#general contractors Johnson County
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allenbuildingspecialties · 6 days ago
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Allen Building Specialties is your trusted choice for general contractors in Johnson County. With decades of experience, we specialize in residential and commercial construction, offering custom solutions tailored to your needs. Whether you’re planning a home remodel, building an addition, or starting a commercial project, our skilled team ensures top-quality results. From initial design to project completion, we focus on delivering exceptional craftsmanship and excellent customer service.
Allen Building Specialties Spring Hill, KS 66083 (913) 732–3036
My Official Website: https://allenbuildingspecialties.com/ Google Plus Listing: https://www.google.com/maps?cid=12033113645331318025
Our Other Links:
bathroom remodeling contractor Spring Hill: https://allenbuildingspecialties.com/bathrooms-remodeling-contractors-spring-hill basement remodeling Spring Hill: https://allenbuildingspecialties.com/basement-remodeling-contractors-spring-hill kitchen remodeling company Near ME: https://allenbuildingspecialties.com/kitchen-remodeling-contractors-spring-hill
Service We Offer:
basement remodeling bathroom remodeling home remodeling services kitchen remodeling
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johnsoncitytnfencecompany · 28 days ago
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Your Trusted Johnson City Fence Company for Quality Fencing Solutions
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If there is one thing that will help improve the security, privacy and even aesthetics of your property it is choosing the right fencing solution. Whether you need a new fence for a new construction project, replacing an old fence or fixing the current structures, choosing the right fence company can be the difference. Johnson City Fence Company is a fencing company that has the reputation of providing excellent services to our clients.
Why Choose a Professional Fence Company?
Hiring the best Johnson City TN professional fence company has a lot of advantages. Having been in the market for many years, we appreciate the business environment, climatic conditions, and the general needs for fencing in the area. Our team has the knowledge and equipment that will enable us to deliver your fencing project in the shortest time possible and to the best quality.
Expertise Matters
This is one of the reasons that make working with a professional fence company one of the best things that you can ever do. Our team of professionals is always able to advise you on the materials, models, and designs that fit your property best as well as serve your practical needs. If you are looking for wood or vinyl fences, we can help you through the various types of fencing materials including wood, vinyl, aluminum and even chain link.
Types of Fencing Solutions We Offer
At Johnson City Fence Company, we provide a wide range of fencing solutions to cater to various needs. Here are some popular options:
Wood Fencing: One of the most popular types of fences, wood fences are easy on the eye and can be built to any height and design. They provide very good privacy and are well suited to provide a comfortable backyard area.
Vinyl Fencing: When it comes to longevity and ease of maintenance, vinyl options are just great for fencing. Often sold in various styles and colors, vinyl fences are also immune to weather and pests so it is worth the investment.
Chain-Link Fencing: Mostly used in the commercial building or to fence the backyard, chain-link fences are perfect for security and visibility. They are cheap and can be further fitted with vinyl slats for increased privacy.
Aluminum Fencing: If someone wants a little bling that doesn’t require maintenance, as wood does, then aluminum fences are an option with beauty and durability. It also makes them ideal for use in enclosures and gardens since they are not only safe, but also fashionable.
Custom Fencing Solutions: At Johnson City Fence Company we are also able to offer you custom fences to suit your requirements. If you have a special concept or design in mind, we are here to help to implement it.
Importance of Local Johnson County Fence Companies
It is wise to work with a local Johnson County fence company when looking for a contractor to build your fence. Local companies know the needs of the community and also are aware of any rules and regulations that may hinder your fencing project. Also, such cooperation helps to promote a local company and get individual attention and better service.
Johnson City Fence Company is a company that provides its services to the people of Johnson City and its environs. We appreciate our community and its inhabitants; therefore, we strive to offer the best fencing services that will improve security and appearance of people’s compounds.
Our Commitment to Quality and Customer Satisfaction
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Quality, therefore, is one of the most important cornerstones of Johnson City Fence Company. Our company installs only the highest quality fences made from the finest materials while using experienced workmanship. Not only do we provide professional installation for your fence, but we also provide repair and maintenance services to preserve the quality of your fence for many years to come.
Customer-Centric Approach
In our opinion, the quality and friendliness of customer service are as valuable as the quality of the work done. Our team of professional and experienced staff will take you through the consultation process and deliver your project. We are patient with our clients, we respond to all their questions, and we ensure we keep them posted at all times. We aim at delivering our services beyond your expectations and give you the satisfaction you deserve.
The Fencing Process with Johnson City Fence Company
When you choose Johnson City Fence Company for your fencing needs, here’s what you can expect from the process:
Consultation: The first step in our process is to have a no-obligation consultation about your goals, tastes, and concerns regarding the cost. Our team will give you important advice and suggestions according to your circumstances.
Estimation: After identifying your needs, you will be presented with a clear cost breakdown of the materials that can be used, and the time that will be taken to complete the project.
Installation: Our professional staff will install your new fence according to the safety codes and laws in your area to provide you with the best result.
Post-Installation Support: After installation, we provide additional services that ensure the fence remains in the best state possible.
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sidewalkstamps · 9 months ago
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C. L. Peck Contractor (Photo taken by me on May 11, 2022)
C. L. Peck Contractor was started by Clair L. Peck Sr. in 1915 or 1918 in Los Angeles, CA. He was born in Michigan City, Indiana on May 5, 1881, the son of a lumberman. He went to Purdue University and, while there, competed in track and basketball at the same time as finishing his four-year engineering degree in three years. The firm "became known for erecting office buildings, classical church structures, warehouses and corporate headquarters" (LA Times). The Los Angeles Business Journal said the firm "specialized in creating fireproof buildings." "He was considered an expert in reinforced concrete almost from the beginning of its use in construction and was noted for his craftsmanship" (NY Times). His full name is Clair Leverett Peck. He was born in 1881 and died in 1971. He was married to Viola Curtis Peck. The LA Times described him as "the contractor who literally built much of Southern California, from the Capitol Records Building to the Bonaventure Hotel... to the Crystal Cathedral and the Orange County Performing Arts Center." The company constructed more than 1,200 buildings in Los Angeles, including 40 buildings along Wilshire Boulevard. Some other buildings include: the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, "the Forum in Inglewood, high-rises in Century City and most of the chapels and other buildings at the Forest Lawn parks." According to The New York Times, "Saks Fifth Avenue had Mr. Peck build its first Los Angeles area store, in Beverly Hills, with no written contract." He died April 23, 1971 at the age of 89 at Good Samaritan Hospital and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA.
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Peck was the Peck of Leonardt & Peck! I think my Leonardt post might be the longest ever, but this one is pretty close! His bookkeeper was named Meda Green and she lived on Hartford Avenue (Westlake). Weirdly in the same 1927 city directory, Peck is president of C L inc at 354 S Spring (Downtown) and vice president of another General Contractors firm of unclear name (with A S Bent as president, whom I've written about before) at 257 S Spring room 430. Finally, in the same directory, Beverly Hills Realty Board is in the "C L Peck bldg" in Beverly Hills (???!).
He had two sons, who both worked in his company: Edwin and Clair Leverett Peck, Jnr., who was born on November 18, 1920. Jnr went to Los Angeles High School. He was married to Emily Lutz and then Margo Ryan (according to a contributor to Find A Grave, he had another wife named Linda Hussey and three step-children through her). He had three children from his first marriage to Emily Lutz of Brentwood (assuming the Los Angeles neighborhood): Clair L. "Peter" Peck III, Nancy Peck Birdwell, and Suzanne Peck. He also had a sister named Sally Peck Carson and seven grandchildren. He had an engineering degree from Stanford and served in the U.S. Navy in World War II before joining his father's company in 1945. He expanded the business's work "erecting major department stores for Nieman Marcus, Robinsons-May, Broadway and Bullock's, the Sherman Oaks Galleria, Fashion Island in Newport Beach and much of the original South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. He worked with some luminary architects as "John Portman on the Bonaventure Hotel, Philip Johnson on the Crystal Cathedral, Charles Luckman on the Forum, I.M. Pei on the Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills, and Bill Pereira on the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Building in Newport Beach."
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The Byron Jackson plant in Santa Ana, CA was designed by John Kewell & Associates and constructed by C. L. Peck (see source below).
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In this photo, Melba Rardin and L. A. Claypool survey the excavation for an addition to St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank, CA in 1961. C. L. Peck was the contractor for the creation of "a new six-story-and-basement wing for the hospital" for $5.5M USD which was planned to add 256 patient beds and other facilities. Claypool was the "clerk of works" for Peck.
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In 1976, Peck was "elected to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and, as chairman of its building committee, oversaw construction of the bank's new building at 101 Market St." The firm also built the Hibernia Bank building in San Francisco. He also served on the boards of the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, Investment Company of America, Farmers Insurance, Northrop Corporation, Los Angeles Children's Hospital, and Metropolitan YMCA. Additionally, he had been president of San Francisco's Bohemian Club, Los Angeles's California Club, and the Los Angeles Country Club. "In 1985 he was the recipient of the Y.M.C.A. Dr. Martin Luther King Human Dignity Award."
As of 1981, C. L. Peck Construction Inc. was located at 626 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 925 in downtown Los Angeles, CA. They had a General Building Contractor license from the California Contractors State License Board from February 27, 1981 through February 28, 1997. Weirdly they were exempt from Workers Compensation Insurance? Victor Herbert Siegel was the Responsible Managing Officer, John Lee Willis was CEO/President until September 26, 1983, Paul John Matt was the Responsible Managing Employee from May 7, 1991 until July 15, 1991, Allen Marvin Katz was RMO/CEO/President until only November 16, 1983, Louis M Stafford was RMO/CEO/President from then until April 7, 1987, and William Alan Worthington was "Officer" until February 15, 1983.
