Joe Louis may have hidden his boxing gloves inside a violin case
His mother wanted him to play the violin. Young Joe Barrow, the story goes, carried the case to the gym with his boxing gloves tucked inside. He also fought under his first and middle names, dropping the Barrow, probably to keep her from finding out. The secret boxer became the heavyweight king with the longest reign ever.
He was the seventh of eight children born to sharecroppers in rural Chambers County, Alabama, in 1914, both parents the children of former slaves. He weighed 11 pounds at birth and barely spoke until about six because of a speech impediment. His father was committed to a mental institution in 1916; the family was told he had died, though he actually lived until 1938, unaware of his son's fame. Intimidated by Ku Klux Klan members, the family moved to Detroit in 1926, part of the Great Migration, and Joe later spent time working at Ford's River Rouge plant.
Through the Depression he trained at a youth recreation centre on Brewster Street. His first amateur bout, at 17, was a loss, but he finished his amateur career 50 and 4 with 43 knockouts, capped by a national light heavyweight title in 1934. A Black Detroit bookmaker, John Roxborough, then took him on, warning that white managers used Black fighters up and left them broke. When the Michigan boxing commission pressed Roxborough to hand Louis over to white management, he refused.
His professional debut, on July 4, 1934, in Chicago, earned him 59 dollars for a first-round knockout, and he won all 12 fights that year. In 1937 he took the world heavyweight title and held it until he temporarily retired in 1949, defending it 25 times in a row, a record in any weight class. His 1938 rematch with the German Max Schmeling turned him into a symbol of opposition to Nazism, and he is widely seen as the first Black American embraced as a hero across the whole country.
Across 69 professional bouts he lost only three. Coming out of retirement, he failed to win the title back in 1950, and a knockout by Rocky Marciano ended his career in 1951.
Source: Joe Louis
