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This chapter discusses the renaissance of boxing in the United States and Germany during the Great Depression. On the evening of June 25, 1935, less than a year after his professional debut, Joe Louis fought ex-champion Primo Carnera in the Yankee Stadium in a non-title bout that transformed Louis into a black hero and heralded the revival of bigtime boxing in the United States. German boxing experienced a similar revival, as a seemingly washed-up Max Schmeling began to show his old form. He fought himself back into heavyweight title contention in 1934 and 1935 just as the Nazi Party took over Germany and turned its attention to boxing as an arena where Germany could shine in international competition.

This chapter describes the events leading up to and following the first match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. Young heavyweight sensation Joe Louis and veteran former champion Max Schmeling prepared to square off for the first time in the open-air Yankee Stadium on June 18, 1936. For former titleholder Schmeling, this bout was a crucial part of his campaign to do what no other former heavyweight champion had done — come back and retake the crown. For his part, Louis had beaten everyone in his path, with the exception of Max Schmeling. In an amazing upset, Schmeling knocked out Louis in the twelfth round, which turned him into a German national hero.

Joe Louis and Max Schmeling finally had the opportunity to square off against each other on the evening of Wednesday, June 22, 1938. The long-anticipated bout brought the competing aspirations of Americans and Germans to a head and transformed Louis from a primarily African American hero into an all-American idol. Facing each other in the ring once again, both combatants stood as idealistic symbols, fighting for the honor of their respective nations. The international tensions surrounding the match stimulated fan interest to new heights.

This chapter focuses on the lives of Max Schmeling and Joe Louis following their epic battle. Schmeling's defeat strained his relationship with Nazi officials. At the start of World War II, Schmeling, like other top German athletes, was drafted into the armed forces to act as a symbol of his nation's fighting spirit. Eventually released as physically unfit for military service in the spring of 1943, Schmeling planned to resume boxing but was officially banned from doing so by German officials. Fed up, he surrendered his last title and retired from the sport he had loved since his youth. In contrast, Louis' victory and his activities during the war made him a full-blown American hero. Seemingly a permanent champion, Louis offered African Americans a model of self-confidence and fighting spirit and white Americans the image of a protector.

This chapter discusses the Nazi politicization of international sports and its impact on the planned title fight between Schmeling and heavyweight boxing champion James Braddock. In response to the Nazi politicization of sports, the American anti-fascist coalition transformed Schmeling into a Nazi representative and Joe Louis into a democratic hero. A boycott movement was organized against the proposed Braddock-Schmeling match, while Louis' managers pushed to show that the Brown Bomber deserved to fight Braddock for the title. It was later announced that Louis would meet Braddock for the championship in Chicago on June 22, 1937.

This chapter details the lives of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling after World War II. After the war, Louis not only worked hard to defend his title, but also championed a more aggressive attack on racial discrimination and inequality in the United States. On the other hand, Schmeling and his wife struggled through the “hunger years” immediately after the war, when everyone's most pressing task was to acquire food and shelter and a means to support themselves now that the regime was lost, the economy destroyed, and the cities bombed. Later, Louis struggled financially after he left boxing, while Schmeling became a successful farmer and then Coca-Cola executive, a key figure in the German economic miracle.

This chapter describes the life and careers of Max Schmeling and Joe Louis prior to their historic match on June 22, 1938, with particular emphasis on the impact on boxing of the Great Depression. As Joe Louis turned professional and Max Schmeling attempted to come back from defeat, humiliation, and depression in 1934, they faced a sport that appeared to be down for the count. However, by the mid-1930s hunger arose for populist male heroes capable of challenging the corruption of the sport. As fans soon learned, changes were under way that would spark a revival on both sides of the Atlantic.

Joe Louis died on April 12, 1981, from a massive heart attack. His body lay in state at Caesar's Palace Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, and it took donations from his former antagonist Max Schmeling and singer Frank Sinatra, a contemporary and long-time admirer, to pay for the funeral. Max Schmeling died on February 2, 2005, at the ripe old age of ninety-nine. Having made a fortune as a Coca-Cola bottling executive, from the 1950s until his death Schmeling had been feted every year on his birthday by West German celebrities, sports figures, and even presidents.

This chapter discusses the clash between ex-champion and German national Max Schmeling and sensational American titleholder Joe Louis. This much-anticipated bout between Louis, only the second black heavyweight champion, and Schmeling, Germany's most successful boxer and the only man to beat Louis, created extraordinary excitement across the world. This was no ordinary prizefight. “The state of the . . . nation or the world can invest a sporting event with dramatic intensity such as is reached in few theatres,” historian C. L. R. James noted. “When the democrat Joe Louis fought the Nazi Schmeling the bout became a focus of approaching world conflict.” While Germans hoped that “Unser Max” would vindicate their nation in the eyes of the world, African Americans entrusted “Our Joe” to knock out this representative of white supremacy.

This introductory chapter begins with a description of the fight between German boxer Max Schmeling, a former heavyweight champion, and the young American titleholder Joe Louis, for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, on June 22, 1938. The role of Joe Louis and Max Schmeling in the politicization of international sport is then discussed.

Originally published in October 1935, Richard Wright describes the immediate aftermath of black boxer Joe Louis’s victory over then white champion Max Baer. On the South Side of Chicago, thousands of black people flooded into public spaces in celebration of a moment’s racial victory, an exceptional instance of black triumph over white. Taking strength from Louis’s strength, spontaneously assembled masses of black people felt temporarily and collectively free and invincible. They shook the hands of strangers in unleashed joy and stopped streetcars. Wright thought this cyclone of celebration exhibited a pent-up black folk consciousness that was hungry for freedom, an emboldened energy that could be harnessed and channeled politically. Although soon subsiding, these desires that had long been suppressed had been uncovered in Joe Louis’s victory.

This chapter discusses how boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling were used by their respective races. In 1936, the two fought in a boxing match filled with underlying political subtext: Louis for the African Americans seeing him as a hope to champion their cause of equality; and Schmeling as a propaganda tool for the Nazi regime. Both figures suffered reputation damage after the Second World War, with Louis incurring financial liabilities and Schmeling being accused of being an active member of the Nazi Party.

Chapter 4 emphasizes how Cubans and African Americans exploited temporary transnational alliances in the 1960s to fight local battles against racism. Comparing the United States’ “colorstruck democracy” to the supposed racial paradise in Cuba, African American newspapers pointed out the dangers of labeling the Cuban Revolution an oppressive dictatorship while U.S. blacks remained second-class citizens at home. Similarly, Afro-Cubans invoked the promises revolutionary leaders made to entice U.S. blacks to visit the island and demand domestic social reforms for themselves. Ironically, the images each group used to describe the other were often inaccurate and illustrate more about local struggles than transnational solidarity. The temporary nature of black alliances with the revolution is a major theme of chapter 4. It speaks to the need to rethink assumptions that political change can achieve racial equality and that momentary collaboration between peoples of African descent necessarily means solidarity.

This chapter explores the complex relationship between the left and mass culture in the first four decades of the twentieth century, and how writers and critics on the left understood mass culture's connection with the novel. It first considers the meanings of left, mass culture, and novel and why they belong together before turning to a discussion of literary realism in relation to emergent forms of mass media of the period. It then explains how novels participated in the cultures of sentiment and sensation and discusses the emergence of radical novels as well as the relationship between class and mass culture. It also examines Richard Wright's readings of Joe Louis, the African American heavyweight boxing champion nicknamed “the Brown Bomber,” and Bigger Thomas, the protagonist in his 1940 novel Native Son. The chapter concludes with an analysis of John Steinbeck's Joad family in his 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.