Joe Louis was born Joseph Louis Barrow on May 13, 1914 in Chambers County, Alabama, the seventh of eight children. We share a birthday.
His family lived in poverty. Both of his parents were children of former slaves, with his father working as a sharecropper and his mother working as a laundress. His father was committed to a mental institution when he was 2 years old and his mother remarried. In 1926, in response to the violence of the Ku Klux Klan in the South, Louis’s family moved to Detroit, Michigan, a part of the larger Great Migration of Black Americans Northward following World War I. His mother signed him up for violin lessons, but a classmate introduced him to boxing. He spent his lesson money on boxing classes and dropped his last name “Barrow” for his fights in an attempt to hide his boxing from his mother. He quickly rose through the amateur ranks with his incredible speed and power, gaining an amateur record of 50-4 with 43 knockouts.
He was immediately successful as a professional, gaining the nickname “The Brown Bomber” from his manager John Roxborough. Roxborough advised Louis to present himself as a modest young man to avoid the negative images placed upon preceding Black fighters. In his meteoric success, Louis became something of a mythical figure within the black community. He acted as a symbol of strength and as a role model for Black people in their fight against segregation, inequity, and racial violence. The scope of his allure can’t be understated.
His symbolism is no better displayed than by a common myth famously told by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s book Why We Can’t Wait. The book reads:
“More than twenty-five years ago, one of the southern states adopted a new method of capital punishment. Poison gas supplanted the gallows. In its earliest stages, a microphone was placed inside the sealed death chamber so that scientific observers might hear the words of the dying prisoner to judge how the human reacted in this novel situation.
The first victim was a young Negro (sub: Black Man). As the pellet dropped into the container, and the gas curled upward, through the microphone came these words: “Save me, Joe Louis.”.
A 2005 LA Times article by David Margolick asserts that this story is based on the real-life and death of a 19-year-old black man named Allen Foster. That article is linked below.
The year is 1936. Joe Louis is undefeated with a 27-0 record, gearing up for a title shot. Overseas in Germany, Hitler has risen to power. The Nazi regime has been established, and their rhetoric and propaganda is spreading. Hitler’s fascist ideology of an Aryan master-race is growing stronger by the weeks, and he is seeking ways to prove it.
Max Schmeling was a German boxer and former champion of the heavyweight division. He fought Joe Louis on June 19, 1936, in a fight that Louis’s team saw as a warm-up for his title shot against James J Braddock. In a miraculous turn of events, Joe Louis was finished in the 12th round.
Hitler immediately weaponized Schmeling’s victory as a display of Aryan superiority. Schmeling was notably not a member of the Nazi party, and did not subscribe to fascist ideology. He even worked with the Jewish-American trainer Joe Jacobs, and reportedly sheltered 2 young Jewish boys from the Gestapo in 1938.
Undeterred by his loss, Louis got his title shot on June 22, 1937 and finished James J. Braddock in the 8th round, becoming the heavyweight champion of the world.
Despite his champion status, the Louis-Schmeling rematch was on the conscience of the public and the fighters. Louis reportedly said “I don’t want to be called champ until I whip Max Schmeling”.
This fight came to represent the warring ideologies of America and Germany. Louis visited Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House as he prepared for the fight. Roosevelt reportedly felt Louis’s bicep and said “Joe, we need muscles like these to defeat Germany.” Schmeling reportedly received a phone call from Hitler before the fight, encouraging him to win for Germany. The world watched, on the brink of total war, as if this fight would determine the outcome of the brewing conflict.
The bout took place on June 22, 1938 at Yankee stadium before a sold out crowd of 70,000 people. Around 100 million people tuned in to the fight by radio around the world, the largest for a single event ever. The bell rang, and a bout of almost religious significance began. Joe Louis knocked Schmeling down three times in the first round before the referee stopped the fight at 2 minutes and 8 seconds.
The fight definitively disproved Nazi ideology and humiliated Hitler. It encouraged Americans of all backgrounds that their strength could overcome the growing power of the Nazi regime.
Despite what the fight came to represent, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling would go on to become great friends. They kept in touch until Joe Louis’s death on April 12, 1981. Schmeling helped pay for the funeral.
Despite the victory against Nazi ideology, the American response was laced in hypocrisy. Joe Louis once said ““White Americans—even while some of them still were lynching black people in the South—were depending on me to K.O. Germany.”
The story brings me to how I discovered it.
My favorite film of all time is Do The Right Thing, written and directed by Spike Lee. If you aren’t already familiar, Spike Lee is an incredibly successful filmmaker who’s primary subject matters are Black American culture, experiences, and history. His other notable films include Malcom X, She’s Gotta Have it, and more recently Black KKKlansman, which won best adapted screenplay at the Oscars in 2019. In addition to being an incredible filmmaker, he is a cultural icon whose aesthetics have influenced fashion, culture, and countless creatives, and a film professor at NYU graduate film school.
Spike Lee’s favorite film of all time is the 1954 film On The Waterfront, written by accomplished screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg. Schulberg’s other famous works include the novel What Makes Sammy Run and the 1956 boxing film The Harder they fall. He was born on March 27, 1914 in New York City, about a month and a half before Joe Louis. A Jewish American, he served in World War II as a field photographer and reportedly witnessed the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. He was even involved in collecting evidence against the Nazis for the Nuremberg trials.
Schulberg had a lifelong love for boxing, with much of his writing involving boxing as a subject matter. He wrote many articles about boxing, compiled in his 1995 book Sparring with Hemingway. He was inducted into the boxing hall of fame in 2002 for his contribution to the sport. Schulberg was present for both of the Joe Louis Vs. Max Schmeling fights.
Schulberg would go on to meet Spike Lee and the two became great friends. They spoke about making a film about the story of Louis and Schmeling. The pair wrote a screenplay about the tension, triumph, and friendship of the two heavyweight titans. The title:
“Save us, Joe Louis”.
Spike Lee and Budd Schulberg repeatedly attempted to raise the funds to produce the film. Unfortunately, the film could not be realized before Budd Schulberg’s death on August 5th, 2009. Spike Lee made a promise before Schulberg’s death to get the film made, and plans to keep it to this day.
It’s hard to conceptualize what a screenplay, written by the combined minds of an incredible Black-American storyteller and a phenomenal writer, World War II veteran and boxing fanatic about one of the greatest ideological battles of sport in history could look like. Personally, I couldn’t dream up a concept that I want to see realized more. Not only will this story make for an incredible film, but it is a story that needs to be told. It’s a story of enormity, war, prejudice, and hypocrisy. Greatest of all, It’s a story of hope.
Dylan Spiegelman 