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In 1986, C. L. Peck Contractor (the 53rd-largest construction company in the USA in 1986 and one of five largest contractors in California by the time of his death) and Jones Bros. Construction Corp. agreed to merge. By then they had "dominated the heavy construction business in Southern California for more than half a century." Apparently the reasoning behind their merger was the increased competition from overseas and out-of-state companies. The plan was to become Peck/Jones and have their headquarters on Wilshire Blvd. in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. C. L. Peck, Jr. would be the chairman, with Jerve M. Jones the chief executive. According to the Los Angeles Times, "the Peck and Jones families will continue to be the sole stockholders of the merged concern, which is estimated to have annual revenue of about $400 million and a work force of about 500."
He died on December 14, 1998 at 78 years old at the UCLA Medical Center from a massive stroke. He is burried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA.
According to Open Corporates, C. L. Peck Construction Inc.'s registered address was 122 S. Westgate Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90049 and there was a filing in 1999 of a Certificate of Dissolution. In January of 2021, Suzanne Peck was added as CEO and then, in July of 2022, there was a change of status from Dissolved to Terminated.
In 2005, Peck/Jones had "been forced into bankruptcy proceedings by its creditors" in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles "by one of its clients and two subcontractors who claim they are owed nearly $400,000." In another bankruptcy filing at the "U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, Redlands Community Hospital and other companies said they were also owed significant amounts of money.
It's unclear if Jones Construction Management is the current name of that firm or if the Jones Brothers' descendant, Eric Jones, is just using their legacy for the company he founded in 2008. According to him, the Jones Brothers acquired C. L. Peck Contractors rather than it being a merger (www.jonescm.com).
"Building Contracts Recorded" Southwest Builder and Contractor, F. W. Dodge Company, 1919.
“C L Peck Construction Inc.” C L Peck Construction Inc · 626 Wilshire Blvd Suite 925, Los Angeles, CA 90017, OPENGOVUS, opengovus.com/california-contractor-license/399308. Accessed 24 Feb. 2024.
“C. L. PECK CONSTRUCTION INC.” Opencorporates.Com, opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/0999492. Accessed 24 Feb. 2024.
“Clair L. Peck Sr., 89, West Coast Builder.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Apr. 1971, www.nytimes.com/1971/04/25/archives/clair-l-peck-sr-89-west-coast-builder.html.
“Clair Leverett Peck Jr. (1920-1998) - Find a Grave...” Find a Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/73675251/clair_leverett_peck. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.
“Clair Leverett Peck Sr. (1881-1971) - Find a Grave...” Find a Grave, www.findagrave.com/memorial/73673866/clair-leverett-peck. Accessed 28 Feb. 2024.
Kelly, Howard D. “Byron Jackson plant, Santa Ana.” LAPL Tessa, 1956, https://tessa2.lapl.org. February 14, 2024. 
Los Angeles City Directory, 1921, Los Angeles Directory Co. accessed through Los Angeles Public Library.
Los Angeles Directory Co.'s Los Angeles City Directory 1927, Los Angeles Directory Company Publishers, accessed through the Los Angeles Public Library.
Melba Rardin and L. A. Claypool survey excavation for St. Joseph Hospital’s addition. 11 July 1961. Los Angeles.
"Obituary for Clair Leverett Peck Jr." The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, December 17, 1998. pg. 65.
Oliver, Myrna. “Clair L. Peck Jr.; Contractor Built Southland Landmarks.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 17 Dec. 1998, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-16-mn-54665-story.html.
Shiver, Jube. “2 Big Builders of L.A. Landmarks Agree to Merge.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 2 Oct. 1986, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-02-fi-3629-story.html.
Staff-Author. “Peck/Jones Headed to Bankruptcy Court under Chapter 7.” Los Angeles Business Journal, 2 Jan. 2005, labusinessjournal.com/news/peckjones-headed-to-bankruptcy-court-under/.
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mrrooferoh · 1 year ago
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WHAT CAN BE DONE TO FIX A FLAT, COMMERCIAL ROOFING SERVICES?
Fixing a flat commercial roofing services will depend on the specific issues it's facing. Here are some general steps and considerations you should take when addressing a flat commercial roofing problem:
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Assessment and Inspection: Begin by thoroughly inspecting the entire roof to identify the source of the problem. Look for signs of damage, leaks, ponding water, membrane deterioration, flashing issues, or any other potential trouble spots.
Consult a Professional: It's advisable to consult with a professional roofing services contractor or a commercial roofing services company. They can provide expert guidance and recommendations based on the specific condition of your roof.
Roof Repair or Replacement: Depending on the severity of the issues and the overall condition of the roof, you might need to decide between roof repair services and replacement. If the damage is localized and the majority of the roof is in good condition, repairs might be sufficient. If the roof is extensively damaged or nearing the end of its lifespan, a roof replacement services might be more cost-effective in the long run.
Professional Roofing Services | Roof Repair Service | Roofers Portsmouth | Roofers Ashland KY |Roofing Huntington WV | Roofing Charleston WV | Roof Replacement Services |Commercial Roofing Services | Residential Roofing Services | Gutter Installation Services |New Roof Installation | Roofers In Johnson County
Address Drainage Issues: Flat roofs are prone to ponding water, which can lead to leaks and deterioration. Ensure that proper drainage systems, such as gutters and downspouts, are in place to direct water away from the roof. Consider installing tapered insulation to improve water flow and prevent ponding.
Roof Coatings: Applying a roof coating can help extend the life of a flat roof by providing added protection against UV rays, water damage, and leaks. Roof coatings can be a cost-effective way to enhance the durability of the roof.
Repairing Leaks and Sealing Joints: Address any leaks promptly to prevent further damage. Identify and repair any damaged membrane sections, seams, or flashing. Properly sealing joints and seams is crucial to maintaining the integrity of a flat roof.
Insulation and Ventilation: Check the insulation and ventilation systems in the building. Poor insulation and ventilation can contribute to moisture buildup and accelerate roof deterioration. Improve insulation and ensure proper airflow to help regulate temperature and moisture levels.
Regular Maintenance: Implement a routine maintenance plan to monitor the condition of the roof and address any issues before they escalate. Regular inspections and maintenance can help extend the lifespan of the roof and minimize the need for major repairs.
Choose Quality Materials: If a replacement is necessary, opt for high-quality roofing materials that are appropriate for your climate and building structure. Consider energy-efficient and durable roofing options that can provide long-term benefits.
Safety Precautions: Roof work can be dangerous, especially on commercial buildings. Ensure that proper safety measures are in place for workers, and follow all relevant safety guidelines and regulations.
Read More Blog: How To Find Roof Repair Services Near Ohio?
Read More Blog: 10 Of The Best roofing companies richmond KY | Mr Roofer- Tri-state OH,KY,WV
Read More Blog: The Importance of Insurance for Roofing Contractors
Read More Blog: Protect Your Home with Expert Roof Repair Services in the Tri-State Area
Read More Blog: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Commercial Roofing Services for Your Business
Read More Blog: How much does the roof replacement cost?
Read More Blog: Top 10 Roofing Companies Near me with Free Estimates- OH, KY and WV
Read More Blog: 5 Best Roofing Underlayment Types | Tri-state Ohio,KY,WV
Read More Blog: 9 Types Of Roof Tiles For Your New Home- 2023| Mr Roofer
Read More Blog: 5 Best Roofing Materials- Tri State OH, KY & WV
Conclusion
Remember that each flat commercial roofing services is unique, and the specific steps required to fix it will depend on factors such as the type of roofing material, the extent of damage, and the underlying structure. Consulting with a professional roofing services contractor is crucial to ensuring a successful and long-lasting solution.
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newstfionline · 4 years ago
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Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Employers, insurers push to make virtual visits regular care (AP) Make telemedicine your first choice for most doctor visits. That’s the message some U.S. employers and insurers are sending with a new wave of care options. Amazon and several insurers have started or expanded virtual-first care plans to get people to use telemedicine routinely, even for planned visits like annual checkups. They’re trying to make it easier for patients to connect with regular help by using remote care that grew explosively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advocates say this can keep patients healthy and out of expensive hospitals, which makes insurers and employers that pay most of the bill happy. But some doctors worry that it might create an over-reliance on virtual visits. “There is a lot lost when there is no personal touch, at least once in a while,” said Dr. Andrew Carroll, an Arizona-based family doctor and board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Landlords and renters both struggling (Washington Post) In the covid economy of 2021, the federal government has created an ongoing grace period for renters until at least July, banning all evictions in an effort to hold back a historic housing crisis that is already underway. More than 8 million rental properties across the country are behind on payments by an average of $5,600, according to census data. Nearly half of those rental properties are owned not by banks or big corporations but instead by what the government classifies as “small landlords”—people who manage their own rentals and depend on them for basic income, and who are now trapped between tenants who can’t pay and their own mounting bills for insurance, mortgages and property tax. According to government estimates, a third of small landlords are at risk of bankruptcy or foreclosure as the pandemic continues into its second year.
Pandemic baby bust unprecedented in Bay Area, California history (San Francisco Chronicle) U.S. residents are having fewer babies this year. And California’s birth rates in January and February—around the time when early pandemic babies would be due—declined by 15% compared to the same period last year, the steepest year-over-year decline for those months since at least 1960, according to a Chronicle analysis. We used data from California’s Health and Human Services department, which collects monthly birth totals per county. We found that the state’s births declined from nearly 70,000 in the first two months of 2020 to fewer than 59,000 in the same period in 2021.
Zoom Court Is Changing How Justice Is Served (The Atlantic) Last spring, as COVID‑19 infections surged for the first time, many American courts curtailed their operations. As case backlogs swelled, courts moved online, at a speed that has amazed—and sometimes alarmed—judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. In the past year, U.S. courts have conducted millions of hearings, depositions, arraignments, settlement conferences, and even trials—nearly entirely in civil cases or for minor criminal offenses—over Zoom and other meeting platforms. As of late February, Texas, the state that’s moved online most aggressively, had held 1.1 million remote proceedings.
