Detroit did not invent Joe Louis.

It simply gave him the ring.

When his family fled the cotton fields of Alabama for the cold hope of Michigan in 1926, young Joe Barrow was still a stammering boy with the weight of Jim Crow on his back.

The Great Migration brought him to Black Bottom, Detroit’s burgeoning African American quarter, where barbershops were as common as boxing gyms and gospel choirs sang in streets filled with jazz horns and union chants.

He wasn’t flashy.

He wasn’t loud.

But he hit like a train and moved like nothing the city had ever seen.

Joe’s mother asked him to play violin.

He chose to grab gloves instead.

In the early 1930s, he trained at the Brewster Recreation Center on Detroit’s east side and became locally known as a brutal amateur, quickly rising to great heights.

In 1934, he turned pro and began knocking out veteran fighters as if they owed him rent, and by 1935, he was a national sensation, having won 27 of 28 fights by knockout while Detroit followed every punch, sitting around radios and proudly calling him “our boy.”

It was a time when the entire world needed a hero – and the Black community needed someone to break free of segregation and make the world take notice.

In 1936, Louis lost his first fight against Germany’s heavyweight Max Schmeling, which Hitler’s propaganda machine turned into a Nazi victory.

Louis was crushed – privately humiliated, publicly doubted – but Detroit never turned him away. Not the corner store owners, not the kids shadowboxing outside the Brewster Projects, and not the Black factory workers punching the clock and hoping for a win.

In 1938, Louis got his rematch.

The stakes were global this time around:

It was Democracy versus Fascism, America versus Hitler.

70,000 people were at Yankee Stadium, and millions more were listening to Joe Louis dispatch Schmeling in the first round.

In two minutes and four seconds, a black man from America used his fist to declare:

“We matter too.”

Louis defended his title 25 times from 1937 to 1949 – a record that stands today.

He was Detroit’s pride – a reminder that greatness can come from the hardest of soils.

He bought his mother a home on Chicago Boulevard and gave back however he could in the city that made him.

For Black Detroiters, he was proof that talent and integrity could break through any system – even one stacked against you.

In World War II he enlisted in the Army, touring the world on morale tours and donating to military causes.

He famously answered critics who asked why he was fighting for a segregated America: “That part we’ll take care of later, after we win the war.”

Joe Louis was not a businessman.

He believed in giving too much to friends, and never learned to say no.

In his 50s, he owed the IRS hundreds of thousands of dollars from war funds, forcing him to take exhibition matches and casino gigs just to scrape by as Detroit watched with both heartbreak and reverence.

Nonetheless, Louis never lost his love of the city that molded him.

To this day, parades honor him, and Tigers games celebrate him as more than just a fighter, but the soul of Detroit in leather gloves.

In 1981, when Joe Louis was 66, “The Fist” – a 24-foot-long monument to his punching arm – was erected on Jefferson Avenue just blocks from downtown Detroit.

It wasn’t delicate.

It wasn’t pretty.

But it was pure Detroit: unapologetic, powerful, and impossible to ignore.

Joe Louis never spoke much.

He didn’t taunt.

His gloves did it for him.

And what they said about dignity, resilience, and black greatness continues to resonate today.

Yzerman was more than a hockey player.

He led a city through his adolescence into his glory years.

He was a man who took hits, took blame, took losses, and gave it all back in the form of raw endurance.

It’s a legacy Detroit has never forgotten.