How boxer Joe Louis went from heavyweight champ to civil rights advocate

Credit: U.S. Office of War Information/National Archives

Leading up to and during World War II, heavyweight champion boxer Joe Louis was arguably the most admired athlete in the United States. The so-called “man with the jackhammer fists” defeated an unprecedented number of challengers. Because he was so admired, the U.S. government used him in propaganda that would downplay the harm caused by racial segregation and encourage Black Americans to fight the Nazis even while facing oppression at home. A new book looks at this aspect of his life. It's called The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis’s Battle for Freedom during World War II. Johnny Smith is the J.C. "Bud" Shaw Professor of Sports History at Georgia Tech, and he's the co-author of the book. He spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello. 

TRANSCRIPT

Peter Biello: So you wrote this along with Randy Roberts, a history professor at Purdue University. Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration for this book?

Johnny Smith: Joe Louis held the heavyweight championship between 1937 and 1949, and he was arguably the most admired American athlete during that period — certainly the greatest Black hero in America during that time period. However, the biographers who have written about Joe Louis have treated his experience during the war as sort of an afterthought. But what we argue in the book is that central to understanding the legacy of Joe Louis as an activist, we have to go back in time to World War II, when the United States government, the War Department, built this propaganda campaign around Louis, organizing him in a campaign to visit military camps, military bases, as a goodwill ambassador, to promote this idea of unity on the home front at a time when Black soldiers are fighting in a segregated army.

Peter Biello: And I want to talk a little bit about what he did during the war. But before we get to that, I want to talk about how the government sort of realized that he was the right person for this job. And part of it has to do with a couple of bouts against German Max Schmeling. Can you talk a bit about the significance of those fights against him?

Johnny Smith: Yes. So, Joe Louis first fought Max Schmeling in 1936. Schmeling was a former heavyweight champion. He was not yet, though, really celebrated by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in 1936. The reason for that is, in that year, it seemed as if Schmeling's career was over and that Joe Louis would easily defeat Schmeling. And so that 1936 fight — which occurs before Louis is the heavyweight champ in the world — it lacked the political significance that their rematch, two years later in 1938, would take on. Ultimately, Schmeling scores a tremendous upset. He beats Joe Louis. It was the first time that Joe Louis had been knocked down and defeated. And so Joe Louis had to gather himself, resurrect his career in some ways. Fast forward, in June of 1938, you have this rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, and they both become proxies for political ideologies. Schmeling now, after having defeated Joe Louis two years earlier, he's the darling of Adolf Hitler. Now the Nazi officials, they are celebrating Max Schmeling because they see the potential of him to win the title against Joe Louis, a Black man who he had once defeated before. Joe Louis, ironically, is transformed by mostly white sports writers into a symbol of democracy. Louis defeats Schmeling in the first round — he destroys him — and Louis is celebrated.

Peter Biello: Describe for me how Black Americans felt about him in particular. Describe the depth of feeling.

Johnny Smith: When Joe Louis wins the heavyweight title in 1937, he is celebrated because in Black America, these fights in the ring against white opponents, he is striking down white men with impunity. Nowhere else in America is that possible. And that is not lost on Black Americans. So he becomes a kind of an avenger for them. It's not so much that Black Americans see him as some racial unifier in the aftermath of defeating Max Schmeling in 1938. They see him as fighting back against racial oppression. What we have to keep in mind at that time is there is no other Black hero who so physically embodied this resistance. This is before Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, but there's no Olympics in 1940. Jesse Owens quickly leaves the sports stage, if you will. But Joe Louis is at center stage for years. Again, between 1937 and 1949, he is the Black hero in America.

Peter Biello: So when the war starts for the United States and Joe Louis joins the Army, he's not gonna see combat. That's not going to be his role, but his role is he's gonna be doing exhibition matches. He's gonna to be visiting bases across the country and abroad. And he knows his role. How does he feel about that, given that he also knows the kind of discrimination that other Black men in the military are facing?

Johnny Smith: Initially, he says all the right things that you would want from America's champion: "I'll do whatever the army asks of me. I'll go wherever my commanding officer tells me to go." He has to go through basic training like every other soldier, but he is segregated. When he goes to Camp Upton in New York — that's where he starts his basic training — he arrives and he's directed immediately. He can't go over with the white soldiers. He has to go with the Black soldiers. So Joe Louis, who lives most of his life above the Mason-Dixon line, who grows up in Detroit, spends a lot of time in Chicago, his career is largely defined in New York — this is different for him. He's now being forced into a segregated state, and I think it was very difficult for him at first. But when he's with those other Black soldiers, they wanna talk to him about his boxing career and his best matches and so on, but they also wanna talk to him about the brutal conditions that Black soldiers faced, who felt like they were in indentured servitude. We have white officers who are acting like overseers. And so that is a very difficult thing for Joe to accept.

Peter Biello: So it seems like during the war, he wasn't vocal, right? He wasn't speaking out. To some extent, there were army censors, right?

Johnny Smith: Yes.

Peter Biello: There were things he could not say. How did that change after the war ended?

Johnny Smith: Joe Louis strongly identified with being a Black veteran. After the war ends, in the summer of 1946, we see white mobs attacking Black veterans in uniform, and Louis becomes outraged. There's a famous story about a soldier named Isaac Woodard who gets assaulted by white cops in South Carolina, and they blinded him, and it angered Joe Louis. And so he organizes a benefit for Isaac Woodard to raise money for him so he can get health care, and he recognizes that he has to speak up. And he gives a speech in December of 1946 where he was being honored and he says, "I hate Jim Crow, I hate the poll tax, but I'm not gonna let this hate control me. I'm gonna do something about it. We must all come together, Black soldiers, white soldiers, Americans, veterans, and take a stand against segregation, fight for our civil rights and our voting rights." And this is very new; this is 1946. This was before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947. Americans weren't accustomed to seeing Black athletes speak out in political ways, to have a political message. And he doesn't see himself as a leader, though Black Americans see him as a leader. And they admire him for taking a stand. And so he contributes to the NAACP and veterans' groups. And it really becomes an important turning point, I think, because Joe Louis now offers a model for future Black athletes to use their influence, their power to press forward for change. And I think that's a role of Joe Louis that's been overlooked.

Johnny Smith's new book is the subject of the most recent episode of GPB's Narrative Edge, a podcast about books with Georgia connections. Find that episode and explore the archives here or by searching for "Narrative Edge" in your podcast app of choice.