Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (6 page)

With the onset of the Great Depression, boxing suffered a prolonged decline in attendance and prestige. This was partly due to the ascendance of other forms of popular entertainment, notably movies, which continued to attract large audiences eager to take their minds off the nation’s domestic ills. But underpinning the increasing indifference to boxing was the fact that no fighter had emerged who could capture the nation’s imagination and revive the sagging sport.

Tex Rickard had recently died and his protégé Mike Jacobs was determined to break the stranglehold of the Madison Square Garden establishment that had long controlled the fight game. Before he could consolidate his power, however, he needed to find the right boxer.

Around the time Jack Johnson was being hounded out of the country, Joe Louis Barrow was born to an Alabama sharecropper. His father died when he was four and his mother remarried, moving her new brood of sixteen children to Detroit, where blacks were being hired to work in the growing auto industry.

After dropping out of school in grade six, Louis was introduced to boxing by a friend and he soon discovered he had a natural talent for the sport. When he was sixteen, his mother gave him money every week for violin lessons but the teenager used the money instead to pay for a locker at the Brewster Recreation Center where Detroit’s best boxers gathered and trained. His amateur career started slowly with a number of early defeats, but soon his awesome punching power was attracting attention. He made it to the Golden Gloves final in Boston in 1933 and won the amateur light heavyweight championship a year later.

His rapid rise brought Louis to the attention of a number of potential handlers—mostly mob-connected and mostly white—who were always anxious to get a piece of an up-and-coming fighter. But he was most impressed by a successful black gambling magnate named John Roxborough, who convinced him that black boxers needed somebody they could trust and that only a fellow Negro could fit that role. Roxborough brought in a Chicago numbers runner and nightclub owner named Julian Black to co-manage his new find. The two weren’t exactly paragons of virtue and honesty—they were both quite prominent in the black mob—but they had a keen sense of what it would take to mold Louis so he would be acceptable to white society.

They knew their fighter must become the antithesis of Jack Johnson if he was ever to get a shot at the title. The first thing they did before turning him pro was to issue a strict set of rules he must abide by. It’s as if they studied Johnson’s biography before crafting the guidelines:

1. Louis was never to be photographed with a white woman.
   
2. He was never to enter a nightclub alone.
   
3. There would be no fixed fights.
   
4. He could never gloat over a fallen opponent.
   
5. He was to keep a deadpan expression in front of the cameras (in memory of the famous Johnson headline about the “grinning, jeering Negro”).
   
6. He was to live and fight clean.
   

A number of physical factors helped facilitate the new image as well. Louis was very light-skinned—in photos, he appeared almost white—and thus looked much less threatening to white America than the dark-complexioned Johnson. He also had a mild speech defect and therefore rarely spoke to the media. This allowed his handlers to do most of the talking—and they took full advantage, honing a carefully crafted image of Louis as a modest, churchgoing man who hated to hurt opponents, didn’t drink or smoke, and supported his large family from his earnings.

Their strategy worked. Roxborough was approached by the powerful promoter Mike Jacobs, who offered to promote Louis’s fights. Jacobs sensed the potential for the “Brown Bomber”—as he was already being called—to revive the nearly bankrupt sport.

In what was to become a theme of Louis’s career, world events played a pivotal role in his ascendancy. In 1934, Benito Mussolini struck the first blow for fascism by invading the African nation of Abyssinia (later Ethiopia), ruled since 1930 by Hailie Selassie, a leader who had become a hero to many American Blacks.

Mussolini had long been a boxing fan, describing punching as “an exquisitely fascist means of self-expression.” In 1930, American immigration officials had threatened to deport an Italian boxer and former champion named Primo Camera back to Italy because of his mob ties. The Italian dictator personally intervened to prevent the deportation, earning Camera the label of “Mussolini’s emissary in America.” Now Jacobs decided to capitalize on the Abyssinia invasion by staging a bout between Louis and Camera.