Mexico City metro overpass collapses onto road; 20 dead (AP) An elevated section of the Mexico City metro collapsed and sent a subway car plunging toward a busy boulevard late Monday, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 70, city officials said. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said 49 of the injured were hospitalized, and that seven were in serious condition and undergoing surgery. The overpass was about 5 meters (16 feet) above the road in the southside borough of Tlahuac, but the train ran above a concrete median strip, which apparently lessened the casualties among motorists on the roadway below. “A support beam gave way,” Sheinbaum said, adding that the beam collapsed just as the train passed over it.
El Salvador’s judiciary (Foreign Policy) Lawmakers in El Salvador voted to remove five influential Supreme Court judges and the attorney general over the weekend in a move U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has noted with “grave concern.” The motions to remove the officials passed with a supermajority in El Salvador’s legislature, now ruled by President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas party following a sweeping victory in February’s elections. Addressing the international community on Twitter Bukele dismissed rebukes over the move. “With all due respect: We are cleaning house … and this doesn’t concern you,” Bukele said.
‘Hospitals are full’ as Argentina COVID-19 cases hit 3 million (Reuters) Argentina coronavirus cases hit 3 million on Sunday since the pandemic began, as medical workers said hospitals were full to capacity despite toughened government measures to bring down the spread of infections. The government of President Alberto Fernandez this week unveiled a new round of tougher restrictions as a second wave of infections has battered the country, filling up intensive care units and setting new daily records for cases and deaths. Marcela Cid, owner of a business on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, said that Argentines were increasingly “locked into a situation” that while necessary, was of little help to anyone trying to move beyond the pandemic.
EU proposes reopening external borders (AP) In an announcement sure to be welcomed by travelers worldwide, EU officials on Monday proposed easing restrictions on visiting the 27-nation bloc as vaccination campaigns across the continent gather speed. Travel to the European Union is currently extremely limited except for a handful of countries with low infection rates. But with the summer tourist season looming, the bloc’s European Commission hopes the new recommendations will dramatically expand that list. The Commission hopes the move will soon allow travelers reunite with their friends and relatives living in Europe and support the bloc’s economy this summer. Under the Commission’s proposal, entry would be granted to all those fully vaccinated with EU-authorized shots. Coronavirus vaccines authorized by the European Medicines Agency, the bloc’s drug regulator, include Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Indian leader’s party takes electoral hit amid virus surge (AP) India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi suffered a resounding defeat in a key state election on Sunday, indicating his Hindu nationalist party’s political strength may be slipping as the country struggles to contain an unprecedented surge in coronavirus cases. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was unable to dislodge West Bengal state’s firebrand chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, after a hard-fought campaign. His party also failed to win in two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. But the BJP secured a second term in the northeastern state of Assam and an alliance with regional parties led it to victory in the union territory of Puducherry. Even before the current virus surge, Modi’s party faced stiff challenges in these local legislative elections. Following the disappointing results, Modi stands weakened but faces no threats to staying on as prime minister until his term ends in 2024.
Formal Withdrawal from Afghanistan Begins (AP) US and NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan formally began the withdrawal phase over the weekend, a process that is expected to last through the summer and officially end Sept. 11. Roughly 3,000 US troops and 7,000 coalition troops remain in the country, along with a reported 18,000 Pentagon-employed contractors. The exit has been framed as nonconditional—meaning ongoing attacks by the Taliban against the Afghan government won’t delay the withdrawal. Many have questioned the ability of the Afghan National Army to provide security against the Taliban absent international forces. Despite assurances by Afghan officials, Taliban forces have established themselves across most of the country. Afghan forces control an estimated one-third of the country’s districts, with the Taliban controlling about 10%, and nearly half—areas that include a total of roughly 14 million people—currently contested.
Chinese man crosses Taiwan Strait by rubber dinghy, seeking ‘freedom and equality’ (Washington Post) A Chinese man appeared to sail undetected through the highly militarized Taiwan Strait in a rubber dinghy, fleeing his native China for Taiwan in search of “freedom,” according to Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration. The man, identified only by his surname, Zhou, left Shishi county in Quanzhou, a port city in Fujian province, at 10 a.m. on Friday, arriving more than 10 hours later at Taichung port on Taiwan’s western coast, Taiwan’s Coast Guard said on Monday. Officials said they were still investigating Zhou’s journey over the 100-mile stretch of sea between China and Taiwan, which is patrolled by hundreds of Chinese and Taiwanese coast guard ships and naval vessels. Coast Guard officials, relaying Zhou’s account of his journey, told reporters he had traveled in a rubber raft measuring 8.8 feet by 5 feet that he bought on the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao and fitted with an outboard motor. The incident has prompted concerns about the security of the contentious waterway at a time when military observers worry that long-standing tensions between the governments of China, Taiwan and the United States, which is committed to defending Taiwan, could boil over into military conflict.
Australia warns its citizens of jail and $50,000 fine if they return from India (Washington Post) Even in the pandemic era of closed borders, Australia’s latest travel restriction stands out: Anyone, including Australian citizens, who arrives in the country after visiting India in the previous 14 days can face up to five years in jail, a $50,000 fine or both. On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the move. Australia had seen a sevenfold increase in the percentage of people traveling from India who tested positive for the coronavirus, the prime minister told Sydney’s 2GB radio station. The decision to threaten even Australian citizens with jail time if they return home from India during its record-breaking coronavirus surge is a significant escalation of border restrictions for Australia, an island nation that had already mandated strict controls at its borders throughout the pandemic.
DR Congo declares state of siege over eastern bloodshed (Reuters) Militants killed at least 19 people, including 10 soldiers, in raids on two villages in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday, hours after President Felix Tshisekedi declared a state of siege in two provinces. A surge in attacks by armed militias and inter-communal violence in the east have killed more than 300 people since the start of the year as government troops and U.N. peacekeepers struggle to stabilize the situation. The most recent attacks took place early on Saturday when militants raided two villages in North Kivu’s regional hub of Beni, local authorities said. Tshisekedi had declared a state of siege in North Kivu and Ituri provinces on Friday.
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sciencespies · 5 years ago
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Bee lawns generate national buzz
https://sciencespies.com/biology/bee-lawns-generate-national-buzz/
Bee lawns generate national buzz
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Credit: Lilla Frerichs/public domain
Bees are excellent dancers. When a forager bee alights upon an Eden of pollen and nectar, it goes home to tell its hive mates. The greater the intensity of the dance, the richer the source of food being indicated.
In Minnesota, more bees are going to be dancing intensely this spring.
Researchers have found that homeowners who seed their lawns with a special grass mix can feed dozens of species of bees that would otherwise go hungry. So, beginning this spring, Minnesota will pay thousands of residents to plant “bee lawns” under a new state program that has attracted attention from other states. Each homeowner will get as much as $350 to do the work.
“A lot of people are watching this,” said Marla Spivak, the University of Minnesota entomologist who came up with the idea for bee lawns, a mix of traditional lawn grass and low-growing flowers.
The stakes are high: More than 1 in 3 bites of food taken in the United States depends on bees and other pollinators. But bee populations have been declining at unusually high rates in recent years.
According to the most recent data from the Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit based in College Park, Md., nearly 38% of managed honey bee colonies in the United States were lost in the winter of 2018-2019. This represents an increase of 7 percentage points above the previous year, and the highest loss recorded since the survey began in 2006.
Minnesota lawmakers last year put $900,000 toward the grant program and this year are weighing a bill to double that amount. Already 10 states have expressed interest in the program, including two states—Wisconsin and Washington—with legislative and agency proposals underway.
But critics say there isn’t enough evidence to justify spending so much.
“Minnesota is already the third- or fourth-highest-taxed state in the nation,” Republican state Sen. Mark Johnson told Stateline. Johnson has co-sponsored legislation that would cut funding for the program by close to $100,000. “What is the return on investment here? We’ve not seen evidence to say this is making an impact on bees.”
Nevertheless, Minnesota policymakers say they have heard from officials in Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Virginia who are interested in bee lawn grants.
At least 28 states have enacted pollinator health laws in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legislation generally addresses habitat protection, research, pesticides, beekeeping and public awareness.
Nationwide, honey bees pollinate $15 billion worth of crops each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Minnesota alone sold nearly $14 million of honey in 2018, according to the USDA.
“Pollinators sound like they’re cute, but they’re really fundamental—unless you don’t want to eat,” said state Sen. Jim Abeler, a Republican who co-sponsored the bee lawn bill in the Minnesota Senate last year.
Some states took aim at pesticides after bees vanished in droves because of colony collapse disorder—the disappearance of the majority of worker bees in a colony with a few dead bees left behind. But chemical companies and the farming industry have fought chemical regulations. They say pesticides are safe and reject findings that pesticides are responsible for bee population loss.
In Minnesota, for example, then-Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton’s task force to protect pollinators, which met from 2016 to 2018, got logjammed every time it brought up pesticides, Spivak said. “But everyone could agree on increasing habitat for bees,” she said.
And habitat loss—not pesticides—is the No. 1 cause of bee deaths, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Other factors, such as climate change, also play a role.
In Wisconsin, Democratic state Rep. Melissa Sargent was inspired by her teenage son to propose a bee lawn measure. Bailey Sargent, 19, brought his mother’s attention to the issue two years ago, as he planted bee lawns across Dane County, Wisconsin, for his Eagle Scout project.
“Pollinators are one of the biggest things we can be working on,” the lawmaker said.
Her bill would set aside $500,000 in grants to homeowners and local governments to plant bee lawns. The Wisconsin Legislative Council, which provides legislative analysis for state lawmakers, is expected to study the bill this summer, and Sargent plans to introduce it during the next legislative session.
In Washington state, creating a bee lawn program like the one in Minnesota will be a high priority recommendation of the state’s pollinator health task force, according to Katie Buckley, a coordinator at the Washington State Department of Agriculture. The working group is set to give lawmakers its recommendations in November.
