He Ain't Heavy

Joe Louis became the world heavyweight boxing champ on this day in 1937 by knocking out James J. Braddock—and made even bigger history exactly a year later.

Louis defended his title an unprecedented twenty-five times until his retirement in 1949. He won all sixty-two fights of his career except one—against Germany's Max Schmeling in 1936. More than a prizefighting event, his rematch with Schmeling on June 22, 1938 resulted in a first-round knockout and symbolized a triumph over Nazi racism.

In Joe Louis: My Life, the "Brown Bomber" wrote, "I heard that when the Germans learned of how badly I was beating Schmeling, they cut the radio wires to Germany. They didn't want their people to know … I had the championship, and I had beaten the man who had humiliated me. America was proud of me, and since the fight, race relations were lightening up—who the hell could ask for more?"

Pictured: Richard Benson, born 1943, O Write My Name: American Portraits, Harlem Heroes, photogravure, Smithsonian American Art Museum.