Joe Louis was a titan, the undisputed heavyweight champion for more than 12 years (and a record 23 title defenses) and one of the greatest American heroes of the 20th century. And yet, oddly to those of us who grew up hearing him talked about as if he were a folk hero in the mold of John Henry, the memory of his achievement has largely faded from our collective consciousness.
Why? Possibly because, as Randy Roberts points out in his exciting account of the great champ's life, "Joe Louis: Hard Times Man," the sport that Louis strode through like a colossus has been in decline for decades. "During the 1930s," writes Roberts, "in the United States 5,000 to 6,000 professional boxers practiced their trade annually, compared to half that number worldwide today." It might also be that Louis is lost between the legends of two great rebels of the sport -- Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion (and the subject of a superb biography, "Papa Jack," by Roberts) and Muhammad Ali.
Born in 1914 in a sharecropper's shack near Lafayette, Ala., Louis moved with his family to Detroit when he was 12. Young Joe quickly discovered he had a talent for boxing -- that he also took violin lessons (which his mother hoped would keep him out of trouble) seems like a scenario from a Hollywood melodrama. Guided by the expertise of trainer Jack Blackburn and black sportsman John Roxborough, Louis cut a swath through the amateur and then professional ranks.
Joe was widely regarded as the uncrowned champion before he was finally given a title shot. In 1936, while still an undefeated challenger, he was beaten in a shocking upset by Max Schmeling, a former champion and native German. Louis rebounded to win the title, and then in 1938 got his revenge by KO-ing Schmeling in the first round. With the United States and Nazi Germany on the verge of war, sportswriter Joe Williams dubbed the second Louis-Schmeling fight "The Battle of Awesome Implications."
Like Roberts' "John Wayne: American," "Joe Louis: Hard Times Man" isn't so much a biography as a cultural history of its subject's life and times. But "Hard Times Man" isn't sociology. It's a thrilling account of an extraordinary life, one that needed to be retold to a generation to whom Joe Louis is no more than an occasional face on ESPN Classic. There was a giant in those days, and Roberts has reclaimed him for us.
Allen Barra's latest book is "Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark."
