“Johnson down in his heart doesn’t believe”: New York Age, January 11,1936.
“Say, I like Joe”: Ring, April 1936.
“the N.A.A.C.P. would blow up in despair”: Letter, Walter White to Russ Cowans, January 13,1936, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.
“For heavens sake”: Washington Post, February 13,1936.
“What I Think About Joe Louis and His Future Fights”: Pittsburgh Courier, March 21, 1936.
“With the Brown Bomber present”: Amsterdam News, March 14,1936.
“Caesar’s triumphant entry into Rome”: Pittsburgh Courier, April 11,1936.
“Not God, not government”: Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 119–20; Daily Worker, February 16, 1936; “Only six more weeks to go”: Chicago Daily News, September 6,1935.
“half-crazy”: Records, Board of Parole, State of North Carolina.
“report” that England, France, and Holland had sent “secret suggestions”: Daily Worker, February 16,1936.
“darling of the Americans”: Box-Sport, April 6,1936.
“fine suits and a splendid car”: Ibid., June 22,1936.
“no understanding for the honor and dignity”: Ibid., April 27,1936.
“surely no unintelligent fellow”: 12 Uhr-Blatt, June 4,1936.
“one cannot think of any man”: Box-Sport, June 22,1936.
“seemed disturbed and somewhat angry”: Schmeling, Erinnerungen.:, p. 327.
“predestined” to fight with their fists; “A better fighting morale can move mountains”: Box-Sport, March 23,1936.
“This great commercial enterprise”: Reichssportblatt, April 8,1936.
nonpolitical sportsmen were “unthinkable”: Chicago Tribune, February 4,1936.
“In my heart I view this day”: 12 Uhr-Blatt, March 27,1936.
“Max Schmeling will remain Hitler’s hero”: Neue Volkszeitung, June 13,1936.
“I expect to bring home”: Denver Post, April 13,1936.
“You see, Louis didn’t make”: 12 Uhr-Blatt, April 15,1936.
“For me there exists no racial dividing line”: Denver Post, April 13,1936.
“Schmeling is the most famous and best loved athlete”: Sheboygan (Wisconsin) Press, March 3,1936.
“The Schmelings are quite open”: Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, T.I, Bd. 3/II: März 1936–Februar 1937 (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2001): April 15, 1936, p. 61.
“shabby” sendoff: New York Times, April 16,1936.
“If the mood at Schmeling’s departure is an omen”: Box-Sport, April 20,1936.
“my mere participation in this bout”: 12 Uhr-Blatt, April 15,1936.
“I guarantee you, if Louis makes the same mistakes with me”: New York Daily News, April 22,1936.
“Why should he? He’s a politician and I am a sportsman”: New York Evening Journal, April 21,1936.
“Against it? That is all they talk about”: New York Sun, April 22,1936.
“you’ll lick this guy and lick him good”: New York World-Telegram, April 22,1936.
“How much enjoyment can Schmeling”: Washington Post, April 24,1936.
“This is the life”: New York American, May 9,1936.
“I know a way, but I better not tell it”: New York American, May 2,1936.
“I couldn’t understand him most of the time”: Ibid.
“a vest pocket edition of Lenox Avenue”: Lakewood Daily Times (New Jersey), June 19, 1936.
“not only a great admirer of the Brown Bomber”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 6, 1936.
“visions of Barnum and Bailey”: Asbury Park Press, May 13,1936.
“What’s the matter with you, fella”: New York Post, May 14,1936.
“Black Moses”; “something in the nature of a miracle”: Van Every, Joe Louis, pp. 1–2.
“You notice his mouth first”: New York American, May 8,1936.
“my friend”: New York Sun, June 15,1936.
“Mike Jacobs’ pet pickaninny”: New York Evening Journal, June 12,1936.
“Joe Louis Takes”: Chicago American, June 15,1936.
“Ah ain’t afraid”: Chicago Tribune, June 14,1938.
“In his native, untrained way”: New York World-Telegram, June 13,1936.
“These are good colored folks”: Charlotte Observer, June 17,1936.
“Don’t think Joe isn’t intelligent”: Champion of Youth, June 1936.
“perfect coordination of mind and muscle”: New York American, May 5,1936.
“silky,” “snaky”: Ibid., May 8,1936.
“I’m Sorry I Made You Cry”; “Let’s Call It a Day”: Ibid., May 18,1936.
“An enterprising salesman could catch”: Baltimore Afro-American.:, May 30,1936.
“Park Avenue has its Newport”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 6,1936.
“The whole atmosphere here”: Amsterdam News, May 30,1936.
“Now the place is as genuinely democratic”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 13, 1936.
“The only thing they give the Race freely”: Chicago Defender, May 30,1936.
“As she walks the streets”: Amsterdam News, May 30,1936.
“With her around all Louis wanted”: Richmond Planet, June 20,1936.
“exhibitionistically frivolous”: New York American, June 1, 1936.
“His admirers say not to worry”: Ibid., May 28,1936.
“grave error of looking too dangerous”: New York Daily News, June 6,1936.
“housemaid’s knee, leaping dandruff”: Ibid., June 8,1936.
“I’ve got to make Louis look bad”: New York World-Telegram, June 18,1937.
“plain ordinary anti-Negro propaganda”: Daily Worker, May 31,1936.
“Throughout his brief professional career”: Collyer’s Eye, May 30,1936.
“as accurate and as rhythmical as a Beethoven sonata”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 13,1936.
“If you’ve got the stuff”: Baltimore Afro-American, June 13,1936.
“Its attitude seems to be”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 9,1936.
“the same as if he were a janitor”: Baltimore Afro-American, June 20,1936.
“We don’t have to rush him”: Boston Post, June 13,1936.
“Chappie, what’s wrong with your fighter?”: Fried, Corner Men, pp. 138–39.
“Gosh, how worried he is about Schmeling!”: Letter, Walter White to John Roxbor-ough, June 12,1936, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.
“when you have gotten the [Schmeling] fight out of the way”: Ibid.
“A good right hand will beat Louis”: Liberty, June 20,1936.
“Why don’t you ask Louis what he plans to do?”: Middletown (New York) Times, June 11, 1936.
“So! I see you give me a chance to win, after all”: New York Daily News, June 5,1936.
“If confidence were music”: Ibid., May 24,1936.
“fistic senility”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 12,1936.
“Today he seems so vitally alive”: New York Herald Tribune, June 13,1936.
“Reich sports idol” and “spectacularly non-Aryan” manager: New Yorker, June 13, 1936.
“constant upbeat chatter made me nervous”: Schmeling, Erinnerungen, p. 335.
“I’m telling you something: That Louis has lost it”: Atlanta Journal, June 21,1936.
“so-called greatness”: Ellenville (New York) Journal, May 28,1936.
“Them guys have been making a plaster cast”: Los Angeles Times, June 21,1936.
“It was he who made Schmeling a champion”: New York World-Telegram, June 15, 1936.
“By now [Jacobs] knew he was dealing with a Grade A rat”: Ibid., June 20,1947.
“Dere will be no war”: Boston Traveler, June 14,1936.
“In sport, the Negro and white”: Champion of Youth, June 1936.
“A sweaty hog of a man”: New York Journal-American, November 30,1946.
“He knows very well”: Arno Hellmis, Max Schmeling: Die Geschichte eines Kämpfers (B
erlin: Deutscher Verlag, 1937) p. 100.
“Reklame”; Mike Jacobs as “a very smart boy”: Angriff, June 17,1936.
“Some woolly head of a Negro”: Ibid., June 19,1936.
“absolutely not to be broached”: Hans Bohrmann (ed.), NS-Presseanweisungen der Vorkriegszeit, Bd. 4/II: 1936 (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1993): June 18, 1936.
“Well, it won’t go fifteen rounds”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 17,1936.
“a nice piece of dough”: Collyer’s Eye, May 30,1936.
“As between Schmeling the German and Joe Louis”: Atlanta Journal, June 19,1936.
“In the face of this one waits for the pyramids to crumble”: Philadelphia Tribune, May 21,1936.
“One can only ask ourselves with what sauce”: L’Auto, June 17,1936.
“a killing is still the best show on earth”: New York Sun, June 18,1936.
“City of Suckers”: Montreal Herald, June 17,1936.
“greater than me or anybody else the game has ever had”: Boston Post, June 16,1936.
“They won’t even bet he has black hair”: New York World-Telegram, June 18, 1936, in Julian Black scrapbooks, Library of Congress.
“What’s going to happen to Schmeling”: New York Mirror, May 25,1936.
