It was in the mid- to late 1950s in Harlem, on a Saturday afternoon at a Malcolm X rally that drew more than twenty thousand spectators, that I met the man called “Sugar.” Sugar Ray Robinson was born in Georgia, nurtured in Detroit, and developed as a boxer in New York City. He had incredibly fast fists and feet, and matchless pugilistic skills in the ring.
I was Malcolm’s lawyer then. But after meeting the Sugar Man, I represented him on two occasions on matters of not great monetary consequence to him or to me; however, it was of some emotional consequence to Mr. Robinson. In the first instance, I was his lawyer in an incident involving an itinerant car washer who left a scratch on the Sugar’s beautiful pink Cadillac. An unforgivable, but uncollectable sin.
When Sugar was seeking to get his tavern and businesses on the New York City Visitor’s Bureau schedule of important places to see, I successfully represented him.
Sugar Ray Robinson, then and always, had enough celebrity, glitter, and glamour wattage to match all the neon that glowed from his array of businesses on Seventh Avenue. The Sugar Man was a most radiant personality.
Herb Boyd has done a superb job of capturing Ray Robinson’s life and ring prowess, particularly those stirring bouts with Jake LaMotta, Gene Fullmer, Kid Gavilan, and Carmen Basilio. For many boxing authorities, Sugar was “pound for pound” the greatest fighter to ever lace on gloves. And Herb Boyd has amassed enough information and woven a sufficiently detailed and informative story to confirm this fact.
Because of my limited relationship with Sugar Ray, I didn’t get a chance to know his wife, Edna Mae, in any substantial way, but her life—from what we can glean in these pages—was a remarkable one as well. Together, there was a time when they were an indomitable couple, dominating the social scene and providing Harlem with its own touch of royalty.
In the seamless weave of their lives, we are able to relive the community’s promise in the forties and fifties, when Sugar Ray’s pink Cadillac was symbolic of an evanescent prosperity. Those were the years when Sugar Ray’s glory was inextricably linked to Harlem’s fortunes, and we reveled in the ascent of those moments, just as we mourned their demise.
When I, with a large body of help from Congressman Charles Rangel, placed time, money, and energy of my own, my family, and my company—Inner City Broadcasting Corporation—into the rehabilitation of the Apollo Theater in the early 1980s until 1992, some of the intent was to revive a community that had slumped considerably after Sugar Ray’s enterprises were no longer available to inspire. In fact, the Apollo and Sugar Ray can be compared in the sense that each was, for a while, a singular lodestar that drew millions of visitors to Harlem. And during those years in which they existed simultaneously, the allure was undeniable. Thanks, Charlie Rangel; thanks, Harlem; thanks, Sugar Ray and Lady Edna Mae.
How wonderful it is to experience, once more, some of Harlem’s halcyon times in this marvelous book. It not only depicts a man and a community, but a man and a woman, two star-crossed lovers who found it difficult to live together and apart. I was also thrilled to learn of the close companionship between Sugar Ray and Joe Louis. The similar trajectories of their lives gives the book an extended, and engrossing, leitmotiv.
But above all else, this book is Herb Boyd’s biography of a great fighter, a boxer who compiled an incomparable record as an amateur and as a professional. In my lifetime, I have seen a number of fighters come along who have anointed themselves “Sugar,” but there was only one Sugar Ray, and Herb Boyd places him back in the ring, back in the spotlight that he relished—and that relished him. Pound for pound, the Sugar was the best, and page for page this book matches his poetry in motion, his powerful punches—his fascinating and fulsome life.