Joe Louis

Joe Louis’ journey from southern sharecropper (a tenant farmer who pays a portion of each harvest as rent to a landowner), to northern migrant and industrial worker, to heavyweight champion of the world embodied both the struggles and dreams of African Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century.

Joseph Louis Barrow was born on May 13, 1914, in Lafayette, Alabama, the seventh of eight children in a sharecropping family. Facing threats from the Ku Klux Klan, Louis and his kin joined the Great Migration to the North in 1926, eventually settling in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood.

Although they left in search of more opportunity, they soon found that the North was no paradise. African Americans were pushed into overcrowded areas with dilapidated housing, under-funded schools, and few city services. They were also kept out of well-paying professions, so money was always tight. At just 12 years old, Louis took on a part-time job delivering ice to the city’s wealthier white citizens. A shy child with a speech impediment whose education in the South was spotty at best, he struggled in the classroom, and school officials eventually enrolled him in the Bronson Vocational School, which was designed to prepare children for jobs involving manual labor. Louis trained in cabinetmaking. He then worked a punishing, full-time job pushing truck bodies at the River Rouge Ford plant right up until he became a professional boxer.

Despite these obstacles, Louis had his eye on a boxing career. He honed his athletic skills at Detroit’s Brewster Recreation Center as a teen. Shortly after he won the national Amateur Athletic Union light heavyweight championship in April 1934, he turned pro. His all-Black management team was determined to get the talented 6-foot-1½-inch, 200-pound fighter a shot at the heavyweight title.

At a time when negative images of African Americans in the media were commonplace, Louis, nicknamed the Brown Bomber, embodied Black male strength, respectability, and success. When Louis defeated the Italian boxer Primo Carnera in 1935, Black fans saw the victory as being about more than just sports. The Italian head of state Benito Mussolini (later an ally of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler during World War II) had recently invaded the African nation of Ethiopia in an attempt to colonize it. Ethiopia’s leader Haile Selassie fended him off, maintaining Ethiopia’s independence from (white) European control. As he beat white fighters in the ring, Louis demonstrated that African Americans could succeed if given a chance to compete on equal ground. In 1937, he defeated James J. Braddock to become the first Black world heavyweight champion since Jack Johnson’s barrier-breaking reign from 1908 to 1915.

Yet it was Louis's 1938 knockout victory over Max Schmeling, a German fighter endorsed by the Nazi Party, that made him into a crossover American hero. Louis’ win came to symbolize the United States’ role as a defender of democracy in the face the fascism. He was so famous that during World War II, he became a central figure in the U.S. government’s campaign to boost morale. Never before had white Americans embraced a Black athlete as their representative to the world. The celebrated Louis remained undefeated until he retired a champion in 1949.

Sadly, the Brown Bomber’s last years point to how African American sporting heroes, once they retire, are often quickly forgotten and undervalued. Louis was generous with his time and winnings during his career, demonstrating his patriotism through war time service and by making a large financial donation to the Army-Navy Relief Fund. But later in life, he struggled to pay off his tax debts and had to come out of retirement and lean on the goodwill of friends to make ends meet. He died in 1981 at 66 years of age.

About the Author

Theresa Runstedtler is a professor of History at American University. She is the author of Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line and Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA.