Sweet Thunder Page 8

  It was a geographical reality that the majority of military bases were located in the Deep South. This often meant that Negro soldiers from the South, many of whom had left the region because of the stinging racial climate, were now returning to familiar scenes—peering from train and bus windows across cotton fields in Alabama, peanut farms in Georgia, darkening woods in Mississippi; staring into the faces of old Negro men and women in their eighties who had lived long enough to remember the last breaths of slavery. The soldiers found there was little difference between the outside world and the cocoon of an Army base: They still had to sit in the back at base movie theatres; they still had separate living quarters. It was a painful conundrum: the word “democracy” was hollered everywhere, but second-class treatment was meted out to them daily. Many of the soldiers and their family members wrote heartbreaking letters to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, complaining of their mistreatment. She appealed to President Roosevelt, who appealed to Secretary of War Stimson, who said he would not be conducting any social experiments—such as integration—during wartime. Still, the Army could not ignore its Negro troops, and Army officials came up with the idea of creating a separate office that would take Negro concerns under consideration.

  Thus the War Department on Negro Affairs was born. It rather bizarrely consisted of just one official, and that official was given just one secretary. One of the department’s earliest ideas was to send Joe Louis on a tour of Army bases to stage exhibitions. The aim of the tour would be to promote troop morale; the underlying mission was to foster racial unity. Louis, who traveled to Washington to discuss the plan, was told to handpick his traveling mates. He quickly decided on Sugar Ray. Then his sparring mate George Nicholson was chosen. Sugar Ray—shrewd in such matters—suggested another fighter for the contingent, a smoothie from Los Angeles. As Sugar Ray knew, “California” Jackie Wilson had a nifty biographical flourish: He’d participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, taking a silver medal. Of Louis’s traveling crew, Wilson was the only one who had seen and sniffed the dangerous Nazi air up close. At those 1936 games, Hitler had risen—his face frozen in anger but the eyes dark as bullets—and abruptly left the stadium rather than witness the triumph of the black sprinter Jesse Owens. West Coast fight fans had begun clamoring for a Robinson-Wilson bout back in May 1942, following Robinson’s tough victory against Marty Servo. Jimmy Nelson, who operated the Dunbar, a Negro hotel in Los Angeles, liked spinning out to reporters the possibilities of certain matchups that he just knew would draw large crowds. In 1942 both Robinson and Wilson were rated top-five contenders. Nelson imagined that a Wilson-Robinson bout—Wilson being local—would be great business not only for the Hollywood crowd, but for the out-of-town Negro fight fans who would book rooms at his establishment. Sugar Ray was no “superman,” the hotelier Nelson huffed. He talked about the blows Robinson had taken in the Servo bout. He warned that Robinson would face an even nastier challenge in Wilson: “Anyone Jackie Wilson can hit can be hurt,” Nelson said.

  The drumbeat would be answered; the bout was announced for February 1943.

  On the other side of the country, in a column on the eve of the announced Robinson-Wilson match, something struck Arthur Daley, sports columnist of The New York Times, about the specter of war bumping up against the grace of the gifted athlete. Daley lamented the perils of three figures—Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee hitter, Jackie Wilson, and Robinson. In Daley’s mind, time and war would now conspire to rob these men of precious gifts; it was as if a movie screen would go blank, darkening further imagination of what they might do and become. Daley seemed to realize that each had a quality that set him off beyond the sporting arena; each was lit by a unique style that made his accomplishments far more than sweat and brawn. And now this: Hitler moving across Europe, the headlines claimed by reports of troop movements, and ordinary citizens keeping watch for foreign submarines along coastlines. It all meant a need for baseball bats and boxing gloves to be put aside. And a deep accompanying reality: War was war. Men became heroes, and heroes died.

  The Robinson-Wilson matchup didn’t take place in Los Angeles but in New York City on February 19, 1943, with twenty thousand watching: Sugar Ray bested the Olympian in the tenth round of a frenetic bout. Ten days later, Sugar Ray reported for Army duty. Joe DiMaggio had reported for duty February 24 at the Santa Ana Air Base near Los Angeles. (Wilson was already enlisted and had been on furlough for the Robinson bout.) The three athletes had shouldered so many dreams—including the dreams of others—and now in the minds of their followers there was so much uncertainty surrounding their continued grace. “It may seem odd at first glance to group Robinson, Wilson and DiMaggio together,” Daley of the Times wrote. “Yet the entire story of America at war is told by these three athletes.”

