Constructing G.I. Joe Louis:
Cultural Solutions to the "Negro Problem" during World War II

Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff

On January 9, 1942, almost seventeen thousand boxing fans sat on the edge of their seats in Madison Square Garden. American flags hung from the rafters and were plastered on every square inch of wall space. Here at the Navy Relief Society benefit fight, the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis Barrow, would challenge the formidable Buddy Baer. Louis would risk his title and donate his earnings of approximately one hundred thousand dollars to the victims of the Pearl Harbor bombing. On the eve of the benefit fight, Walter White, the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), expressed great hope that the patriotic actions of Louis, the most famous black fighter, could stir America's racial conscience—after all, Louis was fighting on behalf of a navy that relegated black Americans to menial positions. Urging Sen. Arthur Capper to write a letter for publication in the New York Times "appealing for the removal of discrimination in the armed services," White asserted that Capper's antiracist pronouncement would have "tremendous effect appearing at the psychological moment when newspapers will be carrying accounts of the Louis-Baer fight and of Joe's generosity despite the discrimination in the Navy."1	1
Joe Louis's very participation in the Navy Relief Society fight exalted his patriot-ism, but as he smashed Baer in round one, the fight catapulted him to eminence as a powerful cultural icon. Yet while White connected Louis's public display of sacrifice with the gradual acceptance of racial reforms, administrators in the Office of War Information (OWI) and the War Department were considering the Louis-Baer fight very differently. As the United States entered the war, state officials understood that they would have to confront explosive racial tensions while gingerly balancing competing political and social interests. The OWI racial adviser Milton Starr proclaimed, "the pure principles of democracy are far from fulfillment in the life of the American Negro. Considering the grave dangers facing the country, it is . . . desirable and necessary to de-emphasize our many long standing internal dissensions and to close ranks as much as practicable for the duration." While promoting democratic unity, war officials, regardless of their ostensible political coloration, were extremely reticent about endorsing overt antidiscrimination policies. Most administrators agreed that war was not a testing ground for social reform, and even for more strident racial progressives, a political stalemate in Congress stymied consideration of any significant civil rights legislation.2	2
Unable or unwilling to press for structural change, administrators in the War Department and the OWI professed a belief that the use of black cultural symbols could reconcile the escalating "Negro problem" with official pronouncements of American egalitarianism. The use of culture to reduce wartime racial tensions became a subject of frequent debate, as officials questioned which individuals and which sectors of the media could best address black Americans without alarming white Americans. While the discussions lingered and program proposals abounded, state administrators agreed on the cultural efficacy of heavyweight champion Joe Louis, particularly after the Navy Relief Society benefit fight. For the state, Louis would become a powerful symbol, appearing in most media of war propaganda and representing heroism, patriotic values, and black military significance. In and through the Louis persona, state administrators could advocate an ethos of racial liberalism, while temporarily skirting the issue of discrimination in American life.	. . .