The Great Depression; Interview with Shirley Povich. Part 1

INTERVIEWER:

Ready? OK, my first question is, in the early '30s before Joe Louis, before he came around, what kind of press coverage did they have for, was there for black athletes?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Well actually not much. Before Joe Louis you have to understand that the imminent black outside of Jesse Owens, he was to come along, was Harry Wills, the great heavyweight-contending black, and the matter of a record that both Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney refused to fight a black. Actually, it wasn't their preference. They were willing to fight Harry Wills, but Promoter Tex Rickard, with his background in race relations, was simply scared of what might develop with black versus white for the heavyweight title, and heaven forgive the black man win. So Harry Wills and other blacks were, were excluded. The blacks, as you know, were excluded in baseball, they were simply shoved aside and put aside, and if you speak of coverage of the blacks, there virtually wasn't any until Jesse Owens I think first came along, came along behind Louis. Jesse Owens and Joe Louis gave America an awareness, a new awareness of blacks as athletes.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, thank you. What was it about, you know, before Har-, even before Harry Wills was of course Jack Johnson, what was it about Jack Johnson that made the heavyweight, the boxing establishment say \"never again\" to a black champion?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

I'm not so sure that the American people said \"never again\" following the scandals of Jack Johnson, who presented the worst kind of image for the blacks with, what his white slavery conditions and his arrogance, all against a background in the years when there was a division of the races, a great division of the races. And as you know, when he knocked out Jim Jeffries in 1910 in Reno, there were riots all over the country, and blacks were lynched, and some whites were killed, you shouldn't joke about this. But this stigmatized the blacks as championship contenders, it wasn't going to happen. May I say that, that aside from Johnson, blacks really had no great future as fighters because all champions were white and promoters weren't eager to give the black men a chance to fight for the title, and they were reduced to fighting in what they call the undercard, the semi-finals, and even less. And I remember speaking to one promoter [laughs] in Washington, Goldie Ahearn, and he says, \"Good-looking, black fighter,\" and I says, \"Two, had a great semi-final fight between two blacks, and rather it wasn't a great fight, it was a dull fight.\" And I say, \"It was a lousy fight,\" and he says, \"Yes, you know,\" he says, \"they have no incentive for fighting,\" he says, \"They know they'll never get a main bout, and so they go in there and they fight a very listless fight, the idea of not getting hurt.\" I asked him, \"Well, how do they manage this? They don't know each other, they haven't met each other. How can they say we're going to take it easy in here?\" And he says, \"Well, blacks having no future in prize fighting,\" he says, \"they talk with their eyes.\" And I, [laughs] I have this memory of blacks being doomed to so called preliminaries and undercards.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, so what was it about Joe Louis that changed all that?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Well, let us consider, we probably could say of Joe Louis that he came along—probably without realizing—advancing the cause of race relations, as I say without knowing it, because Joe Louis was accepted as what they would call in those times, The Good Negro. Joe was likable, he was let's say illiterate, he couldn't hardly write a name and he read not at all, but there was no sense of misbehaving, and he was modest, and he was knocking out all these other people, and he bragged not at all, and boasted not at all, a big contrast with the arrogance of Mike Tyson. And so Joe Louis got an acceptance, I do believe, that no other black athlete ever got. And in his own way, I say, he advanced the cause of race relations probably in a greater degree than anybody before Martin Luther King came along. And I think that this acceptance of Joe Louis by the American people was a watershed, or a landmark, or whatever you want to call it.

INTERVIEWER:

Did the American people accept him at first, or was he first just, did it take the American people awhile to accept him, white people, did it take them awhile to accept them?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

In the Joe Louis case it seems that he was accepted quite quickly because of his nice, young-fellow presence. He knocked out other fighters and he boasted not at all, and even when, for example, he had to go into the service, what reflected Joe Louis was his comment about war, who would win the war, and that's when he said, \"We win, God's on our side,\" and these kinds of little comments endeared himself to the American people.