The media picked up on the fight as a battle between Abyssinia and Italy in the ring, but Blacks were paying the most attention. Mussolini, unlike Hitler, wasn’t yet considered by most Americans to be particularly troubling. But his recent conquest of Abyssinia—which he represented as a victory of whites over the “savage race”—had turned II Duce into a major villain in black America.

To get whites to pay attention and to garner sympathy for Louis, Jacobs donated part of the fight gate to the Milk Fund—the favorite charity of Mrs. William Randolph Hearst. This ensured the support of the powerful Hearst newspaper syndicate. Hearst reporter Quentin Reynolds, for example, told his readers that if Louis became champion, “the boxing game will have a leader of whom it will not be ashamed and the Negro race will have a representative that it can point to with pride.”

On June 25, 1935, the two fighters met in Yankee Stadium and Abyssinia avenged its honor, pulverizing Italy with a sixth-round knockout. After the fight, there were reports of black youths running through the streets of Harlem, yelling “Let’s get Mussolini next.”

Louis made sure to react humbly to his victory, which further ingratiated him to his growing legions of supporters, Blacks and, especially, whites. The
New York Mirror
hailed Louis as “a God-fearing, Bible-reading, clean-living boy” and welcomed his “modest, quiet, and unassuming manner.”

Finally, here was a black boxer who seemed to know his place. The ghost of Jack Johnson appeared to have been banished. (In fact, Johnson was still very much alive. He had returned to America to serve his time and even tried to visit Louis’s training camp, where he was swiftly exorcised by Roxborough.)

The careful crafting of Louis’s image was unquestionably an important factor in his growing acceptance. But times had changed considerably as well. Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House and his popular first lady Eleanor had emerged as a champion of Negro rights. Lynchings were down 80 percent since Johnson’s day, and more Americans every year were expressing tolerance of integration in the annual Gallup poll. Most academics and scientists no longer believed in the genetic inferiority of Blacks, which was almost universally accepted during the Johnson years. The hostility of twenty years earlier had been replaced by a condescending tolerance, still a far cry from the acceptance of Blacks as equal.

Louis was portrayed as humble but also childlike and docile. Even in articles that praised him, the writer would often note his lack of intelligence or comment on his “animal-like” traits in the ring. In the South, he was seen by the media as a good example for Negroes because “he knew his place.” But Southerners were nevertheless nervous that Louis victories might spark a surge of racial pride. Anticipating this, the
Raleigh News and Observer
counseled that “wise Negroes—as wise white men—will not put their pride in a prize fighter, but will watch the race’s advance in the more important, less dramatic things by which in the long view any race or any people must be judged.”

There was still considerable animosity in some circles. Editorial cartoons often portrayed Louis as a combination of savage brute and simple child. Jack Dempsey led the search for a white hope to stop him before he could get a title bout.

The most compelling evidence that America still had a long way to go toward true racial progress emerged during the fight that would represent a major setback in Louis’s march towards the championship and full acceptance by white America.

By 1936, Louis seemed to have achieved all the conditions necessary to secure the right to fight for a title.
Ring
magazine had named him “boxer of the year” after he won five fights in succession. His fight with Max Baer earned boxing’s first million-dollar gate, signaling a major turnaround in the fortunes of the once-moribund sport. Now Mike Jacobs only had one more obstacle for his new cash cow. Remembering the success of the Camera fight and its symbolic implications against fascism, Jacobs plucked a former German champion named Max Schmeling out of obscurity and offered him a fight with Louis. Schmeling had long been embraced by Adolf Hitler as a model of Aryan supremacy, and Jacobs believed a fight between a “member of the master race” and his new black sensation would generate huge interest.

The media, sensing a chance to cash in on nationalistic jingoism, touted the match as a battle between America and the “tool of Hitler’s oppression” rather than a fight between Black vs. White, but their support was not enough to overcome the racial divisions that still plagued parts of the country. Southern newspapers, predicting a Louis victory, reported hundreds of angry letters from readers outraged that they would champion a “darkie.”

