The Great Black Hope Joe Louis

Matt Andrews explores the legacy of professional boxer Joe Louis, one of the first black athletes that many white Americans supported. Andrews also talks about the 1936 Olympic Games, where Hitler's racist goals were refuted by the performances of American black athletes like Jesse Owens. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day University. Welcome,

(00:26):
and we're back on the untold history of sports in America.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last time we discussed sports
and the American Woman. Today will be comparing the American
experience for two of the country's greatest athletes of all time,
Jesse Owens and Joe Lewis. Both men were the best

(00:46):
at what they did, and both men were black, but
how they were viewed in the eyes of light America
in the prime of their competitive days on the international
stage was extremely different. To explain in full, here's Matt
the prize fighter. Lewis is the main focus of our

(01:06):
lecture today, and I'm gonna start with a brief story
in which he's a character. But I'm not sure if
this story is true. The story has been told many
times as if it were true. For example, Martin Luther
King Jr. Like to tell this story, but I have
my doubts that the story actually happened. But it perfectly
introduces what I want to talk about today, so I'm

(01:29):
going with it. But you've been warned. The story goes
like this. In the nineties, one of the Southern states
adopted a new method of execution, poison gas replaced hanging,
and the first time poison gas was used, a microphone
was placed inside the gas chamber so scientists could hear

(01:52):
the words of the dying prisoner. They were curious, how
will he react. The first prisoner to be executed in
this way was a young black man. The pellet dropped
into the container and the gas curled upward, and the
young black man started breathing, heavy, gasping, And then the

(02:12):
scientists listening in on the execution, they heard him say,
over and over, save me, Joe Louis, Save me, Joe Louis,
Save me, Joe Louis. Whether this really happened or not,
the story speaks to how black Americans thought of Joe
Louis as a figure of liberation, as a sort of

(02:35):
black superman. Well, today, I want to explore why this
black boxer, Joe Louis was so important to Black Americans.
If that's a true story, Why did that condemned black
man call for Joe Louis in his darkest hour? But
I also want to explore why Joe Louis became immensely
significant for white Americans as well. Joe Louis is probably

(02:59):
the first black athlete that more white Americans rooted for
rather than a against, and we will explore why. I
think to better appreciate the meaning and the impact of
Joe Louis and other black athletes from this era, it
would be helpful to briefly explore the racial climate of
the era. Two weeks ago, we were discussing the rise

(03:23):
of Jim Crow segregation in sports, and then we discussed
all the violence that black Americans endured after Jack Johnson's
victory over Jim Jeffreys. That was well. By nineteen nineteen,
the mob violence against Black Americans had escalated. In nineteen nineteen,
there were big race riots in Omaha, Nebraska, Washington, d C.

(03:47):
East St. Louis. The biggest was in Chicago. The Chicago
race riot began when a group of white boys they
threw rocks at and they killed a young black boy
who had drifted into the white section of a Lake
Michigan beach. This sparked days of race violence, and twenty
three black Chicagoans were killed. This riot was a response

(04:12):
to the Great migration when millions of black Southerners they
fled the Jim Crow South and they moved north into
the cities, into places like Harlem and Chicago, as we
will see places like Detroit and Cleveland, and some white
Americans responded to their arrival with violence. They did not

(04:33):
want to write on street cars with African Americans, they
did not want to work next to Black Americans, they
did not want to live in the same neighborhoods as
Black Americans, so they lashed out. It's in the context
of this great migration, and in the context of this
heightened climate of of violent racism, that I want to

(04:53):
place the stories of two of the great athletes in
American history, Jesse Owens attract star and Joe Louis, a boxer.
Though as I said, Joe Louis will be our main focus.
Both Jesse Owens and Joe Louis were part of this
great migration. They moved from the South to the North,

(05:15):
and they rose to prominence in this era of racial violence.
But Jesse Owens and Joe Louis market change in the
history of the African American athletes. Owens and Lewis are
the first two black athletes to gain national media attention
after Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson was like a comment, you know,

(05:36):
he burst onto the scene and then he faded away
or or he was chased away, he was imprisoned. After
Jack Johnson, black athletes were ignored by the mainstream press
until Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. And Jesse Owens and
Joe Louis were such extraordinary athletes that they were celebrated