In addition, the Evergreen State is retooling its Department of Fish and Wildlife backyard wildlife habitat program to focus on bee habitat and include patios and porches, according to Taylor Cotten, a conservation manager at the agency. The agency does not currently know how many of the habitat program’s 7,000 certified members provide habitat for bees.
Minnesota last year named an official state bee: The Rusty patched bumblebee, which has been decimated, declining by 87% nationwide in the past 20 years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency in 2017 declared the bee an endangered species.
Minnesota’s bee lawn program will be paid for with lottery revenue. More than 4,000 residents applied for the grants, far more than would be able to receive funding under the current program.
Between 300 and 400 residents will receive the $350 grants this month, said John Bly, director of education at the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Metro Blooms, a state partner that helps administer the program. Recipients can be reimbursed for hiring a contractor or for buying do-it-yourself project materials, Bly said.
Metro Blooms installed its mix of fine fescue turfgrass, self-heal, Dutch white clover and creeping thyme at 15 residences, or more than 3,000 square feet of bee lawns, according to James Wolfin, sustainable land care manager, adding that bee lawns attract more than 60 species of bees, compared with zero for regular turfgrass.
Minnesota Native Landscapes, in Otsego, sold about 160 lawns’ worth of seed mix last year, up from 40 in 2018, according to sales manager Josh Rosinger, adding that he expects to increase sales again this year.
Organic Bob, in Minneapolis, did 15 bee lawn seedings and installations for residents in the Twin Cities area last year, according to Katie Allen, the sales manager. Organic Bob will install bee lawns of about 1,000 square feet for the grant amount, $350, but it will charge more for larger lawns, say $1,500 for a lawn of 6,000 square feet.
“It wasn’t meant to be a boon to the landscaping industry,” said Abeler, the senator who co-sponsored the bee lawn legislation. “Minnesota is a state of do-it-yourselfers. We don’t need to be giving money to people to bring in a lawn service, unless they’re seniors, for heaven’s sake.”
Before expanding the program, Abeler said, he wants to see how the program goes, making sure he doesn’t hear from constituents saying that they’re getting bilked by landscapers over it.
Minnesota state Rep. Kelly Morrison, of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, says the volume of applicants speaks to the popularity of the program and its likely success in boosting bee populations.
Morrison proposes to double the funding for the bee lawns program this year in a bill she introduced last month.
“Restoring habitat for honey bees and our native pollinators is one of the most important conservation concerns of our lifetime,” said Elsa Gallagher, a biologist at the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund, a nonprofit that has planted 82 larger-scale projects in Minnesota. Some are residential, but all are larger than a typical bee lawn.
“Bees don’t care what the land is called,” said Clint Otto, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey stationed at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in North Dakota, adding that bee lawns do need to be cared for.
“Managed properly, high-diversity mixes routinely generate more bee visits, and are aesthetically pleasing,” Otto said.
Bee lawns debuted at four parks in Minneapolis last year, and scientists such as Hannah Ramer and Kristen Nelson at the University of Minnesota surveyed park visitors for their reactions and published their findings in a 2019 article in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.
Only 1% of children and 3% of adults in the United States are allergic to bee stings. But Ramer and Nelson found that more than half of visitors to Minneapolis parks with bee lawns last year said they were worried about bee stings. Still, visitors overwhelmingly (more than 95%) approved of the bee lawns.
“Bees are aggressive when defending their hive; not when out foraging on flowers,” said Washington state’s Buckley, adding that it once took her and her fellow researchers half an hour of harassing a bee to get it to sting one of them.
Scientists found in a 2015 article in the Journal of Asthma and Allergy that bees sting only “as a defensive maneuver,” unlike wasps.
Other Minneapolis respondents objected to the look of bee lawns, with one saying they “could look trashy.” Buckley disagrees. “Personally, I happen to like flowers and think they’re pretty,” she said.
In the legislature, according to the lead sponsor of the Minnesota bee lawns bill, state Rep. Rick Hansen of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, opponents mocked bees as unimportant and unworthy of spending. But Hansen said he was confident bee lawns would expand in Minnesota and around the country.
“We have more people who support the bill,” Hansen said, “and we will prevail.”
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Joe Louis
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Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981), known professionally as Joe Louis, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1934 to 1951. He reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1949, and is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis' championship reign lasted 140 consecutive months, during which he participated in 26 championship fights. The 27th fight, against Ezzard Charles in 1950, was a challenge for Charles' heavyweight title and so is not included in Louis' reign. He was victorious in 25 consecutive title defenses. In 2005, Louis was ranked as the best heavyweight of all time by the International Boxing Research Organization, and was ranked number one on The Ring magazine's list of the "100 greatest punchers of all time".
Louis' cultural impact was felt well outside the ring. He is widely regarded as the first person of African-American descent to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II. He was instrumental in integrating the game of golf, breaking the sport's color barrier in America by appearing under a sponsor's exemption in a PGA event in 1952.
Detroit's Joe Louis Greenway and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County's Joe Louis "The Champ" Golf Course, situated south of Chicago in Riverdale, Illinois, are named in his honor.
Early life
Born in rural Chambers County, Alabama (in a ramshackle dwelling on Bell Chapel Road, located about 1 mile (2 kilometres) off state route 50 and roughly 6 miles (10 kilometres) from LaFayette), Louis was the seventh of eight children of Munroe Barrow and Lillie (Reese) Barrow. He weighed 11 pounds (5 kg) at birth. Both of his parents were children of former slaves, alternating between sharecropping and rental farming. Munroe was predominantly African American, with some white ancestry, while Lillie was half Cherokee.
Louis spent the first dozen years growing up in rural Alabama, where little is known of his childhood. He suffered from a speech impediment and spoke very little until about the age of six. Munroe Barrow was committed to a mental institution in 1916 and, as a result, Joe knew very little of his biological father. Around 1920, Louis's mother married Pat Brooks, a local construction contractor, having received word that Munroe Barrow had died while institutionalized (in reality, Munroe Barrow lived until 1938, unaware of his son's fame).
In 1926, shaken by a gang of white men in the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family moved to Detroit, Michigan, forming part of the post-World War I Great Migration. Joe's brother worked for Ford Motor Company (where Joe would himself work for a time at the River Rouge Plant) and the family settled into a home at 2700 Catherine (now Madison) Street in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood.
Louis attended Bronson Vocational School for a time to learn cabinet-making.
Amateur career
The Great Depression hit the Barrow family hard, but as an alternative to gang activity, Joe began to spend time at a local youth recreation center at 637 Brewster Street in Detroit. His mother attempted to get him interested in playing the violin. A classic story is that he tried to hide his pugilistic ambitions from his mother by carrying his boxing gloves inside his violin case.
Louis made his debut in early 1932 at the age of 17. Legend has it that before the fight, the barely literate Louis wrote his name so large that there was no room for his last name, and thus became known as "Joe Louis" for the remainder of his boxing career. More likely, Louis simply omitted his last name to keep his boxing a secret from his mother. After this debut—a loss to future Olympian Johnny Miler—Louis compiled numerous amateur victories, eventually winning the club championship of his Brewster Street recreation centre, the home of many aspiring Golden Gloves fighters.
In 1933, Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves Novice Division championship against Joe Biskey for the light heavyweight classification. He later lost in the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions. The next year, competing in the Golden Gloves' Open Division, he won the light heavyweight classification, this time also winning the Chicago Tournament of Champions. However, a hand injury forced Louis to miss the New York/Chicago Champions' cross-town bout for the ultimate Golden Gloves championship. In April 1934, he followed up his Chicago performance by winning the United States Amateur Champion National AAU tournament in St. Louis, Missouri.
By the end of his amateur career, Louis's record was 50–3, with 43 knockouts.
Professional career
Joe Louis had only three losses in his 69 professional fights. He tallied 52 knockouts and held the championship from 1937 to 1949, the longest span of any heavyweight titleholder. After returning from retirement, Louis failed to regain the championship in 1950, and his career ended after he was knocked out by Rocky Marciano in 1951.
Early years
Louis's amateur performances attracted the interest of professional promoters, and he was soon represented by a black Detroit-area bookmaker named John Roxborough. As Louis explained in his autobiography, Roxborough convinced the young fighter that white managers would have no real interest in seeing a black boxer work his way up to title contention:
[Roxborough] told me about the fate of most black fighters, ones with white managers, who wound up burned-out and broke before they reached their prime. The white managers were not interested in the men they were handling but in the money they could make from them. They didn't take the proper time to see that their fighters had a proper training, that they lived comfortably, or ate well, or had some pocket change. Mr. Roxborough was talking about Black Power before it became popular.
Roxborough knew a Chicago area boxing promoter named Julian Black who already had a stable of mediocre boxers against which Louis could hone his craft, this time in the heavyweight division. After becoming part of the management team, Black hired fellow Chicago native Jack "Chappy" Blackburn as Louis's trainer. Louis' initial professional fights were all in the Chicago area, his professional debut coming on July 4, 1934, against Jack Kracken in the Bacon Casino on Chicago's south side. Louis earned $59 for knocking out Kracken in the first round. $59.00 in 1934 is equivalent to $1,148.60 in 2020 dollars. Louis won all 12 of his professional fights that year, 10 by knockout.
In September 1934, while promoting a Detroit-area "coming home" bout for Louis against Canadian Alex Borchuk, Roxborough was pressured by members of the Michigan State Boxing Commission to have Louis sign with white management. Roxborough refused and continued advancing Louis's career with bouts against heavyweight contenders Art Sykes and Stanley Poreda.
When training for a fight against Lee Ramage, Louis noticed a young female secretary for the black newspaper at the gym. After Ramage was defeated, the secretary, Marva Trotter, was invited to the celebration party at Chicago's Grand Hotel. Trotter later became Louis's first wife in 1935.
During this time, Louis also met Truman Gibson, the man who would become his personal lawyer. As a young associate at a law firm hired by Julian Black, Gibson was charged with personally entertaining Louis during the pendency of business deals.
