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Old March 21st, 2010 #1
RonPrice
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Default Joe Louis: “The Fight--Part 2,” 10:00-11:00 p.m., SBS2 TV, 25 February 2010.

THE FIGHT
JOE LOUIS AND THE BAHÁ'Í TEACHING PLAN

Joe Louis(1914-1981) was ranked as the No. 1 contender for the heavyweight champion of the world in 1935 and that year he won the Associated Press' "Athlete of the Year" award. What was considered to be a final tune-up bout before an eventual title shot for Louis was scheduled for 19 June 1936 against former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling. By exploiting Louis's habit of dropping his left hand low after a jab, Schmeling handed Louis his first professional loss. He knocked Louis out in Round 12 at Yankee Stadium on 19 June 1936. Two months later, on 18 August 1936, Louis knocked out former champion Jack Sharkey. In that summer of 1936 the North American Baha’is had just begun to make their first efforts to implement ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan in their first systematic teaching program. His Plan has been implemented in a series of organized campaigns which I have been associated with for nearly sixty years.

On 22 June 1937, more than one year into the implementation of that Plan, Louis defeated James Braddock by knockout in Round 8. Louis's ascent to the world heavyweight title was complete. Louis's victory was a seminal moment in African American history. Thousands of African Americans stayed up all night across the country to watch the fight. Louis inflicted constant punishment on Braddock. Noted author, and member of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, celebrating the event described Louis's effect in these terms:

“Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of coloured Americans on relief and poor would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions – or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too.”(1)

On 30 August 1937 Louis and British Empire Champion Tommy Farr touched gloves at New York's Yankee Stadium before a crowd of approximately 32,000. Louis fought one of the hardest battles of his life. The bout was closely contested and went the entire 15 rounds with Louis being unable to knock Farr down. Louis won a controversial unanimous decision. Time Magazine described the scene thus: “After collecting the judges' votes, referee Arthur Donovan announced that Louis had won the fight on points.”

The rematch between Louis and Schmeling is one of the most famous boxing matches of all time, and is remembered as one of the major sports events of the 20th century. Following his defeat of Louis in 1936, Schmeling became a national hero in Germany. Schmeling's victory over an African American was touted by Nazi officials as proof of their doctrine of Aryan superiority. When the rematch was scheduled, Louis retreated to his boxing camp in New Jersey and trained incessantly for the fight. A few weeks before the bout, Louis visited the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt told him, "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany." Louis later admitted: "I knew I had to get Schmeling good. I had my own personal reasons and the whole damned country was depending on me."

When Schmeling arrived in New York in June 1938 for the rematch he was accompanied by a Nazi party publicist who issued statements that a black man could not defeat Schmeling. The publicist also said that, when Schmeling won, the prize money would be used to build tanks in Germany.

On the night of June 22, 1938, Louis and Schmeling met for the second time in the boxing ring. The fight was held in Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 70,043. It was broadcast by radio to millions of listeners throughout the world, with radio announcers reporting on the fight in English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The fight lasted two minutes and four seconds. Louis battered Schmeling with a series of swift attacks, forcing Schmeling against the ropes and giving him a paralyzing body blow. Schmeling was knocked down three times and only managed to throw two punches in the entire bout.(2)

My father, who loved boxing and with whom I watched boxing matches back in the 1950s and 1960s before he died and had a Bahá'í funeral, was 48 years old in 1938 and had 27 years of his own life’s battles yet to go. He was just about to meet my mother whom he married in 1943. -Ron Price with thanks to (1) Wikipedia and (2) “The Fight: Part 2,” 10:00-11:00 p.m., SBS2 TV, 25 February 2010.

All of this boxing history took place
in the years surrounding the beginning
of the relationship between my father
and mother and the opening of that
Bahá'í teaching Plan in 1937 which
was a fight of immense proportions,
requring a force, a gigantic task, and
a concentration of resources that
summoned to its aid all the faith,
the determination and the energies
of North American Bahá’ís in an
effort of single-mindedness to attain
still greater heights of mighty exertions
for the Cause of Faith and Bahá'u'lláh.(1)

(1) Shoghi Effendi, “Letter 30 May 1936,” Messages to America: 1932-1946, Bahá'í Publishing Committee, Wilmette, 1947, p.7.
 
Old March 31st, 2010 #2
John Cassidy
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Default ?

I've read this a few times and I just don't get it. That is, I don't get the point of your post.

Maybe you could help me out and explain in your own words.
 
Old March 31st, 2010 #3
McKinley
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Cassidy View Post
I've read this a few times and I just don't get it. That is, I don't get the point of your post.

Maybe you could help me out and explain in your own words.
I beleive Ron Price is trying to tell us how he is such a Nigger loving traitor peice of shit.
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Old April 2nd, 2010 #4
William Hyde
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Talking Undefeated White Man Rocky Marciano knocks Nigger Whoremonger Joe Louis OUT!

At 5:39 Undefeated White Man Rocky Marciano literally knocks the Nigger Whoremonger Louis out of the Ring!



YouTube- Rocky Marciano knocks out Joe Louis


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Last edited by William Hyde; April 2nd, 2010 at 03:41 AM.
 
Old April 2nd, 2010 #5
hengest
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I don't believe the stuff about stated Aryan superiority and donating the winnings to build tanks; it just REEKS of period propaganda, like Hitler's supposed snub of Jessie Owens.
 
Old April 13th, 2010 #6
Bernie
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I was born in Germany during WW2. Max Schmelling was my first boyhood hero. When poor old Joe Louis was broke and down and out working for pennies in Las Vegas Max Schmelling, by now a retired and successful man helped him out:

From Wikipedia:

Louis and Schmeling developed a long-lasting friendship outside the ring, which endured until Louis' death in 1981. Their rivalry and friendship is the focus of the 1978 TV movie Ring of Passion[27]. Louis got a job as a greeter at the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas, and Schmeling would fly to visit him every year. Schmeling reportedly also sent Louis money in Louis' later years. Schmeling was a pallbearer at Louis' funeral.


Schmelling died in 2005 just shy of his 100th birthday. I recall reading many years ago some street punks set about him, he would have been over 60. He gave them a severe hiding!
 
Old May 31st, 2010 #7
Xuxalina Rihhia
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I wish I could have met Max Schmeling. He was a great man and fighter.
 
Old June 6th, 2012 #8
RonPrice
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Default Belated apologies, John Cassidy

Belated apologies, John Cassidy, for not responding sooner. I just saw this thread for the first time today. My post was just a personal reflection. I am a writer and a poet and I was just attempting to integrate some of the history of boxing into my personal and private world. Readers often have trouble with more poetic ramblings like my own. Sometimes readers enjoy the rambling and sometimes they are completely puzzled.

Millions have had trouble with poetry in the last century, if not the last 3 millennia. My prose-poetry does not appeal to everyone.-Ron Price, Tasmania
 
Old June 7th, 2012 #9
Jason 916
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Cassidy View Post
I've read this a few times and I just don't get it. That is, I don't get the point of your post.
I still don't.
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