Joe Louis by Marcy S. Sacks

Author:Marcy S. Sacks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

CHAPTER 5

“A CREDIT TO HIS RACE”

Louis basked in the glory of his newly won title, celebrating in the embrace of family and jubilant fans. As always, his greatest care was for his own community, and he welcomed the throngs of black Chicagoans who made it nearly impossible for him to reach his home. Their cheers “almost had me crying,” he admitted, and he made repeated curtain calls to the crowds outside of the house. He telephoned his mother, assured her that Braddock had not hurt him, and promised to visit shortly. Finally, after enjoying the “real beautiful buffet” that Marva had laid out, Louis went to sleep.1

Though he had been moving almost inexorably towards this moment, Louis’s boxing achievement still felt stunning to nearly everyone. White people had vowed to never grant a black man a chance at the title again, and while many had already prepared themselves for this eventuality, its arrival nevertheless produced anxiety. They withheld full-throated recognition of the accomplishment though, insisting that he would not be a legitimate champion “unless and until” he defeated Schmeling.2 Black people had barely dared to dream that they would see one of their own return to the commonly accepted pinnacle of athletic achievement. While they unabashedly celebrated, they simultaneously held their collective breath out of concern that Louis might provoke a souring of race relations as Jack Johnson had done thirty years earlier. Louis himself nearly fainted from the emotion of the moment despite knowing that he had legitimately earned the crown.3

The blemish on Louis’s record from his loss to Schmeling tempered the magnitude of the moment. “Louis is champion of all the world except Max Schmeling,” the writer Austen Lake declared in his column for the Boston Evening American just days after the Detroiter won the heavyweight title. The skepticism of Louis’s rightful place atop the boxing world found voice in the repetition of tired refrains about Louis being a “natural-born fighter” rather than a true pugilist. “A right [punch] that started in Africa, grew sturdier in bondage and became skilled in an alien land, slugged,” Herb Graffis declared unequivocally in his recapitulation of the Braddock knockout. “It was a slug. No science in that one.”4 Meanwhile, Schmeling enjoyed widespread respect for his careful study of the sport, and most commentators credited his prior year’s victory over Louis with his particular effectiveness as a student of pugilism (praise that he certainly warranted, considering how much fight film he had reviewed before their first match). Indeed, sports writer Hugh Bradley cautioned the new title-holder that Schmeling “might have knocked you out in less than the time it took you to end that tired New Jersey stevedore.” He further “reminded” Louis that the young man’s chance at the championship would never have existed “if the man who knocked you out a year ago had not come from a land torn with religious hatred.”5 Schmeling cast a dark shadow over the new titleholder’s shining moment.

Louis himself was eager for a rematch against the German, as much for his own pride as to silence the doubters.

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