Title contention
Although Louis' management was finding him bouts against legitimate heavyweight contenders, no path to the title was forthcoming. While professional boxing was not officially segregated, many white Americans had become wary of the prospect of another black champion in the wake of Jack Johnson's highly unpopular (among whites) "reign" atop the heavyweight division. During an era of severe anti-black repression, Jack Johnson's unrepentant masculinity and marriage to a white woman engendered an enormous backlash that greatly limited opportunities of black fighters in the heavyweight division. Black boxers were denied championship bouts, and there were few heavyweight black contenders at the time, though there were African Americans who fought for titles in other weight divisions, and a few notable black champions, such as Tiger Flowers. Louis and his handlers would counter the legacy of Johnson by emphasizing the Brown Bomber's modesty and sportsmanship. Biographer Gerald Astor stated that "Joe Louis' early boxing career was stalked by the specter of Jack Johnson".
If Louis were to rise to national prominence among such cultural attitudes, a change in management would be necessary. In 1935, boxing promoter Mike Jacobs sought out Louis' handlers. After Louis' narrow defeat of Natie Brown on March 29, 1935, Jacobs and the Louis team met at the Frog Club, a black nightclub, and negotiated a three-year exclusive boxing promotion deal. The contract, however, did not keep Roxborough and Black from attempting to cash in as Louis' managers; when Louis turned 21 on May 13, 1935, Roxborough and Black each signed Louis to an onerous long-term contract that collectively dedicated half of Louis' future income to the pair.
Black and Roxborough continued to carefully and deliberately shape Louis' media image. Mindful of the tremendous public backlash Johnson had suffered for his unapologetic attitude and flamboyant lifestyle, they drafted "Seven Commandments" for Louis' personal conduct. These included:
Never have his picture taken with a white woman
Never gloat over a fallen opponent
Never engage in fixed fights
Live and fight clean
As a result, Louis was generally portrayed in the white media as a modest, clean-living person, which facilitated his burgeoning celebrity status.
With the backing of major promotion, Louis fought thirteen times in 1935. The bout that helped put him in the media spotlight occurred on June 25, when Louis knocked out 6'6", 265-pound former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera in six rounds. Foreshadowing the Louis–Schmeling rivalry to come, the Carnera bout featured a political dimension. Louis' victory over Carnera, who symbolized Benito Mussolini's regime in the popular eye, was seen as a victory for the international community, particularly among African Americans, who were sympathetic to Ethiopia, which was attempting to maintain its independence by fending off an invasion by fascist Italy. America's white press began promoting Louis' image in the context of the era's racism; nicknames they created included the "Mahogany Mauler", "Chocolate Chopper", "Coffee-Colored KO King", "Safari Sandman", and one that stuck: "The Brown Bomber".
Helping the white press to overcome its reluctance to feature a black contender was the fact that in the mid-1930s boxing desperately needed a marketable hero. Since the retirement of Jack Dempsey in 1929, the sport had devolved into a sordid mixture of poor athletes, gambling, fixed fights, thrown matches, and control of the sport by organized crime. New York Times Columnist Edward Van Ness wrote, "Louis ... is a boon to boxing. Just as Dempsey led the sport out of the doldrums ... so is Louis leading the boxing game out of a slump." Likewise, biographer Bill Libby asserted that "The sports world was hungry for a great champion when Louis arrived in New York in 1935."
While the mainstream press was beginning to embrace Louis, many still opposed the prospect of another black heavyweight champion. In September 1935, on the eve of Louis' fight with former titleholder Max Baer, Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich wrote about some Americans' hopes for the white contender, "They say Baer will surpass himself in the knowledge that he is the lone white hope for the defense of Nordic superiority in the prize ring." However, the hopes of white suprematists would soon be dashed.
Although Baer had been knocked down only once before in his professional career (by Frankie Campbell), Louis dominated the former champion, knocking him out in the fourth round. Unknowingly, Baer suffered from a unique disadvantage in the fight; earlier that evening, Louis had married Marva Trotter at a friend's apartment and was eager to end the fight in order to consummate the relationship. Later that year, Louis also knocked out Paolino Uzcudun, who had never been knocked down before.
Louis vs. Schmeling I
By this time, Louis was ranked as the No. 1 contender in the heavyweight division and had won the Associated Press' "Athlete of the Year" award for 1935. What was considered to be a final tune-up bout before an eventual title shot was scheduled for June 1936 against Max Schmeling. Although a former world heavyweight champion, Schmeling was not considered a threat to Louis, then with a professional record of 27–0. Schmeling had won his title on a technicality when Jack Sharkey was disqualified after giving Schmeling a low blow in 1930. Schmeling was also 30 years old at the time of the Louis bout and allegedly past his prime. Louis' training retreat was located at Lakewood, New Jersey, where he was first able to practice the game of golf, which would later become a lifelong passion. Noted entertainer Ed Sullivan had initially sparked Louis' interest in the sport by giving an instructional book to Joe's wife Marva. Louis spent significant time on the golf course rather than training for the match.
Conversely, Schmeling prepared intently for the bout. He had thoroughly studied Louis's style and believed he had found a weakness. By exploiting Louis's habit of dropping his left hand low after a jab, Schmeling handed Louis his first professional loss by knocking him out in round 12 at Yankee Stadium on June 19, 1936.
World championship
After defeating Louis, Schmeling expected a title shot against James J. Braddock, who had unexpectedly defeated Max Baer for the heavyweight title the previous June. Madison Square Garden (MSG) had a contract with Braddock for the title defense and also sought a Braddock–Schmeling title bout. But Jacobs and Braddock's manager Joe Gould had been planning a Braddock–Louis matchup for months.
Schmeling's victory gave Gould tremendous leverage, however. If he were to offer Schmeling the title chance instead of Louis, there was a very real possibility that Nazi authorities would never allow Louis a shot at the title. Gould's demands were therefore onerous: Jacobs would have to pay 10% of all future boxing promotion profits (including any future profits from Louis's future bouts) for ten years. Braddock and Gould would eventually receive more than $150,000 from this arrangement. Well before the actual fight, Jacobs and Gould publicly announced that their fighters would fight for the heavyweight title on June 22, 1937. Figuring that the New York State Athletic Commission would not sanction the fight in deference to MSG and Schmeling, Jacobs scheduled the fight for Chicago.
Each of the parties involved worked to facilitate the controversial Braddock–Louis matchup. Louis did his part by knocking out former champion Jack Sharkey on August 18, 1936. Meanwhile, Gould trumped up anti-Nazi sentiment against Schmeling, and Jacobs defended a lawsuit by MSG to halt the Braddock–Louis fight. A federal court in Newark, New Jersey, eventually ruled that Braddock's contractual obligation to stage his title defense at MSG was unenforceable for lack of mutual consideration.
The stage was set for Louis's title shot. On the night of the fight, June 22, 1937, Braddock was able to knock Louis down in round one, but afterward could accomplish little. After inflicting constant punishment, Louis defeated Braddock in round eight, knocking him out cold with a strong right hand that busted James' teeth through his gum shield and lip and sent him to the ground for a few minutes. It was the first and only time that Braddock was knocked out (the one other stoppage of Braddock's career was a TKO due to a cut). Louis's ascent to the world heavyweight championship was complete.
Louis's victory was a seminal moment in African American history. Thousands of African Americans stayed up all night across the country in celebration. Noted author and member of the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes described Louis's effect in these terms:
Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions—or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too.
Initial title defenses
Despite his championship, Louis was haunted by the earlier defeat to Schmeling. Shortly after winning the title, he was quoted as saying, "I don't want to be called champ until I whip Max Schmeling." Louis's manager Mike Jacobs attempted to arrange a rematch in 1937, but negotiations broke down when Schmeling demanded 30% of the gate. When Schmeling instead attempted to arrange for a fight against British Empire champion Tommy Farr, known as the "Tonypandy Terror",—ostensibly for a world championship to rival the claims of American boxing authorities—Jacobs outmaneuvered him, offering Farr a guaranteed $60,000 to fight Louis instead. The offer was too lucrative for Farr to turn down.
On August 30, 1937, after a postponement of four days due to rain, Louis and Farr finally touched gloves at New York's Yankee Stadium before a crowd of approximately 32,000. Louis fought one of the hardest battles of his life. The bout was closely contested and went the entire 15 rounds, with Louis being unable to knock Farr down. Referee Arthur Donovan was even seen shaking Farr's hand after the bout, in apparent congratulation. Nevertheless, after the score was announced, Louis had won a controversial unanimous decision. Time described the scene thus: "After collecting the judges' votes, referee Arthur Donovan announced that Louis had won the fight on points. The crowd of 50,000 ... amazed that Farr had not been knocked out or even knocked down, booed the decision."
It seems the crowd believed that referee Arthur Donovan, Sr. had raised Farr's glove in victory. Seven years later, in his published account of the fight, Donovan spoke of the "mistake" that may have led to this confusion. He wrote:
As Tommy walked back to his corner after shaking Louis' hand, I followed him and seized his glove. "Tommy, a wonderful perform—" I began ... Then I dropped his hand like a red-hot coal! He had started to raise his arm. He thought I had given him the fight and the world championship! I literally ran away, shaking my head and shouting. "No! No! No!" realising how I had raised his hopes for a few seconds only to dash them to the ground ... That's the last time my emotions will get the better of me in a prize fight! There was much booing at the announced result, but, as I say it, it was all emotional. I gave Tommy two rounds and one even—and both his winning rounds were close.
Speaking over the radio after the fight, Louis admitted that he had been hurt twice.
In preparation for the inevitable rematch with Schmeling, Louis tuned up with bouts against Nathan Mann and Harry Thomas.