  George Nicholson was the kind of fighter who made a living giving his body over to the blows delivered by truly great fighters: He had been sparring partner to both Louis and Jim Braddock. Champions look for sparring partners who might challenge them; the sparring partner, however, must possess a nimble mind, ever conscious of the vagaries of a champion’s mood and daily disposition. Nicholson possessed not only bravery but humility and on fight night was content enough to simply recede into the shadows with his little bankroll and the belief he had been both teacher and peer to the fighter in the ring.

  As for Sugar Ray, he was that well-dressed soldier of Harlem that they were singing about. Ring magazine would feature him in full uniform on its September 1943 cover. His right palm rests on the brim of his military hat in a salute; the uniform looks crisp and elegant; the eyes are focused into the distance. “Corp. Ray Robinson, World’s Outstanding Welterweight, now in Army Air Force at Mitchel Field,” it says in the bottom left corner of the cover. There is a bit of an advertisement too: BUY UNITED STATES WAR BONDS AND STAMPS. (Corporal Robinson looks as handsome and coolly brave as any other wartime figure—Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable—who would grace magazines in uniform.)

  This was the first time that the American military had backed anything like the Robinson-Louis tour. It reflected a larger shift in the way the military treated Negro soldiers. During World War I, nearly 90 percent of Negro troops were assigned to labor duty. Black soldiers finally got their chance to fight in World War II, but their numbers were small and the units were mostly segregated. The Army was not shy about showcasing the Negro boxers and their show of patriotism and sent photographers attached to the U.S. Army Signal Corps to snap away.

  In the late August heat of 1943 at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Joe and Sugar Ray and their traveling Army companions began what was announced as a hundred-day tour. As Joe signed the base arrival book, Sugar Ray—looking snappy in uniform—stood staring over his shoulder, a knot of admiring soldiers surrounding both. Joe assumed his usual demeanor of seriousness. Cornered by reporters, he’d talk about patriotism and would offer short, clipped utterances about the need for good troop morale. Sugar Ray was far more jovial. Although the tour was barely under way, it was already being billed as “[t]he world’s greatest boxing show.” As they made their way around the Massachusetts base, word spread quickly. Negro soldiers—attached to the all-Negro 366th Regiment—were surprised at the sight of the traveling contingent and set about slapping palms, whistling, pointing, getting up close. The scheduled morale-boosting events consisted of boxing exhibitions and chatter. At one Fort Devens event, upwards of seven thousand soldiers whooped and hollered at the sight of the group. “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here,” an Army band let loose as the boxers made their way toward the exhibition ring. The group had great leeway, and their days involved a lot of improvisation. Sometimes Sugar would even warble out a tune. In the ring set up outdoors at the rural military camp—GIs piled on jeeps, tall pine trees rising in the distance—Joe and George went at it for a few rounds, then Sugar Ray and California Jackie took a turn. The GIs on the ground, as if inside a fevered arena, howled and whistled as the fighters landed punches. The scenes revealed a summer-camp tablea
u full of vigorous activity. The group got a lot of questions about their weight, their past opponents. Joe and Sugar Ray signed autographs at the Fort Devens Army hospital. Many of the patients were arrivals from battles in North Africa. The fighters scrawled their names on the plaster arm and leg casts of soldiers. Standing side by side outdoors one morning, Joe and Sugar Ray previewed an all-white contingent of Army nurses stepping lively in formation.

