5。13出生的名人：Louis, Joe （boxer） [b]Louis, Joe 1914 -- 1981 [b]Boxer. Born Joseph Louis Barrow, on May 13, 1914, in LaFayette, Alabama. [b]Louis was the seventh of eight children born to Munroe and Lillie Barrow, [b]poor tenant farmers in Alabama's Buckalew Mountains. Two years after his [b]birth, Munroe Barrow was committed to the Searcy State Hospital for the [b]Colored Insane. When his father died a few years later, Lillie Barrow [b]married Pat Brooks, a widower with a large family of his own. Although [b]poor, Louis was blessed with a strong family and a deeply religious, [b]attentive, and strict mother and grew up to be generous and accepting of [b]others. [b]In 1926, Louis?family joined the African-American migration from the rural [b]South to the urban North. Settling in Detroit, a large boy at age 12 and [b]behind because of his inadequate schooling in Alabama, Louis was [b]embarrassed when he was assigned to classes with younger and smaller [b]children. A speech impediment added to his discomfort in school. Within a [b]few years his teachers shunted him off to Bronson Vocational School. As a [b]teenager he worked odd jobs and began boxing with neighborhood kids. Louis [b]used the 50 cents a week his mother gave him for violin lessons to rent a [b]locker at the Brewster Recreation Center, where he began a successful [b]amateur boxing career. [b][b]John Roxborough, the illegal numbers betting king in Detroit's black [b]ghetto, decided to sponsor Louis's professional career. He enlisted the [b]help of Julian Black, a Chicago speakeasy owner and numbers operator, and [b]they moved Louis to Chicago to train with Jack Blackburn, a former [b]lightweight boxer and skilled trainer who had already taken two white [b]fighters to world championships in lower weight divisions. Blackburn [b]patiently taught Louis a fundamental style of boxing that emphasized [b]balanced but unspectacular footwork, a strong left jab, counterpunching, [b]and throwing combination punches in rapid sequence. Until his death in [b]1942, Blackburn ensured that Louis ran six miles a day, sparred with [b]discipline, and maintained his physical superiority and confidence against [b]all challengers. [b][b]By March 1935, Louis had won 18 professional fights and was bumping up [b]against the barrier of segregation. Denied economic opportunity and [b]political power, African Americans were invisible in America's emerging [b]media age. With the exception of occasional tokens in track and field and [b]college football, blacks had no opportunities to participate in major [b]sports. In boxing, Louis had to live down the legacy of Jack Johnson, the [b]first black heavyweight champion, who had caused race riots by humiliating [b]former champion Jim Jeffries and national outrage by marrying white women. [b]After Johnson lost his title in 1915, white promoters and fighters denied [b]black contenders the opportunity to fight for the heavyweight title. [b][b]Mike Jacobs, a Jewish immigrant, helped Louis permanently trample the color [b]line. Jacobs needed a heavyweight contender to break the Madison Square [b]Garden Corporation's monopoly on big-time boxing and promised Louis that he [b]would not have to throw fights to white opponents and would eventually get [b]a chance at the title. Jacobs promoted five Louis tune-up fights then [b]brought Louis to New York City for a fight against former heavyweight champ [b]Primo Carnera in June 1935. Jacobs skillfully played on Louis' role as an [b]ambassador for his race in the buildup to the Carnera fight, and when Louis [b]destroyed his opponent in six rounds, he became a media sensation. [b][b]On September 24, 1935, Louis married Marva Trotter in a brief private [b]ceremony at a Harlem apartment and then drove to Yankee Stadium to fight [b]Max Baer before a crowd of 80,000 people. Although Baer was regarded as the [b]best white fighter in the world, Louis knocked him out in the fourth round. [b][b]At a time when President Franklin Roosevelt refused to support antilynching [b]legislation, Louis suddenly was one of the most famous men in the world. [b]The way white sportswriters wrote about Louis reveals how novel it was for [b]a black to reach a position of prominence. The most sophisticated [b]journalists of the day constantly mentioned Louis's race and gave him [b]alliterative nicknames, such as the Brown Bomber, the Dark Destroyer, and [b]the Tan Tornado. [b][b]Due to the fact that Louis was the only black in the white world of fame [b]and fortune, he became the symbol of his race to blacks