Joe Louis was the world heavyweight boxing champion for 12 years from June 1937 to March 1949. He is the only boxer in the history to maintain the title for this many years.
Background
Joe Louis, the full name Joseph Louis Barrow was born on May 13, 1914, near Lafayette, Alabama. Great-grandson of a slave and son of a sharecropper, Joe was the seventh son to his father Munn Barrow and mother Lilly Reese.
The initial life of Joe was filled with financial struggle. He father was succumbed to the hospital when Joe was very young of age. Some believe that his father wasn’t dead and followed through all of Joe’s later success years. Considering herself a widow, Joe’s mother Lilly remarries to Patrick Brooks, who had five kids of his own. He had very little education and by the time Joe was a teenager, he and his siblings had to work at odd jobs to help his mother to feed the family.
In 1924, Joe and his family shifted to Detroit where Joe joined the Ford Motor company as a laborer.
Education
The movement to Detroit changed Joe’s life. For a brief time, Joe saw his future in cabinet making. It was during this time that Joe was introduced to boxing. When Brooks lost his employment in depression, Joe and his siblings worked as shoe shiners, sold newspapers and took part in odd errands. In one of the interviews, Joe mentioned working ahead of and past school as a helper to ice-wagon driver wherein he had to carry heavy ice blocks which are said to have helped him develop muscles at an early age.
Joe is said to have had a company with the rough crowd on the streets. To keep him away from bad company, his mother gave him 50 cents to join violin lessons which he used to join Brewster Recreation Center where in took up boxing. Joe fought his first amateur match in 1932 against Johny Miller. Lack of training and too much pressure by the odd jobs had taken a toll on him and Joe lost the match. He decides to quit boxing all together but it is believed that it was his mother who motivated and encouraged Joe to continue with boxing as she saw some potential in his son. Joe quits his jobs and focuses on his training.
Career
Joe started in boxing as a lightweight boxer and was knocked down thrice during his first match. Within ten years of his arriving in Detroit, Joe held the national Amateur National Light Heavyweight Amateur Crown of the Golden Gloves in 1933. And during this time he fought 54 matches, coming out victorious in 43. Joe was moving on to become a professional in boxing. It was in the year 1935 when Joe was fighting to his best and won $370,000 in prize money in boxing.
Joe’s manager John Roxborough changed his name from Joseph Louis Barrow to Joe Louis. He mentioned that he found Joe’s former name too long. Jack Blackburn was Joe’s training who helped him learn boxing professionally to the best. Jack Blackburn already had his name in getting two other boxers to be world champions. On 15th of June 1936, Joe experienced his first professional defeat against Max Schmeling who was a German fighter and a heavyweight champion. Losing the game was a crush but it took a backseat on 22 June 1937 when Joe got to fight against Jim Braddock for the Heavyweight championship crown. Joe won the match by the eighth round and proved to be a sporting icon for all across America. This title stayed with him for another 12 years straight and he got his new name The Brown Bomber. Joe has fought his matches with many powerful boxers at the time which also included the big names Billy Conn, Rocky Marciano, and Tony Galento.
Financial conditions improved for the family while Joe enjoyed his fame. He supported his family but as the money kept on growing; the lifestyle of Joe kept upgrading as well which are later seen during his financial struggle in life. He fought for 25 times to depend on the title and it was only three times that the game ended by the last 15 rounds. Joe showed his support towards the country in fighting a war and gave away his prize money twice towards military relief funds.
Joe left his passion to boxing after Rocky Marciano defeated him in the eighth round at Madison Square Garden. Joe officially declared his retirement from boxing on 1st of March 1949.
Being Black, Joe had to go through initial media struggle which wrote more through an eye of racial discrimination rather than a high-end new boxer coming in the market. The management team of Joe ensured that they do their best to make Joe look like a star and bring back the hunger among people for the pleasure of boxing. They kept on creating a good image of Joe in the media and even brought out ‘seven commandments’ that Joe lived by.
The Seven Commandments:
• There would be no soft fights
• He was never to gloat over a fallen opponent
• There would be no fixed fights.
• He was to live and fight clean.
• He was never to have his picture taken with a white woman.
• He was never to go to a nightclub alone.
• He was to keep a "dead pan" in front of the cameras.