INTERVIEWER:

How did you first hear of him? I mean, he was out in the Midwest somewhere, how did you first hear of Joe Louis?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Well, he was out there in Detroit fighting preliminaries and winning some amateur fights, which didn't put him to the forefront at all, but when he turned pro, went to John Roxborough, and he started knocking out everybody he met, then there was a, an awareness. It was almost immediate and unlike the fighters of the modern times who fought once, twice, three times a year, Joe Louis fought five, six, seven times a month, you couldn't keep him out of the public. And with his progression undefeated as he was, he, as I say, became a presence on the scene, and then he began to fight the better fighters, Primo Carnera, Max Baer, and all those who were outstanding, and Max Schmeling at a later date, and to his great misfortune in the first fight when-

INTERVIEWER:

We'll get on to that fight when we-

SHIRLEY POVICH:

This was, the awareness of Joe Louis was as simple a progression of interest in what this young, black man was doing.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, how did the black, how did the boxing establishment—the boxing establishment—react to the fact that he had an all black management team? Was that unusual at that time, that you know, Roxborough, and Blackburn, and Julian Black, they were all black? Was that unusual, and how did, how did the press and the boxing establishment react to that?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

The fact that Joe Louis had an all black coterie, or company, or what you wanna call it, manager, trainer, fighter, all black, seemed to have no impact whatsoever on the American people, the American press. And may I say too that perhaps the American press was a little more in advance of the American people in the acceptance of Joe Louis, and well just broadly in race relation affairs. No, the fact that he, no white man was involved with Joe Louis was of no importance in the boxing scene.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, can you cut for a second?

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

Can you tell me about the first time you saw Joe Louis fight, and which fight it was, and whether he impressed you or how he impressed you?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

I'm not certain which fight it was, but I know what my impressions were of Joe Louis. Joe Louis, to begin with, was I think the calmest fighter I ever saw. He didn't come raging out his corner, and walk across the ring, and begin somersault. He simply walked out to mid-ring, and stalked you for a little bit, and holding that left hand high, and beginning with a little jab, and the next thing that you had to wait for was that right cross that knocked everybody out. You had to see Joe Louis' strength. I talked to one of his sparring partners, whose name I believe was Jack McCarthy. Jack McCarthy was almost as big as Louis and Jack McCarthy says, \"He's the strongest man I've ever known.\" And he says, \"I've been sparring partners with so many heavyweights and Joe Louis would have his arms extended under my armpits and lift me off the floor with his own arms extended. That is how strong he was.\" And everybody knows this question: Was he the hardest hitter in the history of boxing?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Probably so.

You had to be impressed with all of these things when you saw Joe Louis.

And the interest in him mounted—

INTERVIEWER:

I'm sorry we just ran out, we just ran out of film.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, do you want to explain that to me [inaudible]-

SHIRLEY POVICH:

In Joe Louis' time, unlike modern days when they don't identify fighters as black, or Negro, or whatever they want to call them, in Joe Louis' day there was no inhibitions about this. Press could simply call him \"The Dark Destroyer,\" they would say, \"Joe Louis, The Negro,\" and there was never any qualms about this because this got acceptance in those times, it was so different. And the black fighters themselves had no great resentment about this, there was no insistence that we not be called Negro, we like to be called blacks or Afro-Americans. In the 1930s Negroes as such were Negroes, and I recall an experience in my own office at The Washington Post where I was going in to see our managing editor, and just as a black delegation from some group was exiting his office after having visited him, and I talked to him and he said, \"I've just had this delegation in here to see me,\" and he says, \"they came here with the request that when we use the word Negro, we capitalize it. A capital \"N\" if The Washington Post pleases, we would be pleased by it.\" And he says, \"Well of course I agreed to that,\" and then he aped Neville Chamberlain by saying, \"And we had peace in our time,\" [laughs] simply by agreeing to capitalize the word, capital \"N\" in use of the word Negro. These were the different times. Now, happily, nobody identifies Tyson or Hollyfield as black, they're accepted as people, as fighters.

INTERVIEWER:

I read something in the Chris Mead book where you said something about, even in the news department [coughs] they would inquire, well was this murder a black, was it Negroes or was it whites-

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Oh, I think Chris Mead was quoting my interview with him in which this happened to be a true story, and these were the days of the 1920s when I was a police reporter for The Washington Post, and Washington was a city with a considerable number of blacks, but identified mostly as a Southern town in the '20s. And I would be out on a stabbing, or a murder, or a killing, and calling in the office and the first thing the assistant city editor was asking me would be \"white or nigger?\" And if I said \"nigger\" they says \"forget it,\" it wasn't worth printing. These were those times and this tell you how far along the press has come.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, can we cut for a second?