Louis vs. Schmeling II
The rematch between Louis and Schmeling would become one of the most famous boxing matches of all time and is remembered as one of the major sports events of the 20th century. Following his defeat of Louis in 1936, Schmeling had become a national hero in Germany. Schmeling's victory over an African American was touted by Nazi officials as proof of their doctrine of Aryan superiority. When the rematch was scheduled, Louis retreated to his boxing camp in New Jersey and trained incessantly for the fight. A few weeks before the bout, Louis visited the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt told him, "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany." Louis later admitted: "I knew I had to get Schmeling good. I had my own personal reasons and the whole damned country was depending on me."
When Schmeling arrived in New York City in June 1938 for the rematch, he was accompanied by a Nazi party publicist who issued statements that a black man could not defeat Schmeling and that when Schmeling won, his prize money would be used to build tanks in Germany. Schmeling's hotel was picketed by anti-Nazi protesters in the days before the fight.
On the night of June 22, 1938, Louis and Schmeling met for the second time in the boxing ring. The fight was held in Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 70,043. It was broadcast by radio to millions of listeners throughout the world, with radio announcers reporting on the fight in English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Before the bout, Schmeling weighed in at 193 pounds; Louis weighed in at 198¾ pounds.
The fight lasted two minutes and four seconds. Louis battered Schmeling with a series of swift attacks, forcing him against the ropes and giving him a paralyzing body blow (Schmeling afterward claimed it was an illegal kidney punch). Schmeling was knocked down three times and only managed to throw two punches in the entire bout. On the third knockdown, Schmeling's trainer threw in the towel and referee Arthur Donovan stopped the fight.
"Bum of the Month Club"
In the 29 months from January 1939 through May 1941, Louis defended his title thirteen times, a frequency unmatched by any heavyweight champion since the end of the bare-knuckle era. The pace of his title defenses, combined with his convincing wins, earned Louis' opponents from this era the collective nickname "Bum of the Month Club". Notables of this lambasted pantheon include:
world light heavyweight champion John Henry Lewis who, attempting to move up a weight class, was knocked out in the first round by Louis on January 25, 1939.
"Two Ton" Tony Galento, who was able to knock Louis to the canvas with a left hook in the third round of their bout on June 28, 1939, before letting his guard down and being knocked out in the fourth.
Chilean Arturo Godoy, whom Louis fought twice in 1940, on February 9 and June 20. Louis won the first bout by a split-decision, and the rematch by a knockout in the eighth round.
Al McCoy, putative New England heavyweight champion, whose fight against Louis is probably best known for being the first heavyweight title bout held in Boston, Massachusetts, (at the Boston Garden on December 16, 1940). The popular local challenger dodged his way around Louis before being unable to respond to the sixth-round bell.
Clarence "Red" Burman, who pressed Louis for nearly five rounds at Madison Square Garden on January 31, 1941, before succumbing to a series of body blows.
Gus Dorazio, of whom Louis remarked, "At least he tried", after being leveled by a short right hand in the second round at Philadelphia's Convention Hall on February 17.
Abe Simon, who endured thirteen rounds of punishment before 18,908 at Olympia Stadium in Detroit on March 21 before referee Sam Hennessy declared a TKO.
Tony Musto, who, at 5'7½" and 198 pounds, was known as "Baby Tank." Despite a unique crouching style, Musto was slowly worn down over eight and a half rounds in St. Louis on April 8, and the fight was called a TKO because of a severe cut over Musto's eye.
Buddy Baer (brother of former champion Max), who was leading the May 23, 1941, bout in Washington, D.C., until an eventual barrage by Louis, capped by a hit at the sixth round bell. Referee Arthur Donovan disqualified Baer before the beginning of the seventh round as a result of stalling by Baer's manager.
Despite its derogatory nickname, most of the group were top-ten heavyweights. Of the 12 fighters Louis faced during this period, five were rated by The Ring as top-10 heavyweights in the year they fought Louis: Galento (overall #2 heavyweight in 1939), Bob Pastor (#3, 1939), Godoy (#3, 1940), Simon (#6, 1941) and Baer (#8, 1941); four others (Musto, Dorazio, Burman and Johnny Paychek) were ranked in the top 10 in a different year.
Billy Conn fight
Louis' string of lightly regarded competition ended with his bout against Billy Conn, the light heavyweight champion and a highly regarded contender. The fighters met on June 18, 1941, in front of a crowd of 54,487 fans at the Polo Grounds in New York City. The fight turned out to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxing fights of all time.
Conn would not gain weight for the challenge against Louis, saying instead that he would rely on a "hit and run" strategy. Louis' famous response: "He can run, but he can't hide."
However, Louis had clearly underestimated Conn's threat. In his autobiography, Joe Louis said:
I made a mistake going into that fight. I knew Conn was kinda small and I didn't want them to say in the papers that I beat up on some little guy so the day before the fight I did a little roadwork to break a sweat and drank as little water as possible so I could weigh in under 200 pounds. Chappie was as mad as hell. But Conn was a clever fighter, he was like a mosquito, he'd sting and move.
Conn had the better of the fight through 12 rounds, although Louis was able to stun Conn with a left hook in the fifth, cutting his eye and nose. By the eighth round, Louis began suffering from dehydration. By the twelfth round, Louis was exhausted, with Conn ahead on two of three boxing scorecards. But against the advice of his corner, Conn continued to closely engage Louis in the later stages of the fight. Louis made the most of the opportunity, knocking Conn out with two seconds left in the thirteenth round.
The contest created an instant rivalry that Louis's career had lacked since the Schmeling era, and a rematch with Conn was planned for late 1942. The rematch had to be abruptly canceled, however, after Conn broke his hand in a much-publicized fight with his father-in-law, Major League ballplayer Jimmy "Greenfield" Smith. By the time Conn was ready for the rematch, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place.
World War II
Louis fought a charity bout for the Navy Relief Society against his former opponent Buddy Baer on January 9, 1942, which raised $47,000 for the fund. The next day, he volunteered to enlist as a private in the United States Army at Camp Upton, Long Island. Newsreel cameras recorded his induction, including a staged scene in which a soldier-clerk asked, "What's your occupation?", to which Louis replied, "Fighting and let us at them Japs."
Another military charity bout on March 27, 1942, (against another former opponent, Abe Simon) netted $36,146. Before the fight, Louis had spoken at a Relief Fund dinner, saying of the war effort, "We'll win, 'cause we're on God's side." The media widely reported the comment, instigating a surge of popularity for Louis. Slowly, the press began to eliminate its stereotypical racial references when covering Louis and instead treated him as an unqualified sports hero. Despite the public relations boon, Louis's charitable fights proved financially costly. Although he saw none of the roughly $90,000 raised by these and other charitable fights, the IRS later credited these amounts as taxable income paid to Louis. After the war, the IRS pursued the issue.
For basic training, Louis was assigned to a segregated cavalry unit based in Fort Riley, Kansas. The assignment was at the suggestion of his friend and lawyer Truman Gibson, who knew of Louis's love for horsemanship. Gibson had previously become a civilian advisor to the War Department, in charge of investigating claims of harassment against black soldiers. Accordingly, Louis used this personal connection to help the cause of various black soldiers with whom he came into contact. In one noted episode, Louis contacted Gibson in order to facilitate the Officer Candidate School (OCS) applications of a group of black recruits at Fort Riley, which had been inexplicably delayed for several months. Among the OCS applications Louis facilitated was that of a young Jackie Robinson, later to break the baseball color barrier. The episode spawned a personal friendship between the two men.
Realizing Louis's potential for raising esprit de corps among the troops, the Army placed him in its Special Services Division rather than sending him into combat. Louis went on a celebrity tour with other notables, including fellow boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. He traveled more than 35,000 km (22,000 mi) and staged 96 boxing exhibitions before two million soldiers. In England during 1944, he was reported to have enlisted as a player for Liverpool Football Club as a publicity stunt.
In addition to his travels, Louis was the focus of a media recruitment campaign encouraging African-American men to enlist in the Armed Services, despite the military's racial segregation. When he was asked about his decision to enter the racially segregated U.S. Army, he said: "Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't going to fix them." In 1943, Louis made an appearance in the wartime Hollywood musical This Is the Army, directed by Michael Curtiz. He appeared as himself in a musical number, "The Well-Dressed Man in Harlem," which emphasized the importance of African-American soldiers and promoted their enlistment.
Louis's celebrity power was not, however, merely directed toward African Americans. In a famous wartime recruitment slogan, he echoed his prior comments of 1942: "We'll win, because we're on God's side." The publicity of the campaign made Louis widely popular stateside, even outside the world of sports. Never before had white Americans embraced a black man as their representative to the world.
Although Louis never saw combat, his military service saw challenges of its own. During his travels, he often experienced blatant racism. On one occasion, a military policeman (MP) ordered Louis and Ray Robinson to move their seats to a bench in the rear of an Alabama Army camp bus depot. "We ain't moving", said Louis. The MP tried to arrest them, but Louis forcefully argued the pair out of the situation. In another incident, he allegedly had to resort to bribery to persuade a commanding officer to drop charges against Jackie Robinson for punching a captain who had called Robinson a "nigger."
Louis was eventually promoted to the rank of technical sergeant on April 9, 1945. On September 23 of the same year, he was awarded the Legion of Merit (a military decoration rarely awarded to enlisted soldiers) for "incalculable contribution to the general morale." Receipt of the honor qualified him for immediate release from military service on October 1, 1945.
Later career and retirement
Louis emerged from his wartime service significantly in debt. In addition to his looming tax bill—which had not been finally determined at the time, but was estimated at greater than $100,000—Jacobs claimed that Louis owed him $250,000.
Despite the financial pressure on Louis to resume boxing, his long-awaited rematch against Billy Conn had to be postponed to the summer of 1946, when weather conditions could accommodate a large outdoor audience. On June 19, a disappointing 40,000 saw the rematch at Yankee Stadium, in which Louis was not seriously tested. Conn, whose skills had deteriorated during the long layoff, largely avoided contact until being dispatched by knockout in the eighth round. Although the attendance did not meet expectations, the fight was still the most profitable of Louis's career to date. His share of the purse was $600,000, of which Louis' managers got $140,000, his ex-wife $66,000 and the U.S. state of New York $30,000.