These media stunts did bring Joe in the good pages and he was a person who moved from rags to riches and one who earned fame overnight.
Other than boxing, Joe entered into a deal with Cuba for $250,000 to endorse tourism. This was a failure with country’s status of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Additional fields where in Joe put his hands on was Joe Louis Food Franchise which was food shops chain Joe opened with his friends Billy Con who was also a famous boxer.
Politics
There is limited information on Joe's political affiliation. Joe came in news for the first time when he was defeated in his first match against Max Schmeling in 1936. During the rematch with the same boxer in 1938, it was seen less of a game by the media but more of a battle between the Americans and the Germans (Nazi).
Views
Quotations:
"He can run, but he can't hide" on fighting swift and agile Billy Conn.
Personality
Joe Louis was quite and modest man outside the ring. He experienced problems with expressing himself, which especially appeared when he was surrounded by other people due to his natural shyness. Furthermore his managers created an image of "good negro" for him, so he had to be polite - especially with white people - not talk too much and read Bible in public.
Physical Characteristics:
6'2" (188 cm) tall with 76" (193 cm) reach and around 200 pounds (90 kg) during his prime.
Quotes from others about the person
In the Baltimore Sun, Grantland Rice: “His blinding speed, the speed of the jungle, and instinctive speed of the wild, was more than Carnera could face … Louis stalked Primo as the black panther of the jungle stalks his prey”
New York Daily News sports editor Paul Gallico: "I had the feeling that I was in the room with a wild animal…. He lives like an animal, fights like an animal, has all the cruelty and ferocity of a wild thing…. I see in this colored man something so cold, so hard, so cruel that I wonder as to his bravery. Courage in the animal is desperation."
Connections
Joe married Marva Trotter on September 24, 1935. Marva was nineteen and working as a secretary at a newspaper. The relationship went through several up and downs and ten years after the marriage, Joe divorced Marva only to remarry her again a year later in 1946. Even after a try to continue the relationship, there was yet again another divorce that took place in 1949, 3 years after the remarriage.
After retirement, Joe went through a lot of financial crisis and had to depend on money through personal appearances, or a brief stint in wrestling. He had borrowed too much of money from his managers and had huge tax debts. Joe finds love once again in 1955 and marries Rose Morgan who operates a beauty shop and helps him with the finances but this relationship ends three years later in 1958.
Joe latter marries attorney Martha M Jefferson in 1959 and moves with her to her home in LA (Los Angeles). It was in the 1960s that Joe included in the world of prostitution and a woman named ‘Marie’ came to his life. In the biography of Joe Louis, he has mentioned that he fathered a baby through Marie in the month of December 1967 in the city of New York. Martha and Joe adopt this baby and name him Joseph. In the later years, Martha adopts three more children from the same woman who paternal identity is unknown.
During this time, Joe got in the addiction of drugs, particularly cocaine and showed symtoms of mental illness. He often had illusion about his family and close friends creating conspire against his life. In 1969, he was once found collapsed in the streets of New York. He spent some few months in the hospital of Colorado suffering from delusions. Though he was able to get rid of his drug addictions with the help of his wife, Heart ailments worsened his health situation further in combination with his delusions.
It was in 1970 that Caesar’s Palace that exists in Las Vegas offered Joe a job. It included writing autographs and playing a set of golf game with the guests. This employment gave him a house and offered $50,000 salary per year. Joe lived in the palace and worked there. In 1977, Joe had through go through a surgery to correct the expansion of blood vessels; also called aortic aneurysm. After this procedure, Joe had to confine himself to wheel chair though was found attending most of the boxing matches. Joe died succumbing to a cardiac arrest at the age of 66 on 12 April 1981.
His funeral was attended by three thousand people with heart touching tributes from J Jackson. Jesse Jackson thanked Joe for his work and creating an open path of black people in the country sports. Joe had opened the world for black athletes. Muhammad Ali remembered Joe saying that the death of Joe Louis is not only heartbreaking for all the black community but it has made people of all colors cry.
Joe was a national hero who made way for the blacks in sports. He made people forget the color and focus on the game. With his skill in boxing, he made his way into the hearts of the thousands and is still remembers as one of the best heavyweight champions of all time.