only in exhibition bouts. He opened a night club in Harlem which later became the Cotton Club. According to a reporter, the story is that his wife, Lucille Cameron, divorced him in 1924 on the grounds of infidelity. Jack Johnson then married an old friend named Ms. Irene Pineau.
Jack Johnson died in a car crash near Raleigh, North Carolina in 1946 and was buried next to Etta Duryea in Graceland Cemetery, in Chicago, Illinois. He was admitted to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954.