“There is nothing so uncertain as a dead sure thing”: New York Sun, June 17,1936.
“man who came back”: The Boxing News, June 1936.
“Everyone knows Louis is going to win!”: Newark Sunday News, March 13, 1960.
“a personal friend of Hitler and Goebbels”: Saturday Evening Post, September 5, 1936.
“too sure of himself for his own good”: Boston Globe, June 17,1936.
“This guy Schmeling is no chump”: Atlanta Georgian, June 19,1936.
“an undercurrent of distant fear”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 27,1936.
“The trouble with Joe is that you newspapermen”: Fried, Corner Men, p. 140.
“It is not our place to predict a defeat”: Box-Sport, June 15,1936.
“fresher, younger, stronger”: Hamburger Anzeiger, June 18,1936.
“Most likely he’ll manage”: 12 Uhr-Blatt, June 18,1936.
“Possibly the town has come to the conclusion”: New York Morning Telegraph, June 16,1936.
“tripe”; “one of Herr Hitler’s representatives”: New York Mirror, June 16,1936.
“Why let a German”: Mobile Press, June 18,1936.
“The boss told me”: Indianapolis Recorder, June 20,1936.
“The biggest fight of all”: Daily Herald (London), June 18,1936.
“It’s the silliest thing I ever heard”: Indianapolis Recorder, June 20,1936.
“While condemning Hitler”: Amsterdam News, July 27,1935.
“Joe is so handsome”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, June 18,1936.
“Stage parties, banquets and dances EVERYWHERE”: Philadelphia Tribune, June 18, 1936.
“When and If Joe Louis Loses”: Amsterdam News, June 20,1936.
“The white world has long believed”: Amsterdam News, June 13,1936.
“just about the greatest heavyweight you’ve ever seen”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 17, 1936.
Chapter Seven: Victor and Vanquished
“What round?”: Newark Evening News, June 18, 1936.
“Bad day, eh?”: New York American, June 19,1936.
“You gentlemen know each other”: New York Herald Tribune, June 19,1936.
“Now on the scales: Joe Louis!”: New York Sun, June 18,1936.
“Thank you, General”: Ibid.
“Good luck this evening, Joe!”: Schmeling, Erinnerungen, p. 336.
“As the condemned man and the executioner stood”: New York Herald Tribune, June 19,1936.
“too normal, too perfect”: Dr. Vincent Nardiello, The World of Nardiello (Unpublished; property of David Nardiello), chap. 11, p. 153.
“That ain’t no way to spell my name”: New York World-Telegram, June 18,1936.
“How’s about it, Uncle Mike?”: Ibid.
“Go to bed now and don’t get run over by a truck”: New Orleans Item, June 19,1936.
“You can see them guys all summer long”: New York Daily News, June 19,1936.
“raining pitchforks”; “dead fish on his hands”: New York Sun, June 19,1936.
“He worried off four pounds”: Los Angeles Times, June 20,1936.
“The stay the heavens gave him”: New York Post, June 19,1936.
“Max will weather Louis’ early assault”: New York Evening Journal, June 19,1936.
“Heute sieg swelft runde”: Spur, September 1936.
“all golf, stances and grips and hooks and slices”: Detroit Free Press, June 20,1936.
“That was the biggest 39,000 I ever saw”: New York Sun, June 20,1936.
“yawned in the darkness like divots on a fairway”: New York Herald Tribune, June 21, 1936.
“Unlike the American Negro, Jews do not believe”: Richmond Planet, June 27,1936.
“illuminated bulletin board”: Boston Post, June 18, 1936.
“was just something for the fans to look at”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 20,1936.
“Chatted and laughed with her”: Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, T.I, Bd.3/II, June 11,1936, p. 104.
“We’re anxious the entire evening”: Ibid., T.I, Bd. 3/II, June 20,1936, p. 112.
“Night of the Boxers”: Berliner illustrierte Nachtausgabe, June 18,1936.
“We will broadcast the Louis-Schmeling fight”: Nemzeti Sport (Budapest), June 21, 1936.
“a true symphony of rattling alarm clocks”: NS-Kurier, June 20-21,1936.
“Good luck, Max!” Schmeling, Erinnerungen, p. 337.
“I know you can win, Max”: Ibid.
“Tot”; “cold as ice”: New York Mirror, September 15,1937.
