Joe Louis, in full Joseph Louis Barrow, (born May 13, 1914, Lafayette, Ala., U.S.—died April 12, 1981, Las Vegas, Nev.), U.S. boxer. Louis was born into a sharecropper’s family and only began boxing after the family moved to Detroit. He won the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union title in 1934 and turned professional that year. During his career he defeated six previous or subsequent heavyweight champions: Primo Carnera, Max Baer, Jack Sharkey, James J. Braddock, Max Schmeling, and Jersey Joe Walcott. Nicknamed “the Brown Bomber,” Louis gained the world heavyweight championship by defeating Braddock in 1937 and held the title until 1949. Two of Louis’s most famous bouts, those with the German boxer Max Schmeling, were invested with nationalist and racial implications, as Schmeling was seen, unfairly, as the embodiment of Aryanism and the Nazi party. Louis lost to Schmeling in 1936 but defeated him in one round in 1938, causing much jubilation among Americans, and especially African Americans. He successfully defended his title 25 times (21 by knockout) before retiring in 1949. His service in the U.S. Army during World War II no doubt prevented him from defending his title many more times. He made unsuccessful comeback attempts against Ezzard Charles in 1950 and Rocky Marciano in 1951.
