Joe Louis Uncovers Dynamite

Abstract

Originally published in October 1935, Richard Wright describes the immediate aftermath of black boxer Joe Louis’s victory over then white champion Max Baer. On the South Side of Chicago, thousands of black people flooded into public spaces in celebration of a moment’s racial victory, an exceptional instance of black triumph over white. Taking strength from Louis’s strength, spontaneously assembled masses of black people felt temporarily and collectively free and invincible. They shook the hands of strangers in unleashed joy and stopped streetcars. Wright thought this cyclone of celebration exhibited a pent-up black folk consciousness that was hungry for freedom, an emboldened energy that could be harnessed and channeled politically. Although soon subsiding, these desires that had long been suppressed had been uncovered in Joe Louis’s victory.