Joe louis biography book
Joe Louis
About the Book
Joe Louis held the heavyweight boxing championship longer than any other fighter and defended it a record 25 times. (In the 1930s and 1940s, the owner of the heavyweight title was the most prominent non-team sports competitor.) In addition, Louis helped bridge the gap of understanding between whites and blacks. During World War II he not only raised money for Army and Navy relief and entertained millions of troops as a morale officer, but became a symbol of American hope and strength. This biography of Louis outlines his rise from poverty in Alabama to become the best-known African American of his time and describes how an uneducated man, simple at his core, became so articulate and ended up on the side of right in the battles he fought, with fist or voice.
About the Author(s)
Lew Freedman is a long-time, prize-winning journalist for such newspapers as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Anchorage Daily News and Wyoming’s Cody Enterprise. Specializing in sports and the outdoors, he has written more than 100 books. He lives in Columbus, Indiana.
Bibliographic Details
Lew Freedman
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 252
Bibliographic Info: 11 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-5907-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0212-7
Imprint: McFarland
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 Joe Louis: Hard Times Man (now published in paperback) is the definitive biography of the most famous African American of the mid-twentieth century: his life, the complex cast of characters around him, and his importance to civil rights. In this exclusive extract Randy Roberts explains why Joe Louis, often overshadowed by more famous successors like Cassius Clay, was in fact a dazzlingly influential figure, not just in the world of boxing, but in the ever-changing racial and cultural landscape of 20th-century America. Extract from Joe Louis: Hard Times Man by Randy Roberts “When times get really hard, really tough, He always send you somebody. In the Depression it was tough on everybody, but twice as hard on the colored, and He sent us Joe. Joe Louis was to lift the colored people’s heart.” Thinking back, journalist Robert Lipsyte concluded that it was a ‘‘generational thing.’’ America seemed to be tearing apart at the seams in February 1964. Less than three months before, Lee Harvey Oswald had blown of the back of President John Kennedy’s head. The war in Vietnam had taken a dangerous, violent turn after the November assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. No longer was the United States supporting even a nominally democratic regime. Now it was underwriting a war conducted by a corrupt, inefficient military junta headed by a general who had named himself head of state. At home, Martin Luther King’s ‘‘dream’’ had turned into a nightmare. Medgar Evers gunned down in his driveway, four black girls killed when a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church, violent protest marches throughout the South, Malcolm X rejecting integrationists’ goals —the ‘‘movement’’ appeared fractured. Culturally, the look of a new age was showcased on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 12, 1964, when four mop-topped musicians sang ‘‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’’ to ecstatic and screaming young girls. By the last weeks of February, Mi American boxer (1914–1981) "Brown Bomber" redirects here. For other uses, see Brown Bomber (disambiguation) and Joe Louis (disambiguation). Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1934 to 1951. Nicknamed "the Brown Bomber", Louis is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential boxers of all time. He reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1937 until his temporary retirement in 1949. He was victorious in 25 consecutive title defenses, a record for all weight classes. Louis has the longest single reign as champion of any boxer in history. Louis's cultural impact was felt well outside the ring. He is widely regarded as the first African-American to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II because of his historic rematch with German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938. He was instrumental in integrating the game of golf, helping break the sport's color barrier in America by appearing under a sponsor's exemption in a PGA event in 1952. 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
1. The Brain Trust 5
2. Alabama 13
3. Detroit 22
4. Joe Who? 29
5. Laying Out the Big Plan 36
6. Jack Johnson 42
7. Going Pro 50
8. The Brown Bomber 57
9. The Brown Bomber Versus the Italian Man Mountain 67
10. Showdown with “Killer” Baer 78
11. An Eye for the Ladies 86
12. Working His Way to the Top 96
13. Max Schmeling 103
14. Schmeling, Hitler and the Nazis 111
15. Louis-Schmeling I 117
16. Joe Bounces Back 127
17. And the New Heavyweight Champion of the World 135
18. Being the Champ 143
19. LouisSchmeling II 150
20. Bigger Than Ever 160
21. Two-Ton Tony and
—The Autobiography of Miss Jane PittmanJoe Louis
Early life