CHAPTER 1: FROM RED CLAY TO BLACK BOTTOM
1. Gene Schoor, Sugar Ray Robinson (Paris: Hachette, 1952), p.1.
2. Donald L. Grant, The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia (New York: The Carol Publishing Group, 1993), p. 307.
3. Coleman Young with Lonnie Wheeler, Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young (New York: Viking Press, 1994), p. 20.
4. Sunnie Wilson with John Cohassey, Toast of the Town (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), p. 43.
5. Ibid. p. 47.
6. Joe Louis with Edna and Art Rust, Jr., Joe Louis: My Life (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 24.
7. Schoor, p. 6.
CHAPTER 3: A HOME IN HARLEM
1. Schoor seems to believe they were on relief during their days in Detroit. There is no confirmation of this in any of the other material about Sugar’s formative years. It appears that his mother always worked.
2. Schoor, p. 15.
3. Schoor relates a similar incident but he names the boy Sonny Leacock.
4. Sugar calls him “Booksiegel” in a Sport magazine article by Ed Fitzgerald in June 1951.
CHAPTER 4: THE CRESCENT’S STAR
1. Interview with Sigmund Wortherly, December 27, 2002.
CHAPTER 5: THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GLOVES
1. Ronald K. Fried, Corner Men: Great Boxing Trainers (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991), p. 80.
2. Interview with Langley Waller, July 2, 2003.
3. Sometimes Kurt and sometimes with one n in his last name.
CHAPTER 6: PUNCHING FOR PAY
1. Kathleen A. Hauke, Ted Poston: Pioneer American Journalist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999).
2. Barney Nagler, Brown Bomber (New York: World Publishing, 1972), p. 27.
3. Sugar Ray Robinson, with Dave Anderson, Sugar Ray: The Sugar Ray Robinson Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), p. 80.
4. Ibid., p. 87.
CHAPTER 7: SUGAR RAY AND EDNA MAE
1. Robinson, p. 94.
2. David Dean, Defender of the Race: A Biography of James Theodore Holly (London: Carlson Publishing, 1978), p. 195.
3. Howard Brotz, ed., African American Social and Political Thought: 1850–1920 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996).
4. Interview with Delilah Jackson, September 25, 2002.
5. Interview with Clint Edwards, November 2, 2002.
6. Interview with Sylvia Dixon, December 17, 2002.
7. Sport, June 1951, p. 84.
CHAPTER 8: THE MATADOR AND THE BULL
1. Nick Tosches, The Devil and Sonny Liston (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000), p. 80.
2. Robinson, p. 107.
CHAPTER 9: FROM SILK TO OLIVE DRAB
1. Robinson, p. 115.
2. John Peer Nugent, The Black Eagle (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).
3. Robinson, p. 123.
4. Arnold Rampersad, Biography of Jackie Robinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), p. 102.
CHAPTER 10: CHAMPION AT LAST!
1. Althea Gibson, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958).
2. Richard Bak, Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), p. 237.
3. Robinson, p. 133.
4. Bob Roth, Internet.
5. Robinson, pp. 137–38.
CHAPTER 11: A DREADFUL DREAM
1. Robinson, p. 141.
CHAPTER 12: A BROWN BABY AND A PINK CADILLAC
1. New York Times, February 4, 1949.
2. Ring—Boxing the 20th Century, p. 86.
3. New York Times, July 12, 1949.
4. Interview with Hilly Saunders, February 23, 2003.
5. Daily Worker, August 26, 1949.
6. Robinson, p. 150.
7. James Haskins and N. R. Mitang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
8. Ring, February 1951, p. 6.
9. Robinson, p. 152.
10. Rampersad, p. 266.
11. Amsterdam News, September 1950.
CHAPTER 13: “LE SUCRE MERVEILLEUX” IN PARIS
1. The New Yorker, September 29, 1951.
2. Interview with Langley Waller, November 4, 2002.
3. Interview with Roger Simon, March 12, 2002.
4. Jet, April 1, 1954.
5. Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1996), p. 68.
6. New York Times, January 3, 1951.
CHAPTER 14: THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE
1. David Remnick, King of the World (New York: Vintage, 1999), p. 46.
2. Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 142.
3. Jake LaMotta, with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage, Raging Bull (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 148.
4. Fried, p. 302.
CHAPTER 15: IT’S TURPIN TIME
1. Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 298.
2. Our World, August 1951, pp. 40–44.
3. In his autobiography Sugar may have inverted the dates, believing his moment with the president’s wife occurred before the fight. He also contradicts newspaper accounts when he said he wore a pink Lou Viscusi tie to match his pink Cadillac.
