Louis thus exploded onto the professional scene, winning his first 27 fights, 23 by knockout, and amassing purses totaling $371,645, a staggering sum for the times. In the first fight of his professional career, Louis knocked out Chicago’s Jack Kracken on July 4, 1934, in a bout lasting less than two minutes. In 1935, Louis married Marva Trotter (whom he divorced, remarried, and then divorced again in 1948), and the couple had two children, Jacqueline and Joe Louis Barrow Jr. Roxborough would remain with Louis as his manager throughout his boxing career. Roxborough brought in Julian Black, a Chicago nightclub owner and gambling manager, to help him manage Louis’s career when he turned professional in 1934. His accomplishments attracted the attention of John Roxborough, a wealthy black Detroit businessman and gambling mogul. Louis posted a 50-4 amateur record, making it to the Golden Gloves finals in 1933 and winning the National Amateur Athletic Union light heavyweight championship in 1934. Although disappointed when she learned of his secret, his mother nevertheless encouraged him to pursue his talent as a boxer. When Louis turned 16, his mother began giving him money to pay for violin lessons, unaware that he was using the money instead to pay for a locker at the gym where he was learning to box. School did not interest Louis, but he fell in love with boxing when a friend took him to a local gymnasium. In the summer of 1926, when Joe was 13, his newly expanded family moved to Detroit, where Brooks landed a job in the emerging automotive industry. Louis’s mother took in washing to help support the family before marrying Patrick Brooks, joining her family of eight with his family of eight. Louis’s father was a sharecropper the circumstances of his life and death are somewhat unclear, but he was likely deceased early in Louis’s life. He became known simply as Joe Louis when he ran out of room for his last name when filling out a form for one of his first amateur fights. Joseph Louis Barrow was born to Munroe and Lillie Barrow on May 13, 1914, in a shack at the foot of Buckalew Mountain near LaFayette in Chambers County. In 1969, Joe Louis was inducted into the inaugural class of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Louis still holds the record for successfully defending his title more times than any other heavyweight boxer, and his 27 championship bouts are also a record. He had a career record of 68 wins and 3 losses, with 54 wins by knockout. His defeat of German boxer Max Schmeling was renowned as a vivid refutation of Nazi Germany’s official policy of white superiority.

At a time when most sports were still segregated in America, Louis was among the first African Americans to achieve national hero status in a white-dominated society. Known as the “Brown Bomber,” Alabama native Joe Louis (1914-1981) is considered one of the greatest heavyweight boxing champions of all time.

Joe louis biography