Joe Louis vs Racist Press

Joe Louis had to deal with a lot of racism in his career. He was called the Brown Bomber,The Dusky Downer, the Shufflin' Shadow, Mike Jacobs' Pet Pickaninny, the Chocolate Chopper, and the Tan Tarzan of Thump. The press once brought watermelons for him to eat while they took pix.  He told them he didn't like watermelon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Salute To Elvira

Image
Cassandra Peterson was born in Kansas in 1951. That is a very bland statement of fact for the arrival into this world as the Queen of Halloween. Of course Peterson wasn't born as the seductive Mistress of the Dark. When she was just a small child, she was scalded by boiling water and had severe burns on 35% of her body. She was teased for the scars this left as she was growing up, She says that as a child she was more interested in horror themed toys than the Barbie dolls the other girls were playing with. It apparently didn't take her long to find at least some of her talents. As a teen she worked as a go-go dancer in a local gay bar. Dancing was to be her gateway to becoming an icon beloved the world over. At 17 she went on a trip to Las Vegas. She convinced her parents to let her see a show, and the story has it that the producers noticed her and approached her about becoming a performer herself. Since she was underage she had to get her parents' permission, but they agr
Read more

Black Is White

Image
Cilla Black was a discovery of Brian Epstein, who became a pop star in the U.K. in the 60's. But before she was a star she was apparently forgettable enough that some had trouble remembering her name. You see, she was actually named Cilla White, but a writer at Mersey Beat got confused and called her Cilla Black instead. She decided to just roll with it and changed her name from White to Black.
Read more