  It was no accident that the Army began Joe and Sugar Ray’s tour in the state of Massachusetts. The New England state had a long and liberal military history. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers was a celebrated black regiment that had distinguished itself during the Civil War. Still, by 1942 the American military was far from leaving racial separation behind, as Eleanor Roosevelt—considered such an ally to the Negro populace—was being reminded almost daily. At Fort Devens, however, the racial interaction was easy. And there was an undeniable warmth between Joe and Sugar Ray and the Negro soldiers on base who made up the 366th Regiment. The fighters huddled as the soldiers shared confidences with them. At a service club dance for the Negro unit, Joe and Sugar Ray swayed to the music and mingled with the musicians. Off base, they’d buy soldiers meals; they’d listen as GIs regaled them with stories of listening to their fights back home on radio—against Sammy Angott, against Braddock, against the German Schmeling, against Freddie Cabral, against Billy Conn, against Ralph Zannelli. Sometimes it seemed that between them—and in the eyes of the soldiers—Louis and Robinson had knocked out the whole damn world. There were salutes and hearty handshakes as they prepared to depart the base. Life magazine believed that the Fort Devens appearance by Joe and Sugar Ray presented “a quiet parable in racial good will.” But Robinson was bemused and bewildered by such optimism. The Army, on one hand, had indeed made him feel patriotic: He stared at himself in mirrors in his dress uniform, admiring how he had suddenly become a part of the American armed forces—a single soul, but a part of the mass maneuvering and march of machinery. And he quickly came to admire the sense of order and regimentation that went with military life. But this social experiment left him with a kind of nervousness. He remembered the racial nightmares in Detroit, and all those social activists in Harlem who told of lynchings throughout the South. Beneath the public relations façade, he was dubious about this so-called goodwill effort. He deferred to Louis—the big wheel in the Army’s PR machinery—while keeping a sharp sensibility about his surroundings.

  They rolled on like a caravan: Fort Meade in Maryland (ten thousand saw them and cheered); Camp McCoy in Wisconsin; Camp Grant in Illinois; Sioux City Army Air Base in Iowa; Fort Riley in Kansas. Often following the exhibitions, Louis and Robinson and the others would pose with Negro soldiers—buffed and shirtless—who had taken part in the boxing shows. The amateur pugilists were dubbed “Brown Bombers.” The Brown Bombers complained—quietly, away from their superiors—to Louis and Robinson that they were tired of being assigned to sanitation crews. The two marquee names on the tour vowed to get the complaints back to Washington. Both Louis and Robinson were in the headlines: RAY ROBINSON BOXES FOR SOLDIER BOYS; JOE LOUIS SIGNS IN AT FORT DEVENS. They kept signing autographs. They gave away pairs of boxing gloves to smiling soldiers. They guffawed onto each other’s shoulders. Away from the military bases, they patrolled the Negro bars in those Northern and Midwestern cities, unrolling ten-and twenty-dollar bills at the bar, buying drinks. They took weekend furloughs and hightailed it back to Manhattan. They were seen at the swank Savoy Club together; they were seen in the lobby of the Hotel Theresa, where the out-of-town jazzmen often stayed when visiting Harlem. They were seen with wrapped gifts under their arms for female admirers. They cackled with fight promoter Mike Jacobs, who lent both money. They knew they’d pay Jacobs back the only way that mattered to him: by agreeing to the bouts he would arrange for them. (A photographer had followed Robinson into Jacobs’s Brill Building office on one of those forays. Jacobs—always quick to inquire about how “the war” was going—was wearing a three-piece wool suit, white shirt, printed tie. He looked suave. But Sugar Ray, in his dark military dress uniform, his corporal’s hat, looked far more elegant.)

  And there was the scene on the beach, at Atlantic City, the breeze coming in sweetly off the ocean: Edward Allen—destined to spend time with Sugar Ray in later years, when he would become dentist to Miles Davis, Sugar Ray’s pal—was in that boardwalk city as a Navy ensign. He was walking toward the beach, and he saw a horde of black faces. He heard shrieking as he got closer. “I turned to a friend,” he would recall years later, “and said, ‘What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Sugar Ray’s down there.’” Allen kept walking, and there, true enough, was Sugar Ray. “He was just going to the beach,” says Allen. “The people were really fascinated. It was like girls hollering behind Frank Sinatra.”

  Even when Joe and Sugar Ray were on duty, Army brass were astonished at their rather loose and sometimes instantaneous rescheduling. There were missed trains and bus trips, a hurry-hurry effort to catch up and get to the troops when they were running late. Some officers huffed, complained to Washington. But with star power—even Negro star power—came allowances. It could not be dismissed either that the traveling show had the backing of the War Department, which meant it had the backing of the Roosevelt White House.

