The son of an Alabama sharecropper, great grandson of a slave, great great grandson of a white slave owner became the first African-American to achieve lasting fame and popularity in the 20th century.
In a time when his own people were still subject to lynchings, discrimination and oppression, when the military was segregated and African-Americans weren't permitted to play major league baseball, Joe Louis was the first African-American to achieve the kind of hero worship that was previously reserved for whites only. When he started boxing in the thirties, there were no African-Americans in positions of public prominence, none who commanded attention from whites. |