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, so, when—

SHIRLEY POVICH:

When we talk about the prejudices, and it was wondered whether, when Max Baer fought Joe Louis or Joe Louis fought Max Baer, there was anything made of the fact that Joe Louis was black, and Max Baer was Jewish, and was there any conflict here, was there any bitterness whatsoever? I could've said, I would say certainly no. This was never brought into play because the first place, Max Baer was half-Jewish and unobservant, and became Jewish when his manager suggested he wear the Star of David on his trunks. This was the only identification that he had with the Jewish people. However in the case of Joe Louis when he fought Max Schmeling, this was entirely different because we know Hitler had come on the scene, first rumble of the Nazi Holocaust, and the horrors of the new German state, and here comes Max Schmeling to fight Joe Louis. Let us remember this was not for the title because the title was in, held by Jim Braddock. So, the managers of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling didn't do anything to deter this bitterness between Germans and blacks, Germans and Americans, and Nazi factor. In fact I think they helped promote it. But I do recall that Max Schmeling coming over here, his manager denied that he was a Nazi, a Nazi soldier. And this little information was exploded by a friend of mine, a German fight promoter who had fled Hitler, and I asked him about Schmeling, was he a Nazi, and he said to me in very graphic terms, \"He's got forty-four hobnails in his boots just like every other Nazi soldier.\" So this established, I think in my mind at least, the fact that this was Nazi German versus black.

INTERVIEWER:

Was it, excuse me for a second, was it—no keep going—was it Nazi Germany versus black or Nazi Germany versus America? Was there much made about the fact that it was a black man?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Well, oh yes, I should amend that. I should say yes, this is Nazi Germany versus America, yes. The American people versus Nazi Hitler regime.

INTERVIEWER:

How was Joe seen as a representative of America?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Much was made with the fact that Joe resented Schmeling, but I think that I and virtually all others who knew Joe said that, would say it didn't really make much difference to Joe, he wasn't aware of all that was being done in Germany by the Nazis, and-

INTERVIEWER:

But that's Joe, but what about the press and the American public, did they make much about—

SHIRLEY POVICH:

The press—

INTERVIEWER:

—a black man and the—

SHIRLEY POVICH:

The press and the American public pumped up the fight. Now in those days the press always figured in, in what we call hyping fights. There were a lot of sports writers in search of a lot of topics all the time, and they would relish the idea that here was a Nazi soldier versus an American black, and they did nothing to diminish this factor. And, however, the overwhelming interest was Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling, and you know what happened that night.

INTERVIEWER:

Right, great. Can you tell me about the, the—and watch out for the scratching again—can you tell me about your reaction and the reaction of people to that fight?

SHIRLEY POVICH:

The reaction of the people as a result of that fight, in which Max Schmeling knocked out Joe Louis in the twelfth round, the only man—Joe Louis had been on the floor before. If there was a criticism of Joe Louis it could have been his chin. Few people had him on the floor, but Max Schmeling is the only one who ever kept him down. And this was probably the most surprising fight in all boxing history, the fact that Joe Louis could get hit with Schmeling's right hand. I remember talking after the fight to people in his corner, and after the first round when Joe Louis looked like the Joe Louis who could take Schmeling out at any point, Schmeling came back to his corner to tell his trainer, Max Machon, in the German idiom, \"He is strong, he is very strong.\" Schmeling's trainer, Machon, says, \"You are strong too. You can hit him too.\" And beginning in the third round, Schmeling, a darn good boxer, began connecting with right hands and Joe's chin was a little vulnerable, and down he went. The upshot was that he went down three times, he was a thoroughly beaten fighter. And two things were apparent: Schmeling was underrated, Schmeling was unafraid, the second thing, and the third thing is that Joe Louis was meeting somebody who stood up to him, and this was an off night. And no great disgrace because Jack Dempsey was beaten, Gene Tunney lost. The only fighter who ever went undefeated was Rocky Marciano, very underrated.

INTERVIEWER:

What about, going back a fight, or a prominent fight—

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

We have about like twenty feet left.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, then we should stop.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

All right.

INTERVIEWER:

What I was going to ask was about the Primo Carnera fight—

SHIRLEY POVICH:

Why don't we go back to the other Schmeling fight?