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He later lost in the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions.

In 1933, Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves Novice Division championship against Joe Biskey for the light heavyweight classification. After this debut-a loss to future Olympian Johnny Miler-Louis compiled numerous amateur victories, eventually winning the club championship of his Brewster Street recreation center, the home of many aspiring Golden Gloves fighters. Legend has it that before the fight, the barely literate Louis wrote his name so large that there was no room for his last name, and thus became known as 'Joe Louis' for the remainder of his boxing career (more likely, Louis simply omitted his last name to keep his boxing a secret from his mother). Louis made his debut in early 1932 at the age of 17. He is rumoured to have tried to hide his pugilistic ambitions from his mother by carrying his boxing gloves inside his violin case.

His mother attempted to get him interested in playing the violin. The Great Depression severely affected the Barrow family, but Joe still made time to work out at a local youth recreation center at 637 Brewster Street in Detroit. Louis attended Bronson Vocational School for a time to learn cabinet-making. Joe's brother worked for Ford Motor Company (where Joe would himself work for a time at the River Rouge Plant) and the family settled into a home at 2700 Catherine (now Madison) Street in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood. In 1926, shaken by a gang of white men in the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family moved to Detroit, Michigan, forming part of the post- World War I Great Migration. Around 1920, Louis's mother married Pat Brooks, a local construction contractor, having received word that Munroe Barrow had died while institutionalized (in reality, Munroe Barrow lived until 1938, unaware of his son's fame). Munroe Barrow was committed to a mental institution in 1916 and, as a result, Joe knew very little of his biological father. Louis suffered from a speech impediment and spoke very little until about the age of six. Both of his parents were children of former slaves, alternating between sharecropping and rental farming. Early life īorn on May 13, 1914, in rural Chambers County, Alabama-in a ramshackle dwelling on Bell Chapel Road, located about 1 mile (2 kilometres) off State Route 50 and roughly 6 miles (10 kilometres) from LaFayette-Louis was the seventh of eight children of Munroe Barrow and Lillie (Reese) Barrow. He was instrumental in integrating the game of golf, helping break the sport's color barrier in America by appearing under a sponsor's exemption in a PGA event in 1952. He is widely regarded as the first African-American to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti- Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II because of his historic rematch with German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938. Louis's cultural impact was felt well outside the ring. Louis had the longest single reign as champion of any boxer in history. He was victorious in 25 consecutive title defenses, a record for all weight classes. He reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1937 until his temporary retirement in 1949.

Nicknamed ' the Brown Bomber', Louis is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential boxers of all time. Joseph Louis Barrow (– April 12, 1981) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1934 to 1951.

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