May 13, 1914, 100 years ago: Joseph Louis Barrow is born in Lafayette, Alabama, and grows up in Detroit. He dropped his middle name... and then spent most of the 1930s and most of the 1940s dropping "the bum of the month."
No man held the Heavyweight Championship of the World longer than Joe Louis: 12 years, 1937 to 1949. And no man defended the title more times, 25. Most notably, he defended it on June 22, 1938, avenging the only professional fight he'd lost to that point, striking a blow against bigotry, and making the name Yankee Stadium famous to people all over the world who would never see a baseball game. (Temporary lights were used: The original Stadium didn't get permanent lights until 1946.)
"You knew where you stood in those days," said Alan Alda, playing Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H, of the time of the character's youth. "Franklin Roosevelt was always the President. Joe Louis was always The Champ. And Paul Muni played everybody."
In the middle of his reign, he spent 4 years in the U.S. Army, taking it to the Nazis again. He was also the first black person invited to participate in a PGA event, the 1952 San Diego Open.
Sadly, in later years, he faced opponents he couldn't beat: Advancing age, failed marriages, the taxman, cocaine, mental illness, and finally a long-term heart ailment that killed him on April 12, 1981, at age 66.
But he remains a hero: He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and both the Detroit arena and 8th Avenue outside Penn Station and Madison Square Garden (the replacement for the building of that name where he'd fought so many times) are named for him.
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