Joe Louis is arguably among the greatest boxers of all time, and the special regard for the soft-spoken fighter many Detroiters feel is apparent with major public art pieces and the naming of the city's NHL hockey arena for the man they remember affectionately as Detroit's "Brown Bomber".
Joe Louis Barrow was born in Alabama in 1914, the seventh of eight children of Munroe and Lillie Barrow. Joe's father, a poor sharecropper, ended up in an asylum when Joe was 2 years old and died when Joe was 4 years old.
When Joe was 7 years old, his mother married Patrick Brooks, a father of eight. The family moved to Detroit during the mid-1920s.
Joe helped his family by working jobs before and after school. He worked at Eastern Market and at an ice company where he said lifting ice blocks weighing as much as 50 pounds helped develop his powerful shoulders and muscles.
Joe soon began training as an amateur boxer at a local gym.
There are several stories about why Joe Louis dropped his last name when he began boxing, including: it was a ruse for Joe to hide his new-found boxing career from his mother, there wasn't enough space on a form Joe filled out early on for all three names, or an early manager advised him to go with the shorter version of his real name. Whatever the reason, the fighter billed himself as "Joe Louis", and the name stuck.
In 1934, Louis went pro and moved to Chicago.
In 1936, Louis fought with German boxer Max Schmeling, who won in the 12th round when the ref counted Louis out for the first time in his career.
Fans were disappointed because it seemed to symbolize an even larger loss in the face of the rising power of Hitler in Germany. There were riots in Harlem, and Louis learned an important lesson about taking opponents seriously.
In 1937, Joe Louis became the world heavyweight champion. He defended his title 24 times, winning 22 of those fights with knock outs.
Louis had his rematch with Schmeling in 1938, knocking Schmeling out during the first round after just 2 minutes and 4 seconds. The fight was a high point of Louis' career.
Louis enlisted in the army in 1942, leaving several years later as a sergeant with a Legion of Merit award.
His post-military career was disappointing, and he retired in 1948 after knocking out Jersey Joe Walcott in the eleventh round of a championship bout.
Louis' fabled generosity, and some unwise investments, caught up with him when his boxing income stopped. He earned more than $4.6 million boxing, but he fell behind paying his taxes until he owed nearly $1.2 million in Federal income taxes and penalties.
Louis tried a comeback, but retired again in 1951 after Rocky Marciano knocked him out in the eighth round of a bout.
Louis continued to struggle financially. An old Army buddy, now an executive at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, gave Louis a job as a celebrity greeter at the casino, and the government forgave Louis' back-tax debt.
Louis' health declined, leaving him in a wheelchair by 1977. He later had a stroke and died at age 66 in 1981. Louis' burial was at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
The most visible evidence of Detroit's love for Joe Louis may be two large public sculptures.
A giant bronze arm and fist, suspended from a pyramidal framework, sits at the foot of Woodward on Jefferson along the Detroit riverfront. Artist Robert Graham created the 8,000-pound piece with a $350,000 commission from Sports Illustrated/ Time Inc.
Graham's tribute to the fighter caused controversy when the 24-foot-long arm-and-fist sculpture appeared at the site in 1986. People questioned whether the disembodied appendage respectfully represented what Louis meant to Detroit, or whether a big fist was an unnecessarily aggressive image.
Graham felt that the fist offered a more nuanced representation of the man than a conventional statue.
Critics looking for a more representational image found more to like with the 14-foot-tall bronze sculpture created by artist Ed Hamilton for the lobby of Detroit's large convention hall, Cobo Center.
Hamilton won a competition to for a commission to create his memorial to Louis. The piece, installed at Cobo in 1987, shows Louis in his familiar fighting stance.
Want to know more about Joe Louis? Check out recent biographies like Joe Louis: Hard Times Man by Randy Roberts or Joe Louis: Black Champion in White America by Chris Mead, or Joe Louis: My Life by Joe Louis, Edna Rust and Art Rust. To find out more about Louis' rematch with Schmeling, check out Ring of Hate: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, The Fight of the Century by Patrick Myler.
Find out more about the life and work of sculptor Ed Hamilton in The Birth of an Artist: A Journey of Discovery by Ed Hamilton.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
Joe Louis is beloved by everyone in Detroit. he is such a good person no wonder everybody in Detroit worships him.
Posted by: Detroit maids | February 11, 2011 at 02:31 PM
Fantastic post on Louis. I always learn so much when I stop over at your blog.
Schmeling was a very interesting figure, too. He hid two Jewish children in his apartment while the nazis were rounding people up. I saw some documentary on him once. Back then, when people asked why he kept asking for more food, he lied, saying he needed to keep his weight up for his fights.
Posted by: gypsyscarlett | February 13, 2011 at 05:22 AM
Gypsy-Glad you enjoyed Joe Louis' story!
Thanks for sharing the info about Max Schmeling, too. I read that he and Joe Louis became friendly over time, and that Schmeling was one of the folks who helped Louis when he was down on his luck later in life.
Posted by: Dominique King | February 13, 2011 at 07:24 AM