Joe Louis

Hall of Fame

⭐ International Boxing Hall of Fame

Joseph Louis Barrow — known to the world as Joe Louis — was born on May 13, 1914, in LaFayette, Alabama (Chambers County), the seventh of eight children of a sharecropper family. When he was 12, his widowed mother remarried and the family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where Louis began his boxing career at the Brewster East Side Gymnasium. He turned professional in 1934 and by 1937 had won the world heavyweight title, which he would hold for 11 years and 8 months — the longest reign in the history of the heavyweight division. During that time he made 25 successful title defenses, still a record. Louis compiled a professional record of 66 wins (52 by knockout) against only 3 losses. His fights carried a weight beyond sports: in a country where Black citizens faced systematic oppression, Louis's dominance in the ring made him the most celebrated Black athlete in America and a symbol of pride and dignity for millions. His two fights against German Max Schmeling — whom the Nazi regime had promoted as proof of Aryan superiority — became cultural and political events of the first order. In their first fight in 1936, Schmeling knocked Louis out in the 12th round. In the rematch on June 22, 1938, before 70,000 people at Yankee Stadium and a radio audience of millions across America and Germany, Louis knocked Schmeling down three times and stopped him in just 2 minutes and 4 seconds. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had met with Louis before the fight and told him that America needed him to win. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. Born in LaFayette, Alabama.