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Author’s Notes
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| • | Joe Louis’s grandmother was an American Indian, but Louis said, “I’m mostly black and I’m proud of that.” |
| • | Joe Louis was married four times, twice to Marva Trotter, and once each to Rose Morgan and Martha Malone Jefferson. He and Marva Trotter had two children, Jacqueline and Joseph, Jr. |
| • | Joe Louis was the second African American heavyweight champion. The first was Jack Johnson, who knocked out champion Tommy Burns on December 26, 1908, in Sydney, Australia. In July of 1910, there were race riots after Johnson beat the white former champion, Jim Jeffries. When Jack Johnson was champion, white Americas were desperate for a “Great White Hope,” a white man to take back the crown. In 1915, the white fighter Jess Willard did. |
| • | The jungle and animal images used in 1930s newspaper reports of Louis’s fights make clear the horrible anti-black sentiments of the time. |
| • | While Joe Louis was training for the second Schmeling fight, he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president felt Louis’s arms and said, “Joe, we’re depending on those muscles for America.” |
| • | After the war, it was reporter that from a wartime desk job, Schmeling saved children from the Nazis. He and Louis later became friends. |
| • | When Joe Louis died, a New York Times reporter wrote that Louis was “probably the best heavyweight fighter of all time.” |
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Among my sources were two Louis autobiographies, Joe Louis, My Life (Harcourt Brace, 1978), written with Edna and Art Rust, Jr., and My Life Story (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947); a biography, Joe Louis:50 Years an American Hero, written by his son, Joe Louis Barrow, and Barbara Munder (McGraw-Hill, 1988); and several other biographies, including Champion-Joe Louis: Black Hero in White America by Chris Mead (Scribner, 1985) and Brown Bomber: The Pilgrimage of Joe Louis by Barney Nagler (World Pub., 1972). I also referred to newspaper accounts of his fights.
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