After trouble finding another suitable opponent, on December 5, 1947, Louis met Jersey Joe Walcott, a 33-year-old veteran with a 44–11–2 record. Walcott entered the fight as a 10-to-1 underdog. Nevertheless, Walcott knocked down Louis twice in the first four rounds. Most observers in Madison Square Garden felt Walcott dominated the 15-round fight. When Louis was declared the winner in a split decision, the crowd booed.
Louis was under no delusion about the state of his boxing skills, yet he was too embarrassed to quit after the Walcott fight. Determined to win and retire with his title intact, Louis signed on for a rematch. On June 25, 1948, about 42,000 people came to Yankee Stadium to see the aging champion, who weighed 213½, the heaviest of his career to date. Walcott knocked Louis down in the third round, but Louis survived to knock out Walcott in the eleventh.
Louis would not defend his title again before announcing his retirement from boxing on March 1, 1949. In his bouts with Conn and Walcott, it had become apparent that Louis was no longer the fighter he had once been. As he had done earlier in his career, however, Louis would continue to appear in numerous exhibition matches worldwide. In August 1949 Cab Calloway rendered homage to the “king of the ring” with his song Ol’ Joe Louis.
Post-retirement comeback
At the time of Louis's initial retirement, the IRS was still completing its investigation of his prior tax returns, which had always been handled by Mike Jacobs's personal accountant. In May 1950, the IRS finished a full audit of Louis's past returns and announced that, with interest and penalties, he owed the government more than $500,000. Louis had no choice but to return to the ring.
After asking Gibson to take over his personal finances and switching his management from Jacobs and Roxborough to Marshall Miles, the Louis camp negotiated a deal with the IRS under which Louis would come out of retirement, with all Louis's net proceeds going to the IRS. A match with Ezzard Charles—who had acquired the vacant heavyweight title in June 1949 by outpointing Walcott—was set for September 27, 1950. By then, Louis was 36 years old and had been away from competitive boxing for two years. Weighing in at 218, Louis was still strong, but his reflexes were gone. Charles repeatedly beat him to the punch. By the end of the fight, Louis was cut above both eyes, one of which was shut tight by swelling. He knew he had lost even before Charles was declared the winner. The result was not the only disappointing aspect of the fight for Louis; only 22,357 spectators paid to witness the event at Yankee Stadium, and his share of the purse was a mere $100,458. Louis had to continue fighting.
After facing several club-level opponents and scoring an early knockout victory over EBU champion Lee Savold (also defeating top contender Jimmy Bivins by unanimous decision), the International Boxing Club guaranteed Louis $300,000 to face undefeated heavyweight contender Rocky Marciano on October 26, 1951. Despite his being a 6-to-5 favorite, few boxing insiders believed Louis had a chance. Marciano himself was reluctant to participate in the bout, but was understanding of Louis's position: "This is the last guy on earth I want to fight." It was feared, particularly among those who had witnessed Marciano's punching power first-hand, that Louis's unwillingness to quit would result in serious injury. Fighting back tears, Ferdie Pacheco said in the SportsCentury documentary about his bout with Marciano, "He [Louis] wasn't just going to lose. He was going to take a vicious, savage beating. Before the eyes of the nation, Joe Louis, an American hero if ever there was one, was going to get beaten up." Louis was dropped in the eighth round by a Marciano left and knocked through the ropes and out of the ring less than thirty seconds later.
In the dressing room after the fight, Louis's Army touring companion, Sugar Ray Robinson, wept. Marciano also attempted to console Louis, saying, "I'm sorry, Joe." "What's the use of crying?" Louis said. "The better man won. I guess everything happens for the best."
After facing Marciano, with the prospect of another significant payday all but gone, Louis retired for good from professional boxing. He would, as before, continue to tour on the exhibition circuit, with his last contest taking place on December 16, 1951, in Taipei, Taiwan, against Corporal Buford J. deCordova.
Taxes and financial troubles
Despite Louis's lucrative purses over the years, most of the proceeds went to his handlers. Of the over $4.6 million earned during his boxing career, Louis himself received only about $800,000. Louis was nevertheless extremely generous to his family, paying for homes, cars and education for his parents and siblings, often with money fronted by Jacobs. He invested in a number of businesses, all of which eventually failed, including the Joe Louis Restaurant, the Joe Louis Insurance Company, a softball team called the Brown Bombers, the Joe Louis Milk Company, Joe Louis pomade (hair product), Joe Louis Punch (a drink), the Louis-Rower P.R. firm, a horse farm and the Rhumboogie Café in Chicago. He gave liberally to the government as well, paying back the city of Detroit for any welfare money his family had received.
A combination of this largesse and government intervention eventually put Louis in severe financial straits. His entrusting of his finances to former manager Mike Jacobs haunted him. After the $500,000 IRS tax bill was assessed, with interest accumulating every year, the need for cash precipitated Louis's post-retirement comeback. Even though his comeback earned him significant purses, the incremental tax rate in place at the time (90%) meant that these boxing proceeds did not even keep pace with interest on Louis's tax debt. As a result, by the end of the 1950s, he owed over $1 million in taxes and interest. In 1953, when Louis's mother died, the IRS appropriated the $667 she had willed to Louis. To bring in money, Louis engaged in numerous activities outside the ring. He appeared on various quiz shows, and an old Army buddy, Ash Resnick, gave Louis a job greeting tourists to the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas, where Resnick was an executive. For income, Louis even became a professional wrestler. He made his professional wrestling debut on March 16, 1956 in Washington, D.C. at the Uline Arena, defeating Cowboy Rocky Lee. After defeating Lee in a few matches, Louis discovered he had a heart ailment and retired from wrestling competition. However, he continued as a wrestling referee until 1972.
Louis remained a popular celebrity in his twilight years. His friends included former rival Max Schmeling—who provided Louis with financial assistance during his retirement—and mobster Frank Lucas, who, disgusted with the government's treatment of Louis, once paid off a $50,000 tax lien held against him. These payments, along with an eventual agreement in the early 1960s by the IRS to limit its collections to an amount based on Louis's current income, allowed Louis to live comfortably toward the end of his life.
After the Louis-Schmeling fight, Jack Dempsey expressed the opinion that he was glad he never had to face Joe Louis in the ring. When Louis fell on hard financial times, Dempsey served as honorary chairman of a fund to assist Louis.
Professional golf
One of Louis's other passions was the game of golf, in which he also played a historic role. He was a long-time devotee of the sport since being introduced to the game before the first Schmeling fight in 1936. In 1952, Louis was invited to play as an amateur in the San Diego Open on a sponsor's exemption, becoming the first African American to play a PGA Tour event. Initially, the PGA of America was reluctant to allow Louis to enter the event, having a bylaw at the time limiting PGA membership to Caucasians. However, Louis's celebrity status eventually pushed the PGA toward removing the bylaw, but the "Caucasian only" clause in the PGA of America's constitution was not amended until November 1961. It paved the way for the first generation of African-American professional golfers such as Calvin Peete. Louis himself financially supported the careers of several other early black professional golfers, such as Bill Spiller, Ted Rhodes, Howard Wheeler, James Black, Clyde Martin and Charlie Sifford. He was also instrumental in founding The First Tee, a charity helping underprivileged children become acquainted with the game of golf. His son, Joe Louis Barrow, Jr., currently oversees the organization.
In 2009, the PGA of America granted posthumous membership to Ted Rhodes, John Shippen and Bill Spiller, who were denied the opportunity to become PGA members during their professional careers. The PGA also has granted posthumous honorary membership to Louis.
Personal life and death
I did the best I could with what I had
Louis had two children by wife Marva Trotter (daughter Jacqueline in 1943 and son Joseph Louis Barrow Jr. in 1947). They divorced in March 1945 only to remarry a year later, but were again divorced in February 1949. Marva moved on to an acting and modeling career. On Christmas Day 1955, Louis married Rose Morgan, a successful Harlem businesswoman; their marriage was annulled in 1958. Louis's final marriage—to Martha Jefferson, a lawyer from Los Angeles, on St. Patrick's Day 1959—lasted until his death. They had four children: another son named Joseph Louis Barrow Jr, John Louis Barrow, Joyce Louis Barrow, and Janet Louis Barrow. The younger Joe Louis Barrow Jr. lives in New York City and is involved in boxing. Though married four times, Louis discreetly enjoyed the company of other women like Lena Horne and Edna Mae Harris.
In 1940, Louis endorsed and campaigned for Republican Wendell Willkie for president. Louis said:
This country has been good to me. It gave me everything I have. I have never come out for any candidate before but I think Wendell L. Willkie will give us a square deal. So I am for Willkie because I think he will help my people, and I figure my people should be for him, too.
Starting in the 1960s, Louis was frequently mocked by segments of the African-American community (including Muhammad Ali) for being an "Uncle Tom." Drugs took a toll on Louis in his later years. In 1969, he was hospitalized after collapsing on a New York City street. While the incident was at first credited to "physical breakdown," underlying problems would soon surface. In 1970, he spent five months at the Colorado Psychiatric Hospital and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Denver, hospitalized by his wife, Martha, and his son, Joe Louis Barrow Jr., for paranoia. In a 1971 book, Brown Bomber, by Barney Nagler, Louis disclosed the truth about these incidents, stating that his collapse in 1969 had been caused by cocaine, and that his subsequent hospitalization had been prompted by his fear of a plot to destroy him. Strokes and heart ailments caused Louis's condition to deteriorate further later in the decade. He had surgery to correct an aortic aneurysm in 1977 and thereafter used an POV/scooter for a mobility aid.