(05:59):
even by white Americans, even living in this era of
intense racial hostility. And that's because their athletic achievements occurred
at a time of extreme international tensions. So here is
where the stories of racism and sport and patriotism in sport,
here's where those stories collide. All right, let's talk about

(06:23):
Jesse Owens first. James Cleveland Owens was born in nineteen
thirteen in rural Alabama, and when he was nine, the
family moved to north to Cleveland, which was that that's
just coincidental that that was his last name. So Jesse
Owens and his family they lived the Great Migration. He

(06:46):
was given the name Jesse by a teacher who do
not understand his accent when he said his family called
him by his initials j C. She heard Jesse Jesse
Owens attended Ohio State University, and let me point this out,
this can only happen outside of the South. Attending a
flag ship public university is not an option for black

(07:07):
Americans in the South of this time. The universities of
Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi and North Carolina, they were
all off limits to black students at this time. So
Jesse Owens he attends Ohio State and it was here
that he accomplished maybe his greatest athletic achievement. He did
this in May of nineteen thirty five at the Big

(07:29):
Ten Championship Track meet in an Arbor, Michigan. In the
span of forty five minutes, Jesse Owens set world records
in the one hundred yard dash, the long jump, the
two hundred and twenty yard dash, and the two hundred
and twenty yard hurdles, so four world records in less
than an hour. Not bad. Owens was one of those

(07:54):
once in a lifetime athletes, and the question was would
he be allowed to take his talents to the nineteen
thirty six Olympic Games, which were scheduled for Berlin, Germany.
As the nine Olympic Games neared, there was a debate
in the United States over whether or not the U

(08:15):
s should send a team. Should we send a team
to Nazi Germany? In ninety three, Adolf Hitler took power
in Germany, and once in power, his regime began passing
laws that severely discriminated against German Jews. Jews were losing
political rights, their their property was being seized. Added to this,

(08:38):
though the Nazis denied it, it was pretty clear that
German Jewish athletes were not going to be able to
compete for German. The German Olympic team was going to
bar them. In fact, German Olympic officials they contacted the
United States and requested that the US leave its black
athletes at home. As they put it, they did not

(09:00):
want the the sacred grandeur of the Olympics to be
soiled by the appair and some black athletes. Now, the
International Olympic Committee made it very clear that Germany could
not host the Olympics and keep athletes from other nations
from competing, and so black athletes were invited. In the end,

(09:21):
the United States did send a team to Berlin, and
black Americans were part of this team eighteen black American athletes.
Among them was a guy named mac Robinson. He was
a member of the US track team. We will talk
about mac Robinson's younger brother, Jackie next time. And also
on the team was the great Jesse Owens. Berlin Olympics.

(09:46):
They were a spectacle, you know it was. It was
the Nazis who came up with the idea of the
grand opening ceremony. It was the Nazis that invented the
idea of the Olympic torch relay, something that we still do.
The Olympics were used by the Nazis to display German
nationalism and Nazi imperialism. Hitler he wanted these games to

(10:09):
demonstrate that the German people were the master race. But
at these games the idea of Aryan superiority. That idea
was dramatically refuted by the black athletes from the United States,
and especially by Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals.

(10:30):
And in the United States, both black and white Americans
celebrated what Owens had done. Owens was celebrated as a
symbol of national strength. Almost all Americans reveled in Jesse Owens.
They reveled in how his accomplishments embarrassed Hitler and his
theories about German supremacy. So here is where patriotism seems

(10:53):
to have outranked racial prejudice. Now, all that said, the
Owens may have been a national hero. In the summer
of ninety six, when he returned to the United States,
he was reminded that he was still a black man
in America. He was unable to translate his success in
sport to success off the field. We talked about how

(11:16):
Babe Ruth was able to sell everything and everything from
oatmeal to cigarettes, but no such opportunities were out there
for Jesse Owens. In fact, listen to this. To make
a living, Owens took part in athletic spectacles in which
he ran races against horses, a race between a black

(11:38):
man and a horse. It was an unglorious end to
a brilliant athletic career. And it's also my introduction to
Joe Lewis. After the break, Joe Lewis wears the mask.

