Word: earls
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Detroit, where Negro Idol Joe Louis got his start, went Earl Brown, on leave from the Amsterdam News. There he talked with Manager John Roxborough and his wife, with some two dozen Louis friends and hangers-on. In Chicago he spent an evening with Marva Louis, Joe's wife, while she told her troubles. Back in Harlem, he saw Al Monroe, onetime Louis pal, Negro staffwriter for the Chicago Defender. Then Editor Brown wrote his story...
...Alabama field hand. Marva Louis told how nonsmoking, nondrinking Joe frittered away fabulous sums of money on cab fares and cabaret checks for his friends. Trainer Jack Blackburn admitted that Joe didn't care much, one way or the other, about fighting. From newspapers and court files Earl Brown traced Manager Roxborough's connections with the numbers racket, Manager Julian Black's impressive police record. Some of the more lurid facts about the Louis entourage were generously omitted from the story...
When LIFE'S close-up first appeared, one week last month, reactions among Negroes were generally friendly. Out of 16 letters in Earl Brown's mail, 13 (from Negro readers like President Rufus E. Clement of Atlanta University, North Carolina's Sportswriter Dave Hawkins) praised Author Brown for a good job. Said Joe Louis, according to a friend in Detroit: "I ain't read it yet. If he makes something out of it, let him make it. I make mine fighting...
Then hell popped loose in the Negro press. Publisher Robert L. Vann led off with a thundering attack on Editor Brown in his Pittsburgh Courier. Manager Roxborough told an interviewer: "Earl Brown has proved himself just another Uncle Tom who . . . would sell the Negroes of America down the river...
...afternoon Amsterdam News's Publisher C. B. Powell called Editor Brown into his office, told him that Roxborough did not like the story, feared it might hurt Joe Louis' status as an idol. Said Powell : "Do you want to resign or be fired?" Earl Brown chose to be fired...