Joe Louis

He weighed 11 pounds at birth in a cabin off a dirt road in Chambers County, Alabama, to parents who were children of enslaved people and moved between sharecropping and rented ground. He barely spoke until he was about six. His father Munroe was committed to a mental institution in 1916, word came back that he had died there, and his mother remarried on that understanding — Munroe in fact lived until 1938, never knowing what his son became. A gang of white men in the Klan frightened the family north in 1926, to the Black Bottom district of Detroit. He enrolled at Bronson Vocational for cabinetmaking, worked out at a recreation center on Brewster Street, lost his first amateur fight in 1932 at 17, and finished 50 and 4.

He turned professional on July 4, 1934 for 59 dollars and a first-round knockout, took the title off James J. Braddock in the eighth round on June 22, 1937, and then defended it 25 consecutive times across 11 years and eight months, the longest reign any division has produced. The 1936 loss to Max Schmeling and the two minutes and four seconds of the 1938 rematch are the fights that got written into the century. BriefHistory has that night and what the country decided it meant. This page is about the ledger afterward.

In January 1942 he fought Buddy Baer for Navy Relief and raised 47,000 dollars, and in March he fought Abe Simon for Army Relief and raised 36,146. He kept none of it. The Internal Revenue Service later booked roughly 90,000 dollars of charity proceeds as income paid to him, and in May 1950 the audit came back at more than 500,000 dollars with interest and penalties. Of the 4.6 million his career grossed, about 800,000 had ever reached him. He came out of retirement with every net dollar going to the government, lost to Ezzard Charles on September 27, 1950, and went through the ropes under Rocky Marciano on October 26, 1951. By the end of the decade he owed over a million. In 1953 the IRS took the 667 dollars his mother left him.

The rest of it was work. He greeted tourists at Caesars Palace for an Army friend who ran the place, wrestled professionally from 1956 until a heart problem stopped him, and refereed until 1972. He collapsed on a New York street in 1969 and spent five months of 1970 in psychiatric and veterans' hospitals in Denver, treated for paranoia that he later attributed, along with the collapse, to cocaine. Schmeling sent him money. He died of cardiac arrest on April 12, 1981, hours after watching Holmes fight Berbick, and Ronald Reagan waived the rules so he could be buried at Arlington with full military honors nine days later. Detroit hung a bronze fist downtown in his name in October 1986.

Joe Louis's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Louis versus Braddock other
  The eighth-round knockout that took the heavyweight title 1937
• Louis versus Schmeling II other
  Two minutes and four seconds, with three knockdowns and a towel 1938
• Army exhibition tour mission
  96 exhibitions before two million soldiers, across more than 22,000 miles 1942

• 1926 aged ~12 The family leaves Alabama for Detroit after Klansmen threaten them
• 1932 aged ~18 Loses his first amateur fight at 17 He finished as an amateur at 50 and 4, with 43 knockouts.
• July 4, 1934 aged 20 Turns professional and knocks out Jack Kracken for 59 dollars
• June 19, 1936 aged 22 Knocked out in the 12th round by Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium
• June 22, 1937 aged 23 Takes the heavyweight title from James J. Braddock in Chicago
• June 22, 1938 aged 24 Stops Schmeling in two minutes and four seconds
• January 10, 1942 aged 27 Enlists as a private at Camp Upton, the day after fighting for Navy Relief
• May 1950 aged 35 The completed IRS audit puts his debt above 500,000 dollars He returned to the ring with all net proceeds assigned to the government.
• April 12, 1981 aged 66 Dies of cardiac arrest near Las Vegas

• Jack Johnson 1878–1946
  First Black world heavyweight boxing champion whose reign provoked national controversy over race and sport. the champion his handlers built him against
• Jackie Robinson 1919–1972
  First African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier. helped him into officer candidate school
• Muhammad Ali 1942–2016
  Boxing legend and cultural icon known for his athletic brilliance and principled stance against the Vietnam War draft. took the title and the argument further
• Ronald Reagan 1911–2004
  40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics. waived the rules for his burial
• Arthur Ashe 1943–1993
  Tennis champion and activist who broke racial barriers and advocated for education, civil rights, and AIDS awareness. later in the same role