“Both he and Machon sincerely believe”: Chicago Times, June 14,19, and 20,1938.
“floating sports hotel”: 8 Uhr-Blatt, June 9,1938.
“Only the sporting side of the contest”: Bohrmann (ed.), NS-Presseanweisungen der Vorkriegszeit, Bd. 6/I: 1938: June 10,1938.
“preludes and omens”: Frankfurter Volksblatt, June 23,1938.
“like stepping from this enlightened”: New York Mirror, June 18,1938.
“Nasty Adolph’s oaf-ficial observer”: St. Louis Star-Times, June 13,1938.
“spirit of Horst Wessel”: Atlanta Georgian, June 18,1938.
“Little wonder that he dashes back”: New York Mirror, June 18,1938.
“He made Max what he is today”: New York Times, May 28,1938.
“Jews will not forget”: Forverts, June 22,1938.
“the absolute low-down”: Atlanta Georgian, June 19,1938.
“In Germany, we still believe”: Chicago Tribune, June 21,1938.
“This fellow isn’t a sportsman”: Daily Worker, June 23,1938.
Hamburg would be renamed “Schmeling”: Hamburger Tageblatt, June 22,1938.
“Look, Max, you’re a nice guy”: Boston Globe, June 21,1938.
“If this dirty nigger Joe Louis”: Amsterdam News, June 25,1938.
“an old Jewish trick”: Ibid.
“under orders to speak arrogantly”: New York World-Telegram, June 24,1938.
“He’s willing to gab about food”: New York Herald Tribune, June 15,1938.
“He made his prediction”: New York Sun, June 15,1938.
“May the best man win, for you are the best”: Chicago Defender, June 25,1938.
“attired in regalia that made Hollywood look positive dowdy”: Atlanta Georgian, June 20,1938.
“as wide open as Boston Common”: Boston Post, June 19,1938.
“You can bet all the marijuana in Harlem”: Brooklyn Eagle, June 20,1938.
“I think in our first round we will feel each other out”: Liberty, June 25,1938.
“Harlemites who daily risk 600 to 1 odds”: New York Post, June 22,1938.
“Everything I could beg”; “I think Schmeling”: Amsterdam News, June 18,1936.
“Honest Opinion Poll”: New York Post, June 22,1938.
“Kay, O.”: Birmingham News, June 22,1938.
“I think he will whip the nigger again”: Associated Negro Press, July 18,1938.
“A young Christian Science lady”: Daily Worker, July 1,1938.
“Come early and don’t drop your program”: Atlanta Georgian, June 19,1936.
“hits harder than any man alive”: Chicago Tribune, June 22,1938.
“Now, let’s see”: Daily Worker, June 21,1938.
“a revolting pandering to racial prejudice”: New York Daily News, June 20,1938.
“it is understood the ‘proper arrangements’”; “The cards are stacked”: Collyer’s Eye, June 4 and 18,1938.
“as stiff and cold as a stalactite”: Brooklyn Eagle, June 22,1938.
“Herr Hitler has our title”: Boston Post: June 22,1938.
“the Joe Louis of old”: Chicago Defender, June 18,1938.
“There are a few things of which we may be reasonably certain”: New York Sun, June 21,1938.
“The fight may not go more than six”: Atlanta Constitution, June 22,1938.
“Joe Louis has a big mouth”: Der Kicker, June 21,1938.
“On this point we can agree”: Il Popolo d’Italia, June 22,1938.
“150 Million Will Listen to the Schmeling-Louis Bout Tonight”: Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, June 22,1938.
“full of confidence without bragging like the Negro”: Fränkische Tageszeitung, June 22,1938.
“To feel that the homeland is standing behind me”: Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, June 22,1938.
“Have correct fighting weight”: Hamburger Anzeiger, June 21,1938.
“screams of terror” outside jewelry store: New York Daily News, June 21,1938.
“In Jewish homes there is a fresh pang”: Daily Herald (London), June 20,1938.
“a doomed people”: New York Sun, June 18,1938.
“Mr. Joe Jacobs must think”: Chicago Tribune, June 18,1938.
“New York City has been overrun”: Indianapolis Star, June 19,1938.
“For humanity’s sake”: New York World-Telegram, June 20,1938.
“We have kept Schmeling waiting”: New York Times, June 1,1938.
