Bomber, Assassin, Slasher

In the history of U. S. pugilism, filled though it is with the names of many able Negro fighters, there has been only one black heavyweight champion of the world. He, baldheaded, gold-toothed old Jack Johnson, last week climbed into a New York prizering for the honor of being introduced to a crowd that had come to see the Negro who may well be the second. Presently, Jack Johnson clambered out of the ring and the man the crowd had come to see stood up. Joe Louis (pronounced Lewis) of Detroit, whose exploits in the past year have made him the hero of as lively a ballyhoo as U. S. sports-pages have ever seen, was now about to engage the most dangerous adversary of his career, Brobdingnagian Primo Carnera. For a moment the two men stood with their seconds at the centre of the ring. Swarthy Carnera looked darker than khaki-colored Louis. Then the bell rang and the fight began.

Made wary by the enthusiasm for Louis expressed by sportswriters who only a fortnight before had erroneously picked Max Baer to beat James J. Braddock, sophisticated spectators were surprised by what happened in the first round. Instead of cautiously sizing up an adversary who outweighed him 260 lb. to 196 lb., Louis immediately smashed a right to Carnera's mouth. Because his careless handlers had neglected to give the hulking Italian the mouthpiece which all fighters wear to protect their gums and lips from their teeth, blood began to trickle down Carnera's jaw.

In the next round and the next Louis stalked Carnera, waiting his chance, warily aiming punches at his body. By the end of the fourth round, these had served their purpose--to bring Carnera's guard down, make him leave his jaw unprotected. In the fifth round Louis smashed a left to Carnera's face. This time when the blood spurted the crowd knew what to expect.

The end came in the sixth. Bland, graceful, incorrigibly calm, Louis stalked Carnera across the ring, drove a right to his jaw. Carnera fell, dragged himself up, crashed down again, with another right to the jaw. Louis, an amazingly motionless figure, outlined against the ring lights, leaned on the ropes for a moment. When Carnera was on his feet again, Louis moved in, landed a crashing left. As Carnera got up for the third time, he had just presence of mind enough left to turn toward the referee before Louis had time to hit him again. Referee Arthur Donovan stepped between the fighters and the bout was over.

Before last week's fight, sportswriters were inclined to think that Joe Louis might some day win the world's heavyweight championship. When it was over they took it for granted. If and when he becomes heavyweight champion--by beating Max Schmeling next September, then Max Baer, and finally Champion Braddock--Joe Louis will be handicapped in his enjoyment of that honor by the most absurd string of nicknames, the most dazzling rise to fame and possibly the most extraordinary temperament in the history of his sport.

Son of an Alabama cotton picker, with a white maternal great-grandfather and a white paternal great-great-grandfather, Joseph Louis Barrow went to Detroit with his widowed mother when he was five, attended school until he was 14, left to learn to be a cabinet maker. In 1933, when he was 19, he entered the National A. A. U. championships. In 1934 he won the light heavyweight championship in Chicago's Golden Gloves tournament and the National A. A. U. light heavyweight title. Detroit's shrewd Negro Lawyer John Roxborough, with a small fortune made by familiarizing Detroit Negroes with Harlem's "numbers" games, persuaded him to turn professional, hired Jack Blackburn, famed old Philadelphia lightweight, to be his trainer. For his first professional fight, in Chicago's Bacon's Arena just a year ago, Joe Louis received $59. For last week's bout he got $44,600, of which Manager Roxborough and his partner, a Chicago Negro real-estate broker named Julian Black, get one-third. In his first professional fight, Louis knocked out a third-rater named Jack Kracken in the first round. Since then, he has had 21 fights, won 17 of them by knockouts, four by decision. Training for his bout with Carnera, he fought 75 rounds against six sparring partners, knocked each of them out at least twice with oversized training gloves. Salient feature of Joe Louis' character is his almost psychopathic calm. He sleeps twelve hours every night, often takes a day-time nap as well. He talks rarely and in monosyllables. When he arrived in Manhattan, he was greeted by an army of reporters to whom he gave a characteristic opinion of New York: "Don't see anything unusual about anything here, looks about the same as Detroit or Chicago." He likes to sing but finds it hard because he cannot remember words of songs. The legend that Joe Louis reads a Bible between rounds of his fights is unfounded. He has a Bible which he often reads, opening it at random because he usually forgets what he has read before. His preternatural reluctance to talk about himself or other matters is one of the traits that forced sportswriters into an unparalleled display of nickname-coining last week. Among their inventions : Brown Bomber, Alabama Assassin, Sepia Slasher. Tan Thunderbolt, Detroit Dynamiter, Jolting Joe and Dead-Pan.

Unlike his famed predecessor, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis has no dissipations. For amusement, he listens to the radio, buys ice-cream for his young Detroit cronies, visits cinemas with his sisters whose names are Eulalia, Emmarell, Vunies, Dulcinea. In Manhattan last week, where Harlem Negroes held church services to pray that he would win, Joe Louis was attended by four special Negro policemen for each of whom he bought a present after the fight. Before the fight, he predicted he would knock out Carnera in the fifth round. Carnera predicted he would win in the sixth. When it was over, Joe Louis gave out a detailed apology for his error: "I missed him in my round so I thought I might as well get him in his." Joe Louis' next fight, scheduled as a warm-up for his bout with Schmeling, will be against King Levinsky in Chicago next month.

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