(12:14):
So let's get to the main event. Let's talk about
Joe Louis. I think it's possible that within the African
American community, Joe Louis was the single most beloved person
of the twentieth century. You know, Martin Luther King had
his detractors in the Black community, those who thought he
was either too militant or or or not militant enough.

(12:38):
Other prize fighters like Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali, they
certainly had their detractors. I mean, there were many black
men and women who thought that they were too audacious.
Even Jackie Robinson is going to have his detractors. But
Joe Louis was universally loved by Black Americans. And that's

(12:58):
because Joe Louis came along in this time of intense
racism and violence, and in a side land but but
powerful way, he did battle with the idea of white supremacy.
The great writer Richard Wright, he put Joe Louis's impact
like this. Day by day, since they're alleged emancipation negroes

(13:23):
have watched a picture of themselves being painted as lazy, stupid,
and diseased. Joe Louis is the living refutation of the
hatred spewed forth daily over radios, in newspapers, in movies,
and in books about their lives. So because Black Americans

(13:44):
were systematically excluded from the opportunity to demonstrate their worth
and their abilities as a group. The success of Joe
Lewis his his singular successes. They energized the black community.
They were a source of pride for all Black Americans.
And that's how the theory goes, when Joe Lewis won

(14:05):
all Black Americans one. So let's explore the significance of
Joe Louis to Black America. His his his symbolism, and
like I said, let's try to figure out what he
meant to white Americans as well. Like Jesse Owens, Joe
Louis was born in the South, actually also in Alabama.

(14:25):
He was the seventh of eight children born into a
sharecropping family, and he and his family they joined the
Great Migration and they moved north to Detroit, where the
auto factories were, and this is where Joe Lewis worked.
As a teenager, he developed and chiseled his muscles pushing
two hundred pound truck bodies on the assembly lines. He

(14:47):
also took boxing lessons and he made a name for
himself as a boxer in Detroit, in the Midwest. He
rose through the ranks. But now we're faced with that
same old problem. Joe Louis was black, and we've talked
about this with regard to boxing, you know, and after
Jack Johnson and many white Americans did not want to

(15:07):
give another black man a chance to fight for the
heavyweight title ever. But Louis is eventually going to get
that chance. And he's going to get it for two reasons. First,
his timing was good. Boxing needed a fresh face after
the reign of Jack Dempsey. Five different men held the

(15:29):
title over the next ten years, and none of them
were great, none of them were exciting. So boxing was
desperate for a star. But even more important, Joe Louis
will eventually get to fight for the title because Joe
Louis wore the mask. Al Right, what does that mean?

(15:50):
Wearing the mask? Well, this might be a bad idea,
but I'm going to read from a poem. Let me
introduce you to a poem by a black poet named
Paul Dunbar. It's titled We Wear the Mask, and it
goes like this, We wear the mask that grins and lies,

(16:12):
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes. This debt
we pay to human guile with torn and bleeding hearts.
We smile in mouth with myriads subtleties. Why should the
world be overwise in counting all our tears and size, Nay,
let them only see us while we wear the mask.

(16:39):
In this poem, Paul Dunbar is illuminating a coping strategy,
a a survival mechanism for Black Americans in order to
survive in white America. Dunbar is telling us that Black
Americans need to wear a mask. They need to hide
their anger, hide their frustration and their rage. Black Americans

(17:02):
need to wear a mask that will make them presentable
and acceptable to white Americans. Otherwise there might be repercussions,
severe repercussions. Let me put this even more bluntly. Dunbar
is saying that on the surface, Black Americans need to
be what white Americans want them to be. They need

(17:24):
to play the role of the so called in quotes,
good negro. I mean, that's the term people use back then.
Now you know who didn't wear the mask? Jack Johnson.
Jack Johnson did not wear the mask. He did and
he said what he wanted and he went to prison
for it. But Joe Louis is going to wear the mask.

