Joe Louis, The Brown Bomber - Detroit, MI.
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Team--B
N 42° 19.638 W 083° 02.904
17T E 331225 N 4688148
Located inside of Cobo Hall at the front Washington Street entrances.
Waymark Code: WM831V
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 01/18/2010
Views: 9
Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981), better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis helped elevate boxing from a nadir in popularity in the post-Jack Dempsey era by establishing a reputation as an honest, hardworking fighter at a time when the sport was dominated by gambling interests. Louis's championship reign lasted 140 consecutive months, during which he participated in 27 championship fights, including 25 successful title defenses – all records for the heavyweight division. In 2005, Louis was named the greatest heavyweight of all time by the International Boxing Research Organization, and was ranked number one on Ring Magazine's list of 100 Greatest Punchers of All Time.
Louis was born on May 13, 1914 in a ramshackle dwelling about six miles northwest of La Fayette, in rural Chambers County, Alabama. Louis was the son of Munroe Barrow and Lillie (Reese) Barrow, and seventh of eight children. He weighed 11 pounds at birth. Both Louis's parents were the children of former slaves, alternating between sharecropping and rental farming. Munroe was predominantly African American with some white ancestry, while Lillie was half Cherokee.
In 1926, shaken by an altercation with the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family moved to Detroit, Michigan, forming part of the post-World War I Great Migration. Joe's brother worked for Ford Motor Company (where Joe would himself work for a time at the River Rouge Plant) and the family settled into a home at 2700 Catherine (now Madison) Street in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood.
Louis attended Bronson Vocational School for a time to learn cabinet-making, and his mother attempted to get Joe interested in playing the violin.
Louis's amateur debut, probably in early 1932, came as a light-heavyweight at age 17. A legend exists that before the fight Louis, only barely literate, wrote his name so large that there was no room for his last name "Barrow" – as a result becoming known as "Joe Louis" for the remainder of his boxing career.
The artist for this statue is Ed Hamilton and was completed in 1987.
URL of the statue: Not listed
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