BOOK REVIEW: JOE
LOUIS AND JESSE OWENS
By Adeyinka Makinde
25.11 - There are few biographies that opt to feature
a parallel chronology of the lives of two people. Such
are the demands placed on the author to deliver a meaningful
enough summation on one character that the addition
of a second seems at once a daunting, near impossible
concept. In many ways such an undertaking will lack
a central focus unless both protagonists are linked
inextricably in their raison d'etre or their rivalry
or other binding phenomena as were say Adolf Hitler
and Josef Stalin. Both of the subjects must be similar
yet paradoxically they must be sufficiently dissimilar,
if not discordant, in order for the author to wax and
weave grandiloquent on coincidences and ironies which
will litter the narrative.
Award winning sports author, Donald McRae chooses this
format for his recently released treatment of the life
and meanings of two of the greatest sporting icons of
the twentieth century; Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. For
if Muhammad Ali and Pele bear the mantle of greatest
athletes in the second half of that century, then as
surely Louis and Owens bestride the first fifty years.
Joseph Louis Barrow and James Cleveland Owens were
born eight months and a few miles apart in the southern
state of Alabama. They would die a year apart, Owens
in 1980 and Louis in 1981. Both had antecedents enmeshed
in the brutal history of slavery and the painful world
of sharecropping. Both men rose virtually from the depths
of nothingness to ascend the dizzyingly, rarefied heights
of world fame by virtue of their athletic prowess, Louis
with the crushing fury of his fists and Owens with the
velocity of his legs. One quiet and seemingly diffident,
the other ebullient and never complete without a trademark
smile. One was a phenomenal boxer while the other was
a peerless athlete but both were linked in the maelstrom
of the social and political evolution of African-Americans
for they both transcended the veneer of being mere sportsmen
to bear the burdens of and inhabit the sort of status
reserved in the past for political figure's. Although
McRae does not mention it, both men were known better
to the white American public than black intellectuals
like W.E.B. DuBois. What McRae reminds us of, is just
how important these men were.
But although McRae's title refers to the 'Untold Story,'
there is little here that the discerning boxing aficionado
does not already know about Joe Louis. From his glorious,
record setting title reign to his inglorious descent
into tax difficulties and mental maladies. It is Owens
who probably is the lesser known of the two and McRae
does well to focus, diary style, on both men's highest
points in the 1930's. For Owens, it was his extraordinary
performance at the summer Olympic games held in Berlin
in 1936 where before the Nazi elite, then in the midst's
of fashioning an idealized racial state, he conquered
all opposition to win a then unprecedented four gold
medals. Louis, who just weeks earlier had been shockingly
defeated by the German fighter Max Schmeling, would
vindicate himself two years later by battering Schmeling
in a single round. By their deeds both men finally put
to rest Hitlerian notions of Aryan superiority and Black
inferiority. Yet as McRae, a man of white ! South African
origin recounts, both lived in a racially segregated
America, which perpetuated and reinforced assumptions
of Black inferiority. It was Louis and Owens, we are
reminded, who paved the way for the unbanning of blacks
from baseball, basketball and American Football. Yet,
these truly revolutionary figures were not revolutionary
enough for their sporting descendants of the 1960's
who derogatorily labelled them as 'Uncle Toms;' pacified
stooges of the white establishment never mind that the
circumstances of the times in Louis and Owens heyday
dictated that militant stances within the sporting field
were virtually impossible to contrive.
If by 'Untold Story' McRae is referring to the personal
friendship between both men, then only few would be
impressed by the revelation that Louis introduced Owens
to his high class tailor or that both men were inducted
simultaneously into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
Nevertheless, it is as a sympathetically written record
of the lives of both; sporting gods on the one hand
and fallible men on the other, that McRae's book succeeds.
There is Owens, impecunious even after his Berlin victory,
and hounded out of amateur athletics by the despotic
machinations of Avery Brundage, the patrician chairman
of the International Olympic Committee and aptly referred
to as 'Slavery Avery.' Owens was forced over the next
few years to race trains and horses in a series of grotesque
exhibitions. Which reader can fail to travel in time
forty years ahead and then weep at the thought of lesser
men earning million dollar cheques? Read about Louis
combating the American Inland Revenue for a sp! iralling
amount of income tax back payment and empathize with
the man who donated whole portions of his ring earnings
to an Armed Service of the United States military which
employed persons of his race only as cooks and mess
boys. The reader, however, can hardly fail to chastise
Louis for his childlike ineptitude in taking care of
his finances when his earning power was at its zenith.
There are anecdotal vignettes like where Owens steps
in front of Louis who is being confronted by a redneck
who wants to add the 'Brown Bomber' to his self-styled
'Hit-a-Nigger-a-Week' list. It is Louis who has to hold
his friend back when the normally calm Owens takes umbrage
at his slurs and smashes a bottle on a table in anticipation
of 'glassing' his foe.
'In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis
and Jesse Owens' ultimately is an expertly crafted narrative
of the lives of two of the foremost sportsmen of recent
times and although it unearths little of which is unknown
about both subjects, it melds the stories of two icons
from a bygone age whose excellence in their chosen professions
and wider importance in terms of the development of
race relations in the United States cannot be dimmed
by the passage of time.
Ade Makinde may be reached at
adeyinkamakinde@aol.com
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