(17:45):
He's going to present an image to white Americans that
they were comfortable with. Joe Louis was managed by a
white promoter named Mike Jacobs, and Mike Jacobs concocted a
series of rules that Joe Louis had to follow, rules
that he had to obey both inside and outside of
the ring. And these were rules that were put in

(18:05):
place to convince the public, specifically that Joe Louis was
not another Jack Johnson. Inside the ring, Joe Louis was
never to ridicule his opponents. He was never to gloat
or stand over them after knocking them down. In fact,
he was always supposed to go check on them after
he knocked them out. Outside of the ring, he was

(18:26):
supposed to be a model black citizen. He was supposed
to be, to use kind of a loaded term, respectable.
He was never to be seen entering a bar or
a saloon alone, for example, And most of all, he
was never ever to be photographed with white women. After all,
that had been Jack Johnson's greatest transgression, and Joe Louis

(18:51):
played by these rules. He literally played by the rules
of white America. And as he progressed through the heavyweight ranks,
the white press will they fell in love with this quiet,
unassuming l behaved young man. This, this anti Jack Johnson.
Joe Louis gained the respect and the admiration of the

(19:14):
nation's white sports writers and sports fans, but his race, right,
his blackness, was always at the forefront. White sports writers,
they heat the slew of nicknames on Joe Louis. He
was the Black Menace, the Dark Destroyer, the Tan Tornado,
the Golden Puma, and the brown Bomber. And it was

(19:37):
this last name, the Brown Bomber, that's stuck. So Joe
Louis was a great respected fighter, yes, but for many
Americans he was a black fighter first and foremost. But
then came his fights against the German Max Schmelling. Their

(19:58):
first fight took place in June of n six and
it was not a title fight. Neither of them were
the heavyweight champion it Lewis was working his way toward
the championship and this was expected to be just another
fight along the way. Max Schmelling was the champion of Europe.
He was good, but Hitler's Nazi Party they had little
faith in Schmelling. They did not really support Smelling as

(20:20):
they did not think he would beat Joe Lewis. In fact,
the Nazis were annoyed that Max Schmelling was as they sought,
lowering himself to fight a black man. But then Max
Schmelling shocked everyone and won the fight. Smelling battered Joe Lewis.
He he knocked out Joe Louis in the twelfth round.
It's considered one of the great upsets in boxing history.

(20:44):
And suddenly the Nazi propaganda machine they hailed Max Smelling
as a hero. Here was proof. They argued that the
Aryan race was dominant and the Black race inferior. Joe
Louis was was crushed. Black Americans were crushed. The four
gold medals won by Jesse Owen two months after this

(21:06):
bout will that ease the pain a little bit. But
Joe Louis was the great Black hope, not Jesse Owens.
Joe Louis recommitted himself. He trained religiously, he fought frequently.
He won seven fights in eight months. It was an
absolutely furious pace. And then he got the chance to

(21:28):
fight for the title. As I told you, neither Lewis
nor Schmelling had been the champ when they fought in
ninety six. The champion was a fairly unimpressive American fighter
named Jimmy Braddock, a guy known as the Cinderella Man,
and the thought was that whoever got to fight Braddock first,

(21:48):
Smelling or Lewis, he would win the fight and win
the title. Well, since Smelling beat Louis, it probably should
have been Smelling who got the chance to fight Jimmy
Braddock first, But Lewis's promoters feared that if Smelling won
the title, he would take the title to Germany, where
Hitler would use it for political purposes. He would never

(22:10):
give Joe Louis a chance, so Joe Louis's promoters they
bribed Jimmy Braddock to fight Louis. To convince Braddock to
fight Louis, they promised Braddock all of Joe Louis's share
of the fight. Braddock would get one cent of the
money from their fight. Jimmy Braddock thought about it and

(22:32):
said not enough, so they offered, on top of that,
to give Jimmy Braddock ten of the proceeds from all
of Joe Louis's fights for the next ten years. This
was too sweet of a deal for Jimmy Braddock to
pass up. I mean, win or lose, he makes money,
so Joe Louis and Jimmy Braddock. They fought in June

(22:55):
of seven in Chicago. For the first time in over
two decades, a black man was fighting for the heavyweight title,
and Joe Lewis one with an eighth round knockout, the
first black man since Jack Johnson to be heavyweight champion.
Black Americans rejoiced, but Joe Louis said, wait a minute,

(23:16):
I'm not the real champion until I beat Max Schmelling.
So the rematch against Schmelling was set for June of
eight in Yankee Stadium. And by the summer of ninety eight,
many of Adolf Hitler's intentions they were clear. His racist

(23:37):
policies against Jews were clear, though the exterminations had yet
to begin. His militarism and expansionism were clear. Three months earlier,
the Nazi war machine had taken control of Austria, and
it was in this context of heightened international tensions that
something very interesting happened. In the eyes of many white Americans.