4. New York Times, June 16, 1951, p. 5.
5. New York Times, June 29, 1951, p. 23.
6. Sunday Express, March, 16, 1969.
7. New York Times, August 3, 1951.
8. New York Post, May 18, 1956.
9. Our World, November 1953, pp. 71–74.
10. Robinson, p. 210.
CHAPTER 16: BUMPY, BOBO, AND ROCKY
1. Ebony, April 1954.
2. Gerald Early, The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture (Hopewell, N.J.: The Ecco Press, 1994), p. 106.
CHAPTER 17: TAKE IT TO THE MAXIM
1. Interview with Carl Jefferson, November 26, 2003.
2. Grantland Rice, Sunday Mirror, June 29, 1952, p. 52.
3. LaMotta, p. 188.
4. Stanley Weston and Steven Farhood, The Ring—The 20th Century (BDD Illustrated Books, 1993).
CHAPTER 18: TOP HAT AND TAILS
1. New York Times, October 14, 1952, p. 41.
2. Art Taylor, Notes and Tones (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), p. 119.
CHAPTER 19: RETURN TO THE RING
1. Tan, March 1955, p. 49.
2. A. Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume II: 1941–1967, I Dream a World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
3. The Daily News, November 4, 1951.
4. Sunday Post, September 23, 1962.
5. Robinson, p. 267.
6. Roger Kahn, The Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ’20s (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1999), p. 358.
7. Muhammad Ali, The Greatest (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 96.
8. Ali, p. 280.9. Sammons, p. 138.
10. New York Times, May 19, 1956, p. 15.11. Ibid.
CHAPTER 20: THE PERFECT PUNCH
1. Grand Rapids Express, January 5, 1957, p. 32.
2. New York Times, May 3, 1957, p. 33.
3. Ibid.
CHAPTER 21: BROKE!
1. New York Times, March 13, 1958, p. 37.
CHAPTER 22: SUGAR’S DILEMMAS
1. New York Post, April 16, 1959.
2. New York Times, October 24, 1959.
3. New York Post, August 7, 1959.
4. Amsterdam News, November 28, 1959.
5. Amsterdam News, January 21, 1961.
6. Interview with Max Roach, July 24, 2003. (Edna Mae may have been a couple of years off in her memory of the concert and the incident. Roach’s memory is hazy about the whole affair, but he seems to feel it occurred in the early sixties, which would be consistent with his black militancy phase.)
7. Charles Nichols, ed., Arna Bontemps/Langston Hughes Letters, 1928–1967 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1980).
CHAPTER 23: MILLIE AND THE MORMON
1. Conrad Lynn, There Is a Fountain (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1979).
2. In her preparation notes for her memoir, Edna Mae calls the woman Maxine.
3. Interview with Kelly Howard, March 15, 2003.
4. New York Post, September 27, 1961.
CHAPTER 24: MEXICAN DIVORCÉE
1. Amsterdam News, October 28, 1961, p. 28.
2. She may have been a few months off in her recollection of the refund, which the IRS said was received on May 15, 1963.
3. Interview with Howard Bingham, November 30, 2002.
CHAPTER 25: THE OTHER WOMAN
1. Amsterdam News, March 10, 1962.
CHAPTER 26: ALI
1. Ferdie Pacheco, with Jim Moskovitz, The 12 Greatest Rounds of Boxing: The Untold Stories (Toronto: Sport Classic Books, 2003), p. 73.
CHAPTER 27: UP AGAINST THE MOB
1. Interview with Johnny Barnes, December 7, 2002.
2. Peter Heller, “In this Corner”: Forty World Champions Tell Their Stories (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973).
CHAPTER 29: POUND FOR POUND
1. Interview with Clint Edwards, December 7, 2002.
2. Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco Press, 1994), pp. 33–34.
3. LaMotta, p. 154.
4. New York Times, April 15, 1965, p. 22; May 15, 1965, p. 17.
5. Art Taylor, Notes and Tones (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), p. 203.
6. Pete Hamill, quoted in Sugar Ray Robinson: The Bright Lights and Dark Shadows of a Champion. HBO, November 10, 1998.
CHAPTER 30: LORD OF THE RING
1. John Henrik Clarke, Harlem USA (New York: Seven Seas Press, 1964), p. 183.
2. Amsterdam News, July 22, 1962.
3. Amsterdam News, July 22, 1962.
4. Sports Illustrated, July 13, 1987.
5. New York Beacon, April 4, 1994.
THE FINAL BELL
1. Interview with Jackie Tonawanda, May 1, 2003.
2. Fried, p. 304.
EPILOGUE
1. CBZ Journal, April 2001.
2. Boxing Monthly, July 2003, p. 17.