Most Detroit blacks lived in the areas of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley near downtown and east of Woodward. Though the name Black Bottom derived from its river-enriched soil, it had taken on a double meaning by the mid-1930s, becoming synonymous with the “colored” residents who lived there. The nature of Black Bottom varied by its overcrowded blocks, with some parts offering acceptable housing and others unfairly priced shacks. Hundreds of black-owned businesses operated in the two neighborhoods. The nightclubs of Paradise Valley drew such national acts as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. When in town, Joe Louis visited many of the establishments, including the Frog Club, Club Plantation, and Club Three 666.
On Monday, September 9, weeks before Louis faced Max Baer, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to a section referred to as the East Side Slum Districts to announce construction of the Brewster Projects. Approximately 10,000 people, a majority black, greeted her. Roosevelt listened to a black youth choir and visited with the children. She waved a handkerchief to signal demolition of one symbolic dilapidated building and she addressed the audience. “Housing is one of the basic reasons for many of the social problems we have in rural communities as well as cities,” she said. “Better housing makes for better living standards.”
Louis was in New Jersey at the time. He had spent his adolescent years in Black Bottom. The old neighborhood around Catherine Street brimmed with stories about him. “We all knew him,” said Rosa Lee Kirkman Wheeler, who lived a few streets over and used to go to Saturday movies with one of his sisters. A friend of hers had a crush on Louis when he was a teen. “He used to work on a wagon. . . . So we used to tease her because she liked this boy that rode on the coal wagon.” One young man remembered working with Louis before school at the Eastern Market, where they removed apples and oranges from tissue paper and piled them high on carts. Louis’s friend Fred Guinyard recalled peddling ice with him. They’d rent a horse and wagon for three bucks a day, buy hundred-pound blocks of ice, and go up and down the side streets selling chunks. Saturday was their big sales day “because they churned ice cream on Sunday.”
As Louis’s bout with Baer neared, life in Black Bottom increasingly revolved around the big event. The gambling rackets saw bets placed on Louis’s lucky numbers: his current weight, the round at which he predicted victory, his growing number of knockouts. On St. Antoine Street fans gathered at a large bulletin board and debated the stories posted from the New York papers. Russ Cowans, a reporter for black newspapers, doubled as Louis’s secretary and tutor. He wrote weekly letters from Pompton Lakes updating friend Doc Long about Louis’s life and activities. Long posted the letters in the window of his pharmacy. Men grouped around them to read and discuss the news. Within days hundreds from Black Bottom would be boarding special fight trains to New York. Hundreds of others would be joining the cheaper automotive caravans.
At training camp reporters noticed that Louis had matured personally in his fourteen months as a professional. “What impressed this observer was the marked difference in Joe Louis’s response to questions,” said Harvey Woodruff of the Chicago Daily Tribune. His answers were no longer limited to a word or two. “Now, Louis of his own initiative adds whole sentences of explanation to some answer he has given, speaks freely of his coming bout with Baer, and in general shows the advancement in poise and manner which so often corners boxers as they rise from the humbler pugilistic ranks to public prominence.”
Louis was asked repeatedly how he would fare against Baer. One day his Chicago-based trainer Jack Blackburn asked the question on behalf of the assembled reporters. Louis looked at Blackburn and laughed. “What am I going to do to Baer?” he said. “Just what my Tigers is going to do to your Cubs in the World Series—clean them up—and be sure you pay me the ten dollars you’ll owe me when the series is over.”
The world learned that Louis would be marrying stenographer Marva Trotter and moving to Chicago, her hometown and a city where he was spending a good deal of time. Both his trainer and co-manager lived in Chicago, and thirteen of his first twenty-one professional fights had been staged there. Trotter was already buying furniture for their apartment. The news brought a flood of letters to the Pompton Lakes training camp. The writers, mostly women, begged Louis to stay single. Others urged him to remain in Detroit with his family. The local Joe Louis Boosters Club, which planned celebrations and organized transportation to his far-off fights, even adopted a resolution imploring him to stay. Club president Edgar Pitts explained: “We aren’t going to let Joe do it if we can help it. Joe is a Detroit boy and we aim to see that he stays a Detroit boy.”
Louis was in love and talked considerably about Trotter, their wedding, and their future life together.
“When will you be married?” a writer asked.
“Probably a few days after the fight,” said Louis. “We won’t decide definitely until after she comes to New York. . . . Even if I knew, I’d rather not tell for we hope to have a quiet affair.”
Members of the fan club in Detroit tried to get Louis to postpone the date, figuring it would distract him from the fight. Club officer Johnny Tears recalled how nervous he was before his own wedding and imagined Louis might be the same. “Maybe Joe shouldn’t marry for a week after the fight,” he said.