But American support for Schmeling wasn’t confined to Southern crackers. This was made clear on the night of the fight. Overly optimistic, and believing the hype that he would easily vanquish Schmeling, Louis failed to train properly and was knocked out in round twelve. Frederic Jaher observed that the fight itself proved a testament to the enduring priority of racial over national affinity despite the fact that it took place in New York City, a center of American liberalism, racial tolerance, and opposition to Nazism. When Schmeling towered over his fallen opponent, he received a huge ovation from the crowd. Jack Dempsey declared his victory “the finest thing to happen to boxing in a long time.” Schmeling received more congratulatory telegrams from the United States than any other country. More troubling, the media started to turn against the defeated challenger, questioning his heart, his intelligence, and his talent—as if he had betrayed them for their support.

The Nazis wasted no time in capitalizing on Schmeling’s victory, hoping to convince white Americans that they and Germany were on the same side. German propagandist George Spandau declared that “through the German Schmeling the white race, Europe, and white America defeated the black race.”

Meanwhile, Louis was determined to claw his way back into contention for a title shot. Putting the Schmeling fiasco behind him, he won six consecutive fights in convincing fashion. Mike Jacobs sensed the time had come for Joe Louis to take his rightful place.

On June 22,1937, when Louis stepped into the ring with the champion James Braddock, it was the first time in twenty-two years a black boxer had fought for the heavyweight title. Media interest was subdued. Still unable to forgive him for losing to Schmeling, but recognizing the likelihood of his success, most newspaper editors counseled that a Louis victory should not be taken as a sign of black racial superiority.

Louis’s handlers continued their carefully orchestrated campaign to shape their fighter’s image and gain white acceptance for a black champion. His mother was quoted in the sympathetic Hearst press saying, “I know that if Joe wins the championship he is going to make Jack Johnson feel ashamed of himself again. Joe wants to win to show the white folks that a colored man can bring dignity and decency to the title just as well as a white man.”

When, as expected, Louis won to reclaim the title Johnson had first claimed for blacks in 1910, the reaction was significantly muted compared to the hysteria twenty-seven years earlier. Blacks poured out onto the streets of Northern cities to celebrate, but there were few incidents of violence. In the South, the jubilant black population made sure to celebrate in their own homes for fear of provoking retaliation. Louis’s characteristically modest reaction to his victory stood in stark contrast to Jack Johnson’s brash gloating after he first won the title from Jim Jeffries. This, and the changing racial attitudes, helped Americans tolerate, if not fully accept, the new titleholder, even in the Deep South. The
Birmingham News
reported “less race prejudice…less disposition to resent a Negro heavyweight champion.”

The media—and white America—continued to be lukewarm to the new champion, however, until the fight that proved to be the defining moment of his career. Since the 1936 matchup between Louis and Schmeling, Nazi Germany had annexed Austria and had made clear its intentions to take over Europe. By 1938, its brutal campaign of anti-Semitic violence had galvanized world opinion, and America’s distaste for Hitler was much more intense than it had been two years earlier. In this context, Mike Jacobs arranged for a Louis-Schmeling rematch that, this time, was viewed as a contest between America and the enemy. A month before the scheduled bout, Louis was invited to the White House, where President Roosevelt told him, “Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany.” Both countries recognized the propaganda implications of the bout, and the hype was intense. Newspapers billed the match as Democracy vs. Fascism, Good vs. Evil. For the first time in history, the hopes of America rested on a black man.

Louis didn’t let his country down. This time he was well-prepared and from the opening bell he unleashed a stunning assault on the surprised Schmeling, knocking the hope of Aryan supremacy unconscious in just 124 seconds. When the referee raised Louis’s arms in victory, it elevated him from a mere boxer to a legend and, more importantly, an American hero.

Today, Reverend Jesse Jackson calls the fight the incident that freed black people “from the midst of inferiority.” The media were effusive in their praise and it seemed everybody was aware of the fight’s significance.
Ring
magazine declared that “Schmeling’s defeat symbolized the complete deflation of any and all ‘ism’or claims to natural supremacy of any particular race or group.” It seemed that most Americans agreed, and for the first time ever the majority of the country told pollsters they admired a black man.