I was flipping through some GE Show ‘N Tell records and filmstrips from 1964 that I got at auction, putting aside the Disneys and fairy tales and cartoons. Then I started seeing some serious stuff: Indian Pow Wow, the Wright Brothers and Clipper Ships.
Then I came to a knockout: A record and filmstrip of Joe Louis’ March 1942 charity fight with Abe Simon.
It’s rare for me to find black people represented positively in early toys for children, but this was the 1960s when the country was in the midst of a revolutionary change.
This set was a gem among the more than 50 Picturesound Programs in this auction lot. The GE Show ‘N Tell consisted of a plastic combination TV/record player, record and filmstrips – ranging from Disney to classics, history and science. On the top of the TV was a slot for the filmstrip and a turntable for the record. The filmstrip would move upward automatically as the record played.
The record player I bought wasn’t working properly, the sound was very low, and there were a few scratches on the Louis filmstrip. The recording – after nearly 50 years – sounded as muffled as it likely did when the fight was actually fought.
The program was called “Fighting For His Country / Joe Louis.” It referred to a comment Louis made around the time of his first charity fight against Bobby Baer in January 1942, according to my Google research. The GE record has him answering a question posed by a reporter: Why was he fighting for nothing?
“Way I figure it, I wasn’t fighting for nothing,” Louis says in a slight drawl on the recording. “I was fighting for my country.”
It was a country that had not accepted him as a natural fighter and American-born hero, but as someone to be ridiculed by sportswriters from the country’s top newspapers. It had started way before, and intensified after his eight-round knockout of James Braddock in Chicago to win the heavyweight crown in 1937. He defended and maintained his title for 12 years.
White sportswriters and the public weren’t ready for him. Sportswriters denigrated him, his speech and his person. Racial cartoons and caricatures about him abounded. They were waiting for the “great white hope” to take him out as champ just as they’d yearned for one to beat boxing great Jack Johnson a few decades earlier.
The black community, though, loved him. And like them, Louis apparently loved his country – with all its warts. He fought twice in 1942 in charity matches to raise money for a military that relegated blacks to menial jobs and segregated them (This was also the early years of the training for Tuskegee airmen at Tuskegee Institute).
He fought Buddy Baer in January 1942 to raise money for the Navy Relief Society to assist white soldiers following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with proceeds of $47,000 (or $65,000, depending on which article you read). The March fight against Simon netted $36,000 (or $45,000) for the Army Relief Fund.
The book “Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope” (1998) by Richard Bak says the champ told a reporter during training for the Baer fight: “Ain’t fighting for nothing. I’m fighting for my country.”
That comment endeared him to the press, and his reputation was cemented with another comment – both coming at a time when Hitler and Nazism were trampling Europe and threatening everyone. At a dinner sponsored by the Navy Relief Society (and before the March 27 Simon fight), Louis spoke a few words (when and where these were spoken, too, depends on what you read):
“We gonna do our part, and we will win, because we are on God’s side,” he said.
That comment was so popular that it was reproduced on Joe Louis recruiting posters. Among sportswriters, he became “a true champion” and “the best fighter ever.”
He went into the army that year, but the military barred him from title fights. He did not resume championship bouts until1946. Rocky Marciano knocked him out in the eighth round in 1951 and Louis retired from boxing.
