Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, was born in Alabama on May 13th 1914, and moved to Detroit as a young boy (age unknown) where he spent his youth and early days running the streets of Detroit.
Louis is the greatest champion in boxing history, holding the title for a record of 11 years, and defending it successfully 25 times.
Joe’s most notorious fight came in a rematch with Max Schmeling, where he became a national hero during WWII. Max had defeated Joe for his first loss ever (after meticulously studying Joe and seeing that he had a “weakness” of dropping his left glove after throwing a jab). The rematch was one of the biggest fights in the history of boxing, after Adolf Hitler claimed that Max’s first victory was proof of Arian dominance in the world and said Max’s earnings from the second fight would be used to purchase tanks for the Third Reicht (altho Schmeling himself never joined the Nazi Party, and later refused any kind of acclimation from Hitler himself… earning himself accolades amongst the Germans after WWII).
Before the fight, FDR told Joe, at the White House, “Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat the Germans” and Louis took responsibility upon his own shoulders, telling the media many times that the American people were counting on him and he wouldn’t let them down.
On June 22nd, 1938 Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in 2 minutes and 4 seconds… and shortly after the fight, coined the phrase “Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit.”
Joe joined the Army and toured Europe from 1942 to 1945, died on April 12, 1981 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery as a national hero.
I love this statue, it’s the much less seen one of Joe in downtown Detroit in Cobo Arena (the location of the Auto Show every year)… the other is a suspended 24 foot long arm and black fist of Joe’s right in the downtown center off of Jefferson Ave, to represent the strong punch of Joe both in the ring and outside of it. The fist faces South to represent his efforts to fight the Jim Crow Laws.
Like so many of our heros… Joe died poor, and at one point owed more than 1 million in back taxes.