“a quarter of every dollar”: Daily Express (London), June 15,1938.
“The alleged anti-German attitude of the New York audience”: Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, June 21,1938.
had “ballyhooed the fight”: Nation, June 16,1938.
“As long as people are boobs enough”: Roanoke Times, June 22,1938.
“Max Schmeling will fly to New York”: New York Mirror, June 23,1938.
The German was “Sphinx-like” as he emerged: New York Sun, June 22,1938.
“Next time we’ll speak, you’ll be world champion”: 12 Uhr-Blatt, June 22,1938.
“We find this all a little strange, exaggerated”: Box-Sport, July 11, 1938.
“We sink into the asphalt”: Paris Soir, June 23,1938.
“city of wash-house air”: Box-Sport, July 11, 1938.
“You’ve traveled 1,500 miles to see me”: Newark Evening News, June 14,1938.
“something somehow turns off”: Box-Sport, June 20,1938.
“In him, too, the wanderlust of the typical German”: Angriff, June 22,1938.
“National-Socialist Germany, the sports people”: Königsberger Zeitung, June 21, 1938.
“Germany’s best-known radio announcer”: 8 Uhr-Blatt, June 20,1938.
“Nothing but a dumb accident”: Angriff, June 23,1938.
“the primitive nature-boy”: Der Kicker, June 21,1938.
“I’m just afraid that Schmeling”; “Schmeling will do it”: Angriff, June 23,1938.
“Not a train pulled to a stop”: United Press, June 20,1938.
“Who’s he gonna fight?”: Associated Press, June 20,1938.
“Louis Victory Special”: Associated Negro Press, May 25,1938.
“I can count on the fingers of one hand”: Atlanta Daily World, June 20,1938.
attendance at Aqueduct racetrack was of “holiday proportions”: New York Sun, June 23, 1938.
“As jittery as a bridegroom”: Washington Post, June 22,1938.
“Not even General Washington”: Associated Negro Press, June 20,1938.
“From her bag, she drew an old”: New York World-Telegram, June 21,1938.
“Of course, after the fight, there will be a rush”: Norfolk Journal and Guide, June 25, 1938.
“It is a grab in the dark”: New York Sun, June 22,1938.
“the fight nobody knows anything about”: Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 22,1938.
Chapter Thirteen: The Fight
“To the next world’s champion”: Chicago Tribune, June 23,1938.
“Creole fashion plate”: New York Mirror, June 23,1938.
“I ain’t going to take my pants off”: New York Sun, June 23,1938.
“as emotionless as the corner of a house”: New York Daily News, June 23,1938.
“I’m gonna finish this one in a hurry”: Pittsburgh Courier, July 2,1938.
“not only a menace to his fighter”: Knickerbocker News, June 17,1938.
“We’d better let the champ rest”: Chicago Daily News, September 11,1964.
“I’m goin’ out and fight three rounds”: New York Daily News, July 1,1938.
“I did all I could”: Fried, Corner Men, p. 148.
June 22 would be “very disappointing”: Knickerbocker News, June 16,1938.
JOE LOUIS, WORLD’S CHAMPION; “We were in the land”: Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 23,1938.
“step on it”: Roy Wilkins, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (New York: Viking Press, 1982), p. 164.
“The crowd simply carried you through the gates”: Afro-American an
d Richmond Planet, June 25,1938.
“Usually a sports event”: Original flyer, collection of author.
“I’d like to see Joe Louis blast”: Daily Worker, June 22,1938.
“seemed electrically charged”: Interview, Lester Rodney.
“A Gatsby sort of atmosphere”: Interview, Babs Simpson.
“rich Harlem Negroes”: Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, June 23,1938.
“A sea of faces”: Afro-American and Richmond Planet, June 25,1938.
“in an unreal gray haze”: Box-Sport, July 11, 1938.
the largest radio audience: Radio Guide, June 25,1938.
“listened in at car doors, trucks, stores, hotels”: Pacific, January 1946.
“Let’s not have speaking now”: Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 23,1938.
“To my father”: Mobile Register, June 13,1938.
“to show she was absolutely composed”: Pittsburgh Courier, July 2,1938.
“could come and root for Joe”: Chicago Defender, July 2,1938.
“championship ball” for blacks in Brooklyn: New York Age, June 25,1938.