Louis and Trotter decided differently. On the day of the fight, Tuesday, September 24, two hours before the opening bell, they were wed in a New York apartment by Trotter’s brother, a minister. Several friends and a few family members joined them. “Marva was too beautiful and sweet,” said Louis. “She looked like something you’d see in a fairytale book.” Immediately after, he left for Yankee Stadium.
The loss to Jim Braddock had humbled Max Baer. He no longer spouted off about how he would destroy Louis. He respected him. Leading up to the bout, Baer had limited his clowning and trained seriously. He had engaged sparring partners who had faced Louis and had consulted the advisors of Louis’s previous victims. Baer knew that a second straight loss would severely limit his income, if not end his career. In the days before the match Baer had gone back and forth on his projections, sometimes mildly predicting victory, other times being ambiguous about the outcome. More than a few observers thought he was scared. Baer had, after all, seen the Brown Bomber demolish opponents.
At Yankee Stadium, hours before the encounter, Baer threatened to cancel if the boxing commissioner didn’t waive the rules and allow extra padding in his gloves over his knuckles. “These are the gloves we’ll use or there will be no fight,” Baer said before storming off to his hotel with his entourage. Louis had come too far for the fight to be scrubbed. “Give Max anything he wants,” his co-manager Julian Black told the commissioner. “We don’t care.” Later the open-air stadium filled with 84,000 paying customers and possibly an additional 9,000 others, including more than a thousand on-site police officers. Baer worried in his dressing room. He told ex-champ Jack Dempsey, who had been working with him, that his hand was injured. He didn’t want to fight Louis. “He’ll slaughter me,” Baer said. Dempsey told him it didn’t matter if both hands were broken. “You’re not quitting now,” Dempsey said.
The Louis-Baer event was huge, spectacularly so for a nontitle bout. The gate approached a million dollars. Around the ring, which had been erected near second base and was flooded in light, an army of celebrities congregated. There were major stars of sports, entertainment, and politics: former president Herbert Hoover; governors and mayors; Babe Ruth; Ernest Hemingway; reigning champion Braddock; actors James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson; ex-champs Gene Tunney, Jack Sharkey, Primo Carnera, and the blue-bereted, gold-toothed Jack Johnson; and so many more. Among them was Mickey Cochrane, a pair of binoculars around his neck. He had skipped a Tigers game and flown to New York.
At the fight’s start, with the cold autumn air above the ring clouded with cigar and cigarette smoke, Louis looked across at Baer in dark trunks adorned with a white Star of David and saw a man “scared to death.”
From the ring an announcer told the crowd, “Although Joe Louis is colored, he is a great fighter, in the class of Jack Johnson and the giants of the past. . . . American sportsmanship, without regard to race, creed or color, is the talk of the world. Behave like gentlemen, whoever wins.” About a third of the audience was black. Seconds later Louis landed a left uppercut. He knew then he had control of the fight. Louis drew blood in the second round and nearly knocked out Baer in the third. The bell saved him. The men in his corner revived him enough to return. Louis finished him in the next round. Baer “fell like a marionette whose string had snapped,” wrote Grantland Rice. He managed to get to one knee but no further. It was the first time he had been knocked out.
Black America celebrated. From Harlem to Paradise Valley blacks poured out of their homes and into the streets laughing, clapping, cheering, screaming, singing, drinking, blowing horns, clanging pots, and voicing unadulterated joy. “It was twice as noisy as the coming of New Years to Times Square—and twice as happy,” said one observer. “He’s the Brown Embalmer now,” said a cabdriver.
In Chicago writer Richard Wright witnessed a bold torching of pride: “Something had popped loose, all right. And it had come from deep down. Out of the darkness it had leaped from its coil. And nobody could have said just what it was, and nobody wanted to say. Blacks and whites were afraid. But it was sweet fear, at least for the blacks. It was a mingling of fear and fulfillment. Something dreaded and yet wanted. A something had popped out of a dark hole, something with a hydra-like head, and it was darting forth its tongue.” A similar scene played out in Detroit, where Louis’s mother had listened to the fight on the radio.
The following weekend Louis was back in the city. On Sunday he and Marva went to Calvary Baptist Church where his family worshipped. Word had spread before and during the service. Two thousand five hundred Detroiters packed into the church. Another 5,000 gathered outside along Joseph Campau and Clinton Roads. The celebration was being piped outdoors. Louis was to speak about sons and mothers, but the mere sight of him at the front of the church caused such a blissful uproar that he couldn’t get out a word. Parishioners crowded around Louis.
“Since President Lincoln freed the slaves,” said visitor Sherman Walker, a pastor from Buffalo, “there hasn’t been a one of the race made as much of his talents as Joe Louis. Yes, sir, he’s a powerful man himself and for his people.”