Detroiters recall Louis’ 1936 heavyweight win on anniversary
It took all of two minutes and four seconds for Joe Louis — the pride of Detroit via rural Chambers County, Alabama — to knock out German Max Schmeling on June 22, 1938, in the “Battle of the Century.”
The “Brown Bomber’s” first-round destruction of Schmeling, which avenged an embarrassing loss to the German in 1936, was called a blow to Nazism and a victory for democracy. And it happened 85 years ago Thursday.
And 85 years later the event continues to be an immense source of pride for two Detroit women that can recall what they were doing on the night when the two heavyweights clashed before a sellout crowd of 70,000 at New York’s Yankee Stadium.
“It made me feel great!” said 102-year-old Julia Esaw said Wednesday. She was a 17-year-old student attending Cass Tech at the time and was among the estimated 70 million people that listened to the fight on the radio. “We didn’t have that many Black celebrities then, like we do now, and there was so much love between both races afterwards.”
Esaw, who described growing up on Brewster Street near Hastings and Rivard, recalled how every Louis victory was a community happening from the time the longest-reigning heavyweight champion — 1937 until 1949 — rose to prominence.
“We just had a good time listening on the radio and pulling for Joe,” said Esaw, who recalled seeing Louis doing his training roadwork near the Brewster Recreation Center. “The neighborhood would get together, discuss the fight and eat. That was in the good, good old days, when you slept in your house with nothing but the screen door and you didn’t have to worry about anyone bothering your home.”
June 22, 1938, also was a “good” day for the then 9-year-old Helen Gentry.
“Everybody was pinned to the radio when the fight was going on and when Louis won; it was just euphoria all over the place,” recalled the now 94-year-old Gentry, who at the time was living on Tennessee Street while attending Keating Elementary on Dickerson Avenue. “During a time when African Americans were the last to be hired and the first to be fired, the thing that made us greatly happy was when Joe Louis won in the ring. The children in the neighborhood would grab garbage can tops and hit them with sticks as we marched around, and then the next time we went to school our heads were held high. It just lifted people up to the ceiling.”
Gentry, a 1946 graduate of Southeastern High School, who later earned degrees from Michigan State and Wayne State, would go on to be a champion in her own right later in life as she served people in Detroit and beyond. Her robust professional career includes being a United States Air Force intelligence specialist, a Wayne County social worker, an examiner for the Social Security Administration, and a teacher at Southeastern and Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School, where she retired in 1984.
If times had been different for Esaw when she graduated from Cass Tech in 1939, she would have committed herself to helping others live long lives by becoming a dietician. However, she said, the opportunities for her to pursue her desired career path in college were few and far between. Instead, Esaw made contributions as a loving mother, a beautician, a devoted member of People’s Community Church and more, as her daughter, Berneta Esaw, was proud to point out on Wednesday after her mom had sung the praises of Joe Louis.
“There’s a lot about herself that mother won’t say, like being a block club president, and a travel agent, and riding a horse in parades,” said Berneta Esaw, a retired Detroit Public Schools math teacher, who in 2019 celebrated her 50th Cass Tech class reunion on the Detroit Princess Riverboat with her mother, who was celebrating the 80th anniversary of her own graduation from Cass. “But what I admire the most about her is that she is a warm-hearted, giving person who will do almost anything for anyone.
“My mother and father (the late Tuskegee Airman Burkes Esaw Sr.) were excellent role models. Mom and dad went out and helped everyone, and we were taught that everything you do represents your family. I think if people lived like that today we would have a different world because people would think twice before doing anything that reflected poorly on their family.”