ABSTRACT
The 1938 championship boxing match between Joe Louis, a black American, and Max Schmeling, a Nazi-sympathizing German, is considered one of the greatest fights in history. In contemporary books, articles, and documentary films, the fight is presented as a geo-political metaphor, with Louis playing the democratic United States hero and Schmeling the fascist German villain. In media and academia today, Louis is presented as a hero to both black and white Americans. But how did American newspapers in 1938 actually present the fighters and the fight? Was Joe Louis written about as a national American hero and Max Schmeling as the Nazi villain? Were the geo-political implications overtly presented on the pages of the press? Using examples from four newspapers (two white and two black), this chapter will present evidence that most journalists in the white press at the time did not present Louis as a hero. In fact, the white press often presented Schmeling in more positive terms, both physically and intellectually, than Louis. Black journalists, on the other hand, did write about Louis as a hero but mostly as a hero to “the race,” not the nation. While some of the texts did note some of the political undertones associated with the event, this was much more explicit in the black press. This chapter argues that, through the collective memory, those recalling the fight have reconstructed the moment and attached additional meaning to it based on events that have occurred since, in particular World War II and the civil rights movement.