and whites alike. [b]For African Americans, Louis was the greatest of their small pantheon of [b]heroes. Every time he stepped into the ring against a white opponent, Louis [b]refuted theories of white superiority. From Martin Luther King Jr, to [b]Malcolm X, from Maya Angelou to Jesse Jackson?ach of whom wrote eloquently [b]about his impact on their lives?frican Americans took hope and ambition [b]from Louis. After every Louis victory, blacks in urban ghettos across the [b]United States filled the streets to cheer their hero. [b][b]Louis lost his reputation for invincibility on June 11, 1936, when he [b]suffered his first professional loss to Max Schmeling of Germany. But Mike [b]Jacobs outmaneuvered Schmeling and the Madison Square Garden Corporation by [b]offering the heavyweight champion, James J. Braddock, a share of future [b]promotional income from Louis' fights. Braddock agreed to defend his title [b]against Louis instead of Schmeling. On June 22, 1937, in Chicago's Comiskey [b]Park, Louis knocked out the courageous but overmatched Braddock in eight [b]rounds. [b][b]Despite this victory, sports fans would have doubts about Louis's abilities [b]until his rematch with Schmeling, the only man who had beaten him. Jacobs [b]scheduled their rematch for June 22, 1938 in Yankee Stadium. The fight that [b]would define Louis' career was also one of the most symbolic sporting [b]events in history. Adolf Hitler had stepped up the pace of German [b]rearmament and territorial expansion, annexing Austria in March 1938 and [b]pressuring Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. Hitler's racist theories [b]had received considerable press in the United States, partly because the [b]American press had reported that Hitler had embraced Schmeling's 1936 [b]victory over Louis as proof of Aryan racial superiority. Later in the [b]summer of 1936, the Nazis hosted the Olympics in Berlin, and the American [b]press reported that Hitler was counting Germany's overall medal victory as [b]evidence of racial supremacy. The American press also noted that Hitler had [b]snubbed Jesse Owens and other African-American track and field medal [b]winners. [b][b]In an ironic twist, whites accepted Joe Louis as the representative of [b]American values fighting against a symbol of Nazi racism. Upset with [b]himself for losing to Schmeling in their first fight, angry that many [b]people still believed that Schmeling was his boxing equal, determined to [b]win a symbolic victory and personal vindication, Louis decided on a [b]strategy that fit his mood. He planned to attack without letup, not [b]allowing Schmeling to set himself long enough to counterpunch with a right [b]over Louis' jab, as Schmeling had done so successfully in their first [b]fight. In the first round, Louis immediately drove Schmeling against the [b]ropes with a sequence of combination punches and then landed an overhand [b]right that had Schmeling out on his feet. Schmeling instinctively turned to [b]avoid Louis, and as he turned Louis broke two of Schmeling's vertebrae with [b]a roundhouse right to Schmeling's side. Louis knocked Schmeling down three [b]times in rapid succession, and Schmeling's trainer, Max Machon, threw in [b]the towel and rushed into the ring to protect his fighter. Referee Arthur [b]Donovan called the fight at two minutes and four seconds into the first [b]round, with Schmeling on his knees. More than 70,000 fans at Yankee Stadium [b]and a huge international press contingent had witnessed a dominating [b]athletic performance from a once-in-a-generation talent. [b][b]From January 1939 until the United States entered World War II, Louis [b]defended his title 15 times, fighting so often and so well that his [b]overmatched opponents in early 1941 were called the "Bums of the Month." [b]The only significant risk to Louis' title came on June 18, 1941, against [b]light-heavyweight champion Billy Conn. Weighing 170 pounds to Louis' 200, [b]Conn used his lightning-quick hands to build a solid lead on points against [b]Louis going into the 13th round. But Conn went for a knockout, continuing [b]to trade punches until Louis interrupted a Conn combination with an [b]overhand right that was solid enough to slow Conn. A two-minute volley of [b]punches finished Conn with two seconds left in the round. [b][b]In early 1942, just after the United States entered World War II, Joe Louis [b]enlisted in the U.S. Army. He went on morale-boosting tours for the army [b]throughout the war, fighting exhibitions in the United States, Alaska, and [b]Europe, and quietly broke racial barriers in the segregated armed services [b]wherever he went. After the war, the treatment of Louis by the white press [b]changed. The alliterative nicknames disappeared, save the standard Brown [b]Bomber and Dark Destroyer. White journalists now rarely identified him as a [b]Negro and stereotyped references declined. Important newspapers praised [b]Louis in editorials, and the praise had a more sincere and less [b]condescending ring. Louis left the army in 1945 as a beloved patriot but a [b]bankrupt one. He had always been generous and free spending to a fault. [b]During the war he borrowed heavily from Mike Jacobs and John Roxborough, [b]and he had a large deferred tax bill. After the war, income tax rates on [b]the top brackets rose as high as 90 percent as the U.S. government tried to [b]pay off the huge debt accumulated during the war. [b][b]On June 19, 1946, Louis knocked out Billy Conn in eight rounds in a much- [b]anticipated rematch between two over-the-hill fighters. Louis' purse of [b]$600,000 from the Conn rematch was a fantastic sum for those days but it [b]was illusion. Mike Jacobs arranged to have Louis first pay off his personal [b]debts, leaving Louis with an even larger unpaid tax liability. With upper [b]tax brackets so high, Louis was running in quicksand, sinking under a tax [b]bill that was above $1 million by the mid-1950s (it was never repaid). [b][b]Louis defended his title twice against Jersey Joe Walcott before retiring [b]for the first time in 1949. Financial problems forced him back into the [b]ring against new champion Ezzard Charles on September 27, 1950; Charles won [b]a 15-round decision. After a series of wins over lesser lights, Louis [b]fought for the last time against future champion Rocky Marciano on October [b]26, 1951. Louis outpointed Marciano until the eighth round, when he ran out [b]of gas and was knocked out. Louis finished his career with 68 wins, 54 by [b]knockout, and three losses. [b][b]Of the 43 men Louis fought before World War II, only one was black. The two [b]heavyweight champions who followed him, Walcott and Charles, were black and [b]were readily accepted by Americans as a result of Louis' well-crafted [b]public image. Black athletes following his example had integrated the [b]National Football League in 1945, Major League Baseball in 1947, and the [b]National Basketball Association in 1949. Louis opened sports to blacks and [b]helped to make athletics a cutting edge of the civil rights movement. [b][b]Louis's first wife, Marva, with whom he had two children, divorced him in [b]1945, remarried him in 1946, and divorced him again in 1949. During the [b]1950s Louis lived a nomadic existence, making money from personal [b]appearances and a brief stint as a professional wrestler. He was married to [b]Rose Morgan, a successful beauty shop operator, from 1955 to 1958. In 1959, [b]he married Martha Malone Jefferson, a successful black attorney, and moved [b]into her home in Los Angeles. Martha cared for him through bouts of [b]paranoia and drug abuse. After an involuntary commitment in a Colorado [b]mental hospital in 1970, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas offered Louis a house [b]and employment as a greeter in its casino. Louis lived there until his [b]death from a massive heart attack on April 12, 1981. Jesse Jackson, who [b]would later be the first African American to run for the presidency of the [b]United States, told 3,000 assembled mourners that with "fist and [b]character," Louis had "snatched down the cotton curtain." [b][b]Louis had followed a strategy of not speaking out against America's [b]unrelenting racism in the 1930s in order to win white acceptance. In part [b]because of the success of that strategy, white America became more aware of [b]its own racism. In time, many African Americans became famous in sports, [b]politics, and the arts, and the white media slowly came to accept black [b]celebrities who spoke out against racism and refused to conform to [b]stereotypes. A growing black militancy and rising white consciousness fed [b]each other. In such a context, Joe Louis's image as inoffensive and popular [b]with whites seemed dated and less worthy of respect. [b][b]Louis not only had to establish himself as a dominant athlete, but he also [b]had to prove that blacks could compete on equal terms with dignity and [b]without exacerbating racial tensions. Louis accepted that responsibility [b]and performed so well that he became a challenge to segregation. [b]