Joe Louis: America's Hero Betrayed

[Trainer Monkey]

No I didn't get my facts wrong, they might have been misunderstood though.

#1 The Black Athletes were going to boycott the 1968 Summer Olympics due to the issues of segregation and Jim Crow Laws.

- Jesse Owens opposed this and didn't see how it would solve anything. That of course rubbed certain eliments of the Civil Rights Movement the wrong way...George Foreman caught the same flack for waving around American flags when he won a gold medal

#2 Tommie Smith (Gold) and John Carlos (Bronze) held up their fists in protest to the National Anthem of the United States of America

- Jesse Owens talked with them, tried to get them to appologize. He failed, they were kicked off the team for what they had done and in a meeting with them and there he was called an Uncle Tom and a toady for "the white man"


This has been American History 101 with your professor Lyle, thank you and goodnight

Penning a letter a few weeks prior to the games, Smith wrote to legendary track and field star Jesse Owens. At the 1936 Berlin, Owens won four gold models and angered Adolf Hitler who had planned to show the world the racial superiority of his Aryan super athletes.

“I wrote Jesse just before his death to let him know how much I admired him and to let him know that I thought he was the greatest athlete of all time not just for winning but because he never made the big dogs in the Olympic committee - who were all Jim Crow –put him down as a black man.”
Do you check anything?

[El Kabong]

Penning a letter a few weeks prior to the games, Smith wrote to legendary track and field star Jesse Owens. At the 1936 Berlin, Owens won four gold models and angered Adolf Hitler who had planned to show the world the racial superiority of his Aryan super athletes.

“I wrote Jesse just before his death to let him know how much I admired him and to let him know that I thought he was the greatest athlete of all time not just for winning but because he never made the big dogs in the Olympic committee - who were all Jim Crow –put him down as a black man.”
Do you check anything?

That doesn't disprove anything I said.


Yeah sure guys like Ali and Smith appologized later on. But like any young kid they ran off at the mouth against some really iconic figures and it shouldn't have happened. That's tough for me to respect...but yes later they corrected themselves.

Joe Louis turned down Jack Johnson's help because he couldn't be champion if he had ANYTHING to do with Johnson. Johnson was a great champion and flaunted his race and it rubbed people the wrong way and after he was beaten it set black fighters back....you think Sam Langford just chose never to get a title shot

I do understand the level of frustration there probably was between the generations of Louis and Ali but that is no reason to call out someone for being an Uncle Tom.

Ali was a talkative guy and I am sure like anyone else he regrets saying certain things....I am by no means perfect but I don't have cameras in my face either. Ali had a platform to speak from and sometimes he said the wrong things....he corrected himself in later years though.