(24:00):
This black American fighter, the brown bomber, he became one
of them. He became one hundred percent American. Just as
the Nazis said that Schmelling represented them. White Americans said
that Joe Louis represented America, he represented the United States
and democracy. And we've been talking about how tribal boxing

(24:24):
was in the United States. Well now almost the entire
nation is united behind this black fighter. I described the
nineteen ten Jack Johnson Jim Jefferies fight as the most
significant sporting event in American history. I think this is
the most anticipated sporting event in American history. And if

(24:47):
you had tickets for the fight at Yankee Stadium, you
better have been in your seat when it started, because
it was over in two minutes and four seconds. Joe
Louis came out of his corner and overwhelmed Max Smelling.
Joe Louis through punches, solidly landing thirty one. Max Schmelling

(25:08):
only threw two punches before being knocked down twice, and
after the second knockdown his cornermen they jumped into the
ring and they stopped the fight. Sixty million Americans, half
the nation's population, they were tuned in and listening on
the radio, and Americans celebrated like they had just won

(25:30):
a war. I mean, especially Black Americans. This was absolute
jubilasan save me, Joe Lewis, I always like what Roy
Wilkins of the n Double a c P said, Though
the bout was actually just over two minutes, he called
the fight the shortest, sweetest minute of the nineteen thirties.

(25:53):
I told you how things went for Jesse Owens after
the nine Olympics, so let's end by talking how things
went for Joe Lewis after this night fight. When World
War Two came in one, Joe Louis volunteered for the
United States Army. He put on boxing exhibitions, and he
raised the morale of American troops. He made speeches encouraging

(26:16):
black Americans to enlist. He played the role of the
patriotic American. But let me point out a couple of things.
The U. S. Army was racially segregated during World War Two,
so Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion of the world, the
American hero, he was part of a segregated unit. And

(26:39):
during World War two the race riots started up again.
And coincidentally, it was Joe Louis's hometown of Detroit that
saw the most significant of these riots. Black Americans were
moving into Detroit to work in the factories, and tensions
were high as whites in the city, they resented blacks
moving into their city and taking jobs. These tensions erupted

(27:02):
in the Detroit Race Riot of ninety three, when black
Americans were killed. As for Louis, he defended his title
three times during the war, and he patriotically signed his
checks over to the American government every penny, but he
was still taxed on this money and World War two

(27:22):
tax rates were very high eighty percent in some instances.
To pay these taxes, Joe Louis had to fight well
after he should have retired. In nineteen fifty he fought
and lost the title to Zard Charles. Charles was a
black fighter, and I think it's worth mentioning that many

(27:43):
black boxing fans they never forgave Charles for defeating their
hero Joe Louis. But still in debt, Joe Louis kept fighting. Finally,
in October of nineteen fifty one, when he was thirty
seven years old, he was destroyed in the ring by
the new champion, a white fighter named Rocky Marciano. Rocky

(28:06):
Marciano openly wept after the fight. Joe Louis had been
his idol. So like we did last time with Babe
Didrickson let's take stock of everything we just discussed. I'm
gonna fuse these two stories of Jesse Owens and Joe
Lewis and asked the question, just how significant was that

(28:28):
moment in Berlin with Jesse Owens and that moment in
when Joe Louis defeated Max Smelling. Were these moments of
advancement for Black Americans? Or a better and more simple
way to put it, did they matter? And I think
there are two ways, at least of looking at it.

(28:48):
On the one hand, these were very significant moments because
they bolstered Black America and because they led some white
Americans to root for and identify with a black athlete.
So we might say that it was americans passion for
success in international sport. This was helping to broaden the
notion of who an American was. But on the other hand,

(29:13):
a second way of looking at it, no more, how
psychologically satisfying these moments may have been. It was just sports,
and success in sports was not a solution to the
problems of discrimination and segregation. These victories were merely symbolic,
nothing more. Nothing changed. Segregation did not end. You know,

(29:34):
Joe Lewis was segregated. The race riots and the attacks
against Black Americans continued. Next time on the Untold History
of Sports in America, presented by One Day University Jackie Robinson,