“I want to see him”: New York Evening Journal, June 20,1936.
“A sort of premonition”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 27,1936.
“I wish good health to all my friends”: Hellmis, Max Schmeling, p. 110.
“one of the greatest heavyweights in the annals of Fistiana”; “Let us cast aside all prej-udism”; “Let us say ‘Ring the bell, let ’er go, and may the best man be the winner’”: New York Post, June 20,1936.
“sneeringly confident and patronizingly bored”: New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 21,1936.
“Nervous conversation popped on all sides like firecrackers”: New Republic, June 27, 1936.
“an almost insolent confidence”: Ibid.
“filling in”: Connecticut Nutmeg, June 2,1938.
“This baby is easier than either Carnera or Baer”: New York Sun, August 15,1936.
“he iss going to fall for it”: Topical Times, July 9,1938.
“sort of deadened everything”: New York World-Telegram, August 6,1936.
“fairy-tale city”: This and subsequent quotes from the German radio broadcast of June 19, 1936, come courtesy of Mr. Ralf Klee, a German sports scholar, who owns what appears to be the only complete audio recording of the 1936 fight, contained on twenty-seven Decelith sound foils. He hopes to include them in his own sports museum.
“You fetched him a pretty good one”; “I think I knock him out”; “I have him where I want him”: Saturday Evening Post, September 5,1936.
“Joe, honey, get up! Get up!”; “Kill him, Max! Kill him!”: New York Evening Journal, June 20,1936.
“young cub who had been roundly cuffed”: Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 21, 1936.
“The gasps that went up”: Wignall, Ringside, p. 59.
“Those far back … cannot see the stupor”: San Francisco Examiner, June 20,1936.
“Now I got him”: Topical Times, July 9,1938.
“So. Den übermensch haben wir”: Saturday Evening Post, September 5,1936.
“I just remember one pop, a sort of sudden blaze of lights”: Boston Post, June 17,1937.
“like a man on stilts”: Washington Post, June 20,1936.
“
Der übermensch hat ja Gummibeine”: Saturday Evening Post, September 5,1936.
“Finally, a blue, the color of lapis lazuli, rimmed his eyes brightly”: Boston Post, June 20,1936.
“Der wird frech. Nehm’s ihm wieder ab”: Saturday Evening Post, August 29,1936.
“Go on, Maxieboy, kill that nigger, kill him!”: Hellmis, Max Schmeling, p. 117.
“A ship in a storm without a rudder or a mast”: New York Sun, June 20,1936.
“like a tired child at bed-time prayer”: New York Evening Journal, June 20,1936.
“And Louis is down again”: New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 25,1937.
“Up Chappie! Up, boy! Steady!”: New York Evening Journal, June 20,1936.
“there was a miserable, frightened look”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 27,1936.
“a terrific burst of acclaim”: Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer, June 20,1936.
“For a fraction of a moment, the crowd seemed unable to cheer”: Macon Telegraph, June 20,1936.
“Sixty thousand people stood”: New York Herald Tribune, June 20,1936.
“the white gentile section”: Amsterdam News, June 27,1936.
“You, yourself are still trembling and shaken”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 18,1938.
“There lay Joe Louis in an abject heap”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, June 20,1936.
“He’s hurt bad”: San Francisco Examiner, June 20,1936.
“Her face streaming with tears”: New York Evening Journal, June 20,1936.
“a blocky young man”: Boston Post, June 20,1936.
“beaten his way back over the rough trail from Hasbeenville”: San Francisco Examiner, June 20,1936.
“We never saw a gamer fighter”: New York World-Telegram, June 29,1941.
“I guess I fooled you guys”: The People (London), June 21,1936.
“a world full of pinwheels”: Boston Globe, June 20,1936.
“a grotesque Stepin’ Fetchit type of a tired Negro”: Washington Post, June 20,1936.
“Wrapped in his garish red and blue ring robe”: Boston Post, June 20,1936.
“There goes one of them supermen”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 20,1936.
“in vast and amazing plenitude”: Boston Post, June 20,1936.
“Don’t fool me, Mister”: New York Evening Journal, June 20,1936.
“They wouldn’t believe their eyes”: Amsterdam News, June 27,1936.
“Some day the sphinx will talk”: New York World-Telegram, June 20,1936.
Beyond Glory Page 52