Sugar was nearly fourteen in March 1935 when a riot raged through the streets of Harlem. A Puerto Rican youth, a year older than Sugar, was caught stealing at the Kress department store on 125th Street and was subsequently beaten to death by the store manager. Mobs quickly gathered on the street corners of Harlem. Mayhem was inevitable, and it exploded, and for one furious night 125th Street was torn apart—it was, according to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the first race riot started by black people. When it was over, three blacks were dead. Some two hundred stores were plundered and looted, and property damage was estimated in the millions of dollars. Sugar never said where he was during the riot, but it’s a good bet he was in the basement of the Salem Methodist Church, working up a sweat pounding a punching bag, or doing hundreds of sit-ups to toughen his still developing stomach and back muscles, or above all, absorbing the sage advice of William “Pops” Miller, who had managed and trained middleweight champion Theodore “Tiger” Flowers in 1926. Miller was the dean of the Salem Crescent gym’s coaching staff, and he taught Sugar the combination punches that would make him so formidable with his fists.
The boxing team at Salem was managed by Peter J. White, and George Gainford and Miller were the top trainers. Each night the fighters trained in the basement gym, encouraged by the church’s pastor, Reverend Cullen, whose adopted son was the famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen. “The church was open to the boys of the community and even though the boys were rough, the congregation tolerated them because they believed it was better to have them under good and wholesome supervision rather than on the street,” wrote Linda Reynolds in her history of the church based on Reverend Cullen’s memoir. Among the team members were Gus Levine, Danny Cox, Cedric Harvey, Spider Valentine, Buddy Moore, Junior Burton, and Coley Wallace, who eighteen years later, in 1953, would portray Joe Louis in a movie based on the Brown Bomber’s life.
“I knew a lot of the fighters that came out of Crescent,” said Sigmund Wortherly, a former boxer and ring authority. “Spider Valentine was every bit as good as Sugar Ray; they had similar styles. He was trained by the great Al Smith, who was also my trainer. Smith was a legend in the Harlem boxing circles and he has not received the recognition he deserves. Yeah, Sugar was good but there were several fighters around at that time who could take him out.”1
When Sugar came under the wing and the close scrutiny of Gainford, he was told to add a few pounds, to drink more milk, and to “put some meat on those bones” (at that time, Sugar weighed only a little over one hundred pounds). Gainford’s reputation as the kingpin of amateur boxing in Harlem was legend. Never much of a fighter himself, he knew exactly what it took to become a Golden Gloves champion, and when he barked out his commands he loomed even larger than his hulking six feet two, two hundred and fifty pounds of pure intimidation. Each time he heard Gainford’s powerful voice or had to endure his imposing presence, Sugar would tremble. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Gainford had come with his parents to the United States from British Guiana, now Guyana. He was a no-nonsense guy who expected his orders to be followed without any back talk. But talking back to him was the last thing on Sugar’s mind.
As a tiny flyweight (a boxer under 112 pounds), Sugar fought other PAL fighters his age and weight. When Sugar began boxing, he adopted a flailing, windmill style of moving his arms, but Gainford gradually developed him into a more polished boxer, adding technique to Sugar’s natural speed, balance, and endurance. During this period, while Sugar was processing Gainford’s lessons, developing a snappy jab and a solid two-punch combination, his idol, Joe Louis, was destroying every opponent he faced in his climb to the top of the heavyweight ranks. Sugar would later recall Louis’s encounter with Max Schmeling on June 19, 1936, at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, forty some blocks uptown and across the Harlem River. Just about everybody in Harlem had their radio on that sultry evening, tuned to the fight. “I was outside, sitting on our gray cement stoop,” Sugar wrote in his autobiography, “listening to all the radios around me, but I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My man Joe couldn’t stay away from Schmeling’s right hand.” Sugar and the rest of Harlem—and millions of Americans—were stunned to hear that Louis had been knocked out by the German. It was his first defeat as a professional fighter.
Sugar was so devastated by his hero’s defeat that he took all of the equipment Gainford had given him to the pawnshop and hocked it for three dollars. When Gainford’s nephew told him what Sugar had done, the trainer demanded that Sugar return the equipment to him. Eventually, after getting reports that Gainford was looking for him, Sugar returned to Crescent and begged for a second chance. Only after severely chiding him did Gainford relent and allow him to return to the gym. Leila dropped by the gym one day after hearing her son was learning to box. She con-fronted Gainford and told him that she didn’t mind her son spending time at the gym because it kept him off the streets and out of trouble, but that there would be no fighting.