  Angelo Dundee, whose fame would come in the 1960s as Muhammad Ali’s valued trainer, was in the Army during the war. He boxed on occasion, but mostly he trained fighters for exhibition bouts. He heard of the Louis-Robinson tour, news of it spreading fast on the homefront grapevine. “It was a tremendous thing because Louis and Robinson were so popular,” he would recall.

  Before autumn’s end, in their crisp uniforms and shiny shoes, Sugar Ray and Joe Louis would find themselves stepping onto military bases in the Deep South.

  Between them—and prior to 1943, when Robinson joined the military—Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson had fought dozens of pro fights. But fewer than five of all of their combined bouts had taken place below the Mason-Dixon line. Joe Louis hadn’t felt the sting of daily Southern racism since his Alabama childhood; Sugar Ray’s family had Georgia roots, but he had come of age in a freer Detroit. While Joe Louis retained traces of a country demeanor, there was little doubt that New York City, Chicago, and Detroit—places of urban sophistication and the cities he was most fond of—had rubbed off on him. As for Sugar Ray, he had taken naturally to the spin of the city, bouncing up off the pavement of New York City and Harlem poverty like a man to the wicked and hustling environs born. Boxing topped off the stature of both men. Its money-and headline-making victories and attendant glory had propelled them into a sphere of living—Sugar Ray in 1943 was relatively new to it—that kept nasty and brutish racial insults at a remove. These were not men who shuffled in their gait. They drank champagne with actors and actresses and singers; they shopped for clothes at fine tailors on Broadway. They were mystical; Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson were two Negroes who made others curious. When their feet hit the ground, they knew exactly which direction they were going.

  The South that Louis and Robinson descended upon in late 1943 was still very much a bruised land. The Depression had been a long and painful song, but it was the Civil War and the way it pitted South against North, slavery against freedom, black against white, that remained the visceral touchstone in the area. Down where those battles had been fought, their economic and cultural echoes were far from silent, the land far from healed.

  White soldiers in World War II Southern Army camps came from households where the Confederate flag still blew in the outdoor breeze; where Gen. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were epic heroes; where states’ rights remained the last gasp of proof that the South had done something right and fruitful in its bid at state-by-state secession. Many of the soldiers in the World War II Army camps across the Carolinas, across Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, were the great-grandsons of Civil War veterans. They lived in homes that held Civil War–era keepsakes: pistols,
caps, swords, sepia-tinted photographs.

  In 1908 after Jack Johnson had entered the boxing ring in Sydney, Australia—“Come on and fight, nigger!” champion Tommy Burns had unwisely yelled to Jack—and walked out of it as the crowned champ, Negroes in America celebrated. They celebrated all over—in Georgia, in Mississippi, in Alabama. Not long after Johnson’s history-making bout, the deacon of a white Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, was startled that his Negro carriage driver dared challenge him on the amount of the fee. The carriage driver did not wish to be underpaid. An argument ensued; the white deacon shot the carriage driver dead. Friends of the driver hoped for justice and gathered in the courtroom for the beginning of legal proceedings. The judge released the deacon. He then turned to the gathering of Negroes with an admonishment: “You Niggers are getting beside yourselves since Jack Johnson won the fight from a white man. I want you to mind what you do in this town. Remember, you are in the South, and remember further that when you speak to white gentlemen you should speak in a way that is best becoming a Nigger. This act will be repeated daily by the white gentlemen of this city if you Niggers don’t find your places.”

  The Louis and Robinson contingent, traveling by military plane, arrived first in Mississippi. They landed at Keesler Field, an air base in the Magnolia State. Some Negro troops had heard about their arrival, and as soon as they spotted them, moved toward them for handshakes, then autographs. Glancing about, taking in the surroundings, Sugar Ray told the soldiers he’d see them at that night’s show. (Sugar Ray was calling the exhibitions “shows,” because sometimes he’d do stand-up comedy; he’d tell stories; he wanted to allow for improvisation, which made him happy and seemed to loosen Joe up.)

  “[W]e wanted to see Joe and you now because we won’t be able to see the show,” one of the soldiers said.