“The world will hold you responsible”: Emilio Azcarraga to John F. Royal, June 18, 1938, in NBC papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
“should a Negro defeat a Fascist”: Chicago Daily News, June 6,1938.
“There was no doubt whatsoever”: Haynt (Warsaw), June 24,1938.
“Shvartser Bombardier”: Sport-tsaytung (Warsaw), June 28,1938.
“Behind the windows in almost every apartment”: Angriff, June 24,1938.
“the murderous American heat”: Ibid., June 22,1938.
“Hallo Berlin … Hallo Deutschland”: All Hellmis quotes from the 1938 fight are taken from the English-language translation found in the NBC papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. No version of the German original survives; the German used in this and subsequent quotations is my best guess of what Hellmis said.
“You’ll need only one”: Indianapolis Recorder, July 2,1938.
“Don’t make a sucker out of me”: Ring, March 1950.
“a Nazi son-of-a-bitch”: Richard Bak, Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope (Da Capo Press: New York, 1998), p. 163.
“prancing and dancing as a Man O’ War”: Philadelphia Tribune, June 23,1938.
“No challenger in memory”: New Orleans Item, June 27,1938.
“the picture of suavity”: Boston Post, June 23,1938.
“Do you hear the booing?”: Hellmis transcript, NBC papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
“Listen to this booing”: Herbert Swope to David Sarnoff, June 24, 1938, in NBC papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
“the biggest Bronx cheer”: Associated Press, June 21,1938.
“saw fit to give Schmeling”: Chicago Defender, July 2,1938.
“wrinkled his forehead like a washboard”: News of the World (London), June 26,1938.
“Unchain them!”; “Kill that Nazi, Joe!”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 25,1938.
“It seemed that each man and woman”: New Masses, July 5,1938.
“nervous and jumpy as a doped race horse”: Ken, July 28,1938.
“They’ve got that guy hopped up”: New Orleans Item, June 23,1938.
“This is the million-dollar thrill of sports”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 22,1938.
“One hundred and sixty thousand knees”: Amsterdam Recorder, June 23,1938.
“a silence, like the calm of Heaven”: Philadelphia Tribune, June 30,1938.
“Fourteen million brown men, women and children”: Pittsburgh Courier, July 2,1938.
“Look out, Joe!”: Atlanta Constitution, June 23,1938.
“bobbed up and down”: New York Mirror, June 23,1938.
“These folks at once sensed another victory”: Chicago Defender, July 2,1938.
“The Negro swung, hooked”: Ken, July 28,1938.
“Oh! oh!”: New York Sun, June 23, 1938; “Genug! Genug!”: New York Daily News, June 24,1938.
“I thought in my mind”: New York Times, November 10, 1948.
“Did you hear that?”: Interview, Larry Kent.
“half human, half animal”: Wilson, Boxing’s Greatest Prize (London: S. Paul, 1980), p. 25.
“Sweetest music I ever heard”: Philadelphia Tribune, June 30,1938.
“Hitler’s wilted pet”: Daily Worker, June 24,1938.
“like a spinning wheel”: Haynt (Warsaw), June 24,1938.
“like the shrieking of a mother”: Prager Mittag, June 23,1938.
“Impossible!”: New York World-Telegram, June 23,1938.
“With each blow”: Ibid.
“Laughter roared through the land”: Pittsburgh Courier, July 2,1938.
“A red drool dribbled”: Boston Evening American, June 23,1938.
“to smash it like a baseball bat”: New York Herald Tribune, June 23,1938.
“a pale study in vicarious suffering”: Boston Post, June 23,1938.
“like a seagull”: Sunday Pictorial (London), June 26,1938.
“Schmeling was no longer”: Liberty, May 23,1942.
“water ran past the corners”: New York World-Telegram, June 23,1938.
“He was—for the first time”: New Orleans Item, June 27,1938.
“I told you so”: Denis Brian, Tallulah, Darling: A Biography of Tallulah Bankhead (New York: Macmillan, 1980), p. 84
“The happiest people I saw”: Associated Negro Press, June 29,1938.
“Wasn’t it swell?”: Baltimore Afro-American, July 2,1938.
“My daddy told me”: Chicago Defender, June 25,1938.
“Beat the hell out of the damn”: Rayford W. Logan, “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois,” speech delivered at Howard University, June 5,1968, Rayford W. Logan Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. For this, I am indebted to Professor Kenneth Janken of the University of North Carolina.