Both Gainford and Sugar kept this bargain for several months, with Sugar just tagging along to the bootleg fights. But when a promoter of fights in Kingston, New York, informed Gainford that he needed a flyweight for one of his bouts, Sugar begged the trainer to give him a shot. Gainford hesitated for a moment or two, and then gave his consent. There was another problem, however. Sugar didn’t have the required AAU card, certifying his amateur status. Gainford remedied this situation by giving the promoter one of several cards he carried in his wallet of fighters in his stable at the Crescent. The one he offered belonged to a fighter named Ray Robinson, who had stopped boxing.
As he was about to enter the ring, Sugar—now Ray Robinson—was half terrified and half excited at the prospect of being the center of so many people’s attention. It would be like performing outside the Alvin Theatre, he told himself, while mumbling a silent prayer. Gainford slapped three sprays of water from a sponge over his head as if he were anointing him. Sugar had no idea that this would be the beginning of a ritual that would be carried out before each of his fights in the future.
After three frantic rounds, Sugar was declared the winner by a unanimous decision. This bout had been an easy victory. Gainford pointed out to him that some would not be so easy. But the young man had no thought about rough fights to come; he just wanted to enjoy this one—and get the gold watch that he was promised. As per the custom, Sugar gave the watch back to the promoter and received his fifteen-dollar payment in return. For the first time in his life, Sugar had real money in his pocket. But how would he explain this windfall to his mother? He knew that if he told her, it would end the possibility of future fights, and he was eager to return the following week. Luckily for Sugar, his sister Marie agreed to hide the money.
Meanwhile, over the course of several weeks, Sugar continued to pile up victories and money. Boxing and training were soon consuming most of his waking hours; either he was working the bags at Crescent, jogging around the north end of Central Park, or hanging out at Grupp’s Gym—where the legendary Jack Dempsey learned how to throw a double left hook off a jab—on 116th Street Street near Eighth Avenue (Grupp’s was the premier gym in the city until it was supplanted by Stillman’s, which was located on 125th Street near Seventh Avenue before moving to its final, more famous location on Eighth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets). Even before he was sixteen, Sugar was beginning to demonstrate his skill on the speed bags and in skipping rope, which at first he disdained, believing jumping rope was for girls. At Grupp’s “College,” as Sugar called it, the professors of the “sweet science” were such ring veterans as Kid Norfolk, Panama Joe Gans, and the indomitable Harry “Black Panther” Wills, whom Jack Dempsey refused to fight. They, along with Soldier Jones, who would be a mainstay in Sugar’s camp during his professional career, supplied the bantering remarks that were history lessons of the fight game, and Sugar was all ears. From Wills he learned the importance of balance. Jones gave him lessons in basic anatomy. He would take his finger and swab a bit of sweat from Sugar’s body and taste it. If it was salty, he would smile. “When it’s not salty,” he told Sugar, “it means you’re stale.” Gans, Wills, Norfolk, Jones—the black “professors”—and an old Irishman named Kelly were like surrogate fathers to Sugar, teaching him the manly art, but Gainford was “Big Daddy,” or “The Emperor.”
Gainford delivered the lectures in strategy and psychology. Once Sugar was slated to fight a pug with loads of scar tissue, a flat nose, and cauliflower ears, and he was leery of him. But Gainford explained that the reason the opponent appeared so menacing was because he had been beaten so many times. If he were any good, Gainford told Sugar, he wouldn’t be so scarred and battered. Sugar won the decision without breaking a sweat.
Sugar’s skill and precision were improving at such blinding speed that he was matched in just a few weeks against seasoned amateurs, including one tough Italian named Willie Papaleo. Sugar beat him in a close decision in a bout in Hartford. That fighter would later be called Willie Pep, and would rule the featherweight ranks for years.
Sugar’s next big fight was against another unbeaten bruiser, from Canada. The bout was set for Watertown, New York, a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. Sugar and Gainford had just been released from a night in jail, having been detained when someone had accused Sugar of being a professional because he had defeated Papaleo. Sugar’s status was verified after a call to the AAU the next morning. But the fight was delayed a week as Gainford negotiated for more money. The delay also allowed the anticipation of the fight to build, and for Sugar to catch up on his homework, though by now he had practically stopped going to classes.
But finally the bout was held. Concerned about being cut in the face, which would certainly be noticed by his mother, who still didn’t know he was boxing, Sugar quickly moved to put the Canadian on the defensive. The tactic worked, and a blistering left hook dropped his opponent for the full count. It was the first time Sugar had ever scored a knockout.
When it was over, as Sugar was leaving the ring, a sportswriter told Gainford: “That’s some sweet fighter you’ve got there.” A woman at ringside heard the comment and added: “As sweet as sugar.” In the paper the next day, the sportswriter called him Sugar Ray Robinson, and “Sugar” was born. From that day forward, he had a moniker that, like the Babe’s, was distinctly his. Now, the Crescent had a real luminary, a true star.