“Everybody danced and sang”: Pacific, January 1946.
“dusky maids in evening gowns”: Macon Telegraph, June 23,1938.
“Then our visitors walked silently”: Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 32–33.
“It was hard to explain”: Midwest Daily Record, June 29,1938.
“did a fandango”: Philadelphia Inquirer, June 23,1938.
“Fighting Fury … Forked Lightning”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 25,1938.
“Horror, dynamite, mayhem”: Philadelphia Tribune, June 23,1938.
“In every land and in myriad tongues”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 25,1938.
“Listen to this, buddy”: New York Mirror, June 23,1938.
“Mox kept a bold front”: New Orleans Item, June 27,1938.
“Bang”: Charlotte News, June 23,1938.
“I told you I sent out”: Baltimore Afro-American, July 2,1938.
“Donovan could have counted”: New York Times, June 23,1938.
forty-one blows, thirty-one of them “serious”: Ring, May 1946.
“I was in a hurry”: Hep, February 1957.
“Artie, that was the softest”: New York World-Telegram, June 23,1938.
“Joe, you are a real champion”: New York Journal-American, June 23,1938.
“He wept softly at first”: New York Daily News, June 23,1938.
“Reduced to dithering bewilderment”: Time, July 4,1938.
“Some of the noble 72,000”: Philadelphia Record, June 25,1938.
“a little addled”: Letter, R. H. White to Roy Witmer, July 1, 1938, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
“What round is it?”: Interview, Richards Vidmer.
“Unser Max!”: American Israelite, June 30,1938.
“the shortest, sweetest minute”: Wilkins, Standing Fast, p. 164.
“We might just as well”: New York Herald Tribune, June 26,1938.
“I’m willing to eat”: Chicago Defender, July 2,1938.
“Lift up the hand that did it”: New York World-Telegram, June 23,1938.
“Ah sho ’nuff ”: Newark Star-Eagle, Ju
ne 23,1938.
“What for? Didn’t he just have his chance and lose?”: Ibid.
“You must have felt different tonight”: Ibid.
“Ah just felt stronger”: Ibid.
“He never hurt me”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 25,1938.
“I got what folks call revenge”: Associated Press, June 23,1938.
“Ah don’t know how many”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 23,1938.
“Levinsky was pretty easy”: New York World-Telegram, June 23,1938.
“I was sore at some of the things”: Daily Worker, June 23,1938.
“Well, he didn’t deny them”: Ibid.
“Now man, you know ’ah ain’t”: Brooklyn Eagle, June 23,1938.
“Why, you old son of a gun!”: Providence Journal, June 23,1938.
“exactly like a wool-gathering youngster”: New York Times, June 23,1938.
“Nice work, Joe!”: Daily Worker, June 24,1938.
“This is our anniversary tonight”: Bronx Home News, June 23,1938.
“Nice work, Bomber”: Pittsburgh Courier, June 25,1938.
“How’s that for our old boy?”: Ibid.
“giving Father Time time”: Associated Press, June 24,1938.
“Sportsmanship, I suppose”: Bronx Home News, June 23,1938.
“Heil Louis!”: Newark Star-Eagle, June 23,1938.
“He is a pugilistic old man”: New York Mirror, June 23,1938.
“To put it bluntly”: New York World-Telegram, June 23,1938.
Chapter Fourteen: Aftermath
“aus”: Angriff, June 24,1938.
“That was the last word in the ether”: Prager Mittag, June 23,1938.
“That was the last word from the receiver”: Nasz Przeglad (Warsaw), June 23, 1938.
“as if someone had suddenly”: Box-Sport, June 27,1938.
“Shaking our heads silently”: Angriff, June 24,1938.
“a breathless, half-loud crossfire”: Ibid.
“We looked at each other silently”: Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, June 23,1938.
“Go back to Germany! You Nazi bum, you never could fight!”: Atlanta Georgian, June 23,1938.
“woebegone and tragic figure”: New York Daily News, June 23,1938.
“Too bad, Max”: Ibid.
“When he got in his dressing room”: New York Mirror, June 24,1938.
“Yah, he hit me such a terrible blow”: New York Daily News, June 23,1938.
“Such terrible pain. I can’t move”: New York World-Telegram, June 1938.
Beyond Glory Page 56