Louis died of cardiac arrest in Desert Springs Hospital near Las Vegas on April 12, 1981, just hours after his last public appearance viewing the Larry Holmes–Trevor Berbick Heavyweight Championship. Ronald Reagan waived the eligibility rules for burial at Arlington National Cemetery and Louis was buried there with full military honors on April 21, 1981. His funeral was paid for in part by former competitor and friend, Max Schmeling, who also acted as a pallbearer.
Film and television
Louis appeared in six full-length films and two shorts, including a starring role in the 1938 race film Spirit of Youth, in which he played a boxer with many similarities to himself.
He was a guest on the television show You Bet Your Life in 1955.
In 1943, he was featured in the full-length movie This is the Army, which starred Ronald Reagan, with appearances by Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" and Irving Berlin, and which was directed by Michael Curtiz.
In 1953, Robert Gordon directed a movie about Louis's life, The Joe Louis Story. Filmed in Hollywood, it starred Golden Gloves fighter Coley Wallace in the role of Louis.
Legacy
In all, Louis made 25 defenses of his heavyweight title from 1937 to 1948, and was a world champion for 11 years and 10 months. Both are still records in the heavyweight division, the former in any division. His most remarkable record is that he knocked out 23 opponents in 27 title fights, including five world champions. In addition to his accomplishments inside the ring, Louis uttered two of boxing's most famous observations: "He can run, but he can't hide" and "Everyone has a plan until they've been hit."
Louis was named fighter of the year four times by The Ring magazine in 1936, 1938, 1939, and 1941. His fights with Max Baer, Max Schmeling, Tommy Farr, Bob Pastor and Billy Conn were named fight of the year by that same magazine. Louis won the Sugar Ray Robinson Award in 1941. In 2005, Louis was named the #1 heavyweight of all time by the International Boxing Research Organization. In 2007, he was ranked #4 on ESPN.com's 50 Greatest Boxers of all-time list. In 2002 The Ring ranked Louis #4 on their 80 best fighters of the last 80 years list. Louis was also ranked #1 on The Ring's list of 100 Greatest Punchers of All Time.
Louis is also remembered in sports outside of boxing. A former indoor sports venue was named after him in Detroit, the Joe Louis Arena, where the Detroit Red Wings played their NHL games from 1979 to 2017. In 1936, Vince Leah, then a writer for the Winnipeg Tribune used Joe Louis's nickname to refer to the Winnipeg Football Club after a game. From that point, the team became known popularly as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
His recognition also transcends the sporting world. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Joe Louis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. On August 26, 1982, Louis was posthumously approved for the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given to civilians by the U.S. legislative branch. Congress stated that he "did so much to bolster the spirit of the American people during one of the most crucial times in American history and which have endured throughout the years as a symbol of strength for the nation". Following Louis' death, President Ronald Reagan said, "Joe Louis was more than a sports legend—his career was an indictment of racial bigotry and a source of pride and inspiration to millions of white and black people around the world."
A memorial to Louis was dedicated in Detroit (at Jefferson Avenue and Woodward) on October 16, 1986. The sculpture, commissioned by Time, Inc. and executed by Robert Graham, is a 24-foot-long (7.3 m) arm with a fisted hand suspended by a 24-foot-high (7.3 m) pyramidal framework. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring.
In an interview with Arsenio Hall in the late 1980s, Muhammad Ali stated that his two biggest influences in boxing were Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis.
On February 27, 2010, an 8-foot (2.4 m) bronze statue of Louis was unveiled in his Alabama hometown. The statue, by sculptor Casey Downing, Jr., sits on a base of red granite outside the Chambers County Courthouse.
In 1993, he became the first boxer to be honored on a postage stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
Various other facilities have been named after Joe Louis. In 1984, the four streets surrounding Madison Square Garden were named Joe Louis Plaza in his honor. The former Pipe O' Peace Golf Course in Riverdale, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), was in 1986 renamed "Joe Louis The Champ Golf Course". American Legion Post 375 in Detroit is also named after Joe Louis. Completed in 1979 at a cost of $4 million, Joe Louis Arena, nicknamed The Joe, was a hockey arena located in downtown Detroit. It was the home of the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League from 1979 until 2017. The planned demolition of the Arena prompted the City of Detroit in 2017 to rename the Inner Circle Greenway as the Joe Louis Greenway. When completed, this 39-mile (63 km) biking and walking trail will pass through the cities of Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Dearborn.
In one of the most widely quoted tributes to Louis, New York Post sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, when responding to another person's characterization of Louis as "a credit to his race", stated, "Yes, Joe Louis is a credit to his race—the human race."
Cultural references
In his heyday, Louis was the subject of many musical tributes, including a number of blues songs.
Louis is played by actor Bari K. Willerford in the film American Gangster.
In 2009, the Brooklyn band Yeasayer debuted the single "Ambling Alp" from their forthcoming album Odd Blood, which imagines what advice Joe Louis's father might have given him prior to becoming a prizefighter. The song makes reference to Louis' boxing career and his famous rivalry with Schmeling in the first person, with the lyrics such as "Oh, Max Schmeling was a formidable foe / The Ambling Alp was too, at least that's what I'm told / But if you learn one thing, you've learned it well / In June, you must give fascists hell."
An opera based on his life, Shadowboxer, premiered on April 17, 2010.
The aforementioned sculpture of Louis's fist (see Legacy above) was one of several Detroit landmarks depicted in "Imported from Detroit", a two-minute commercial for the Chrysler 200 featuring Eminem that aired during Super Bowl XLV in 2011.
Louis is the inspiration behind Jesse Jagz's eponymous song from the album Jagz Nation Vol. 2: Royal Niger Company (2014).
The first track from John Squire's 2002 debut LP Time Changes Everything is titled "Joe Louis", and the lyrics include references to his boxing and army career.
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Roundup! Who’s Who at the State of the Union, 9p.m. ET (watch/listen/read: whitehouse.gov or c-span.org)
Speakers
President Donald Trump
Democratic Response (English): Stacey Abrams
Democratic Response (Spanish): Xavier Becerra
Attendees
Officials: Members of the House and Senate, the President’s Cabinet (with the exception of one planned absentee Cabinet member), Vice President, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, former Members of Congress, and members of the diplomatic corps.
Invited Guests (as of 2 p.m. ET)
President Trump/First Lady Melania Trump
Congress (via @RollCall) click below for list (as of 2p.m. ET):
            Senate
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee: A.B. Culvahouse, Jr., Ambassador of the United States of America to the Commonwealth of Australia and a Tennessean.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin: Diane Whitcraft, a constituent with multiple sclerosis who stopped taking a drug after 23 years because she could not afford it.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey: Edward Douglas, who faced a lifetime sentence in 2003 for selling crack cocaine, but was released in January thanks to a criminal justice reform bill called the First Step Act passed by Congress in December.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois: Toby Hauck, an Aurora, Illinois, air traffic controller and Air Force veteran and one of the more than 8,000 Illinois federal employees impacted by the partial government shutdown.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York:Navy Lt. Cmdr. Blake Dremann, a transgender service member and the president of SPART*A, an LGBT military advocacy organization focused on transgender military advocacy.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California: Trisha Pesiri-Dybvik, an air traffic controller and a mother of three who lost her home in the Travis wildfire, and soon after went without a paycheck during the 35-day shutdown.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico: Former Pueblo of Acoma Governor Kurt Riley will attend to bring attention to how the shutdown adversely affected public safety, child welfare, and health care programs at Indian Health Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Sen. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota: Bethlehem Gronneberg, founder and CEO of uCodeGirl.
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine: Margo Walsh, the owner and founder of MaineWorks, a Portland employment agency, and co-founder of Maine Recovery Fund, which provides services for people in recovery for substance abuse.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota: Nicole Smith-Holt, a constituent whose son died because the family was unable to afford his insulin.
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts: Varshini Prakash, executive director and co-founder of Sunrise, a movement of young people working to stop climate change.
Sen. Martha McSally, R-Arizona: Isaiah Acosta, a 19-year-old rapper born without a jaw, who is an advocate for Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Children’s Miracle Networks Hospitals.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada: Dr. Michael Moradshahi, a second-generation American and licensed psychologist. Moradshahi served in the Department of Veteran Affairs and currently works in the Indian Health System (IHS) in Reno. He worked without pay during the partial government shutdown.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon: Albertina Contreras, a mother detained in solitary confinement and separated from her 11-year-old daughter Yakelin when she sought asylum from domestic violence in Guatemala.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio: Jamael Tito Brown, mayor of Youngstown, the beneficiary of a recent U.S. Department of Transportation BUILD grant.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada: Tanya Flanagan, a constituent and county employee who has survived breast cancer three times, who would be at risk of losing health care coverage without the Affordable Care Act’s protections for patients with preexisting conditions.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland: Lila Johnson, a grandmother and primary breadwinner, who has worked as a general cleaning services contractor at the U.S. Department of Agriculture for more than two decades. As it stands, Johnson will not receive compensation for the 35 days the government was partially shuttered.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona: Maj. Bryan Bouchard, a retired Bronze Star recipient.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina: Pastor Andrew Brunson, a North Carolina native who was imprisoned in Turkey, and his wife Norine Brunson. Brunson was arrested during a crackdown after a failed military coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He was released last year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts: Sajid Shahriar, an employee of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development furloughed during the government shutdown. Executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3258, Shahriar organized rallies in Boston to urge an end to the shutdown.
                 House of Representatives
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona: Border Patrol Agent Art Del Cueto.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon: Blumenauer will not attend the State of the Union address, but has asked Nate Mook, executive director of the World Central Kitchen, to take his place. Word Central Kitchen, founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, provides food to people in need, and distributed meals to federal employees during the shutdown.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Oregon: Alexandria Goddard, who helped organize Portland’s March for Our Lives while a student at Sunset High School. Goddard is currently a freshman at Portland State University.
Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Illinois:Tom Mueller, a soybean farmer whose income has taken a hit from trade policy under the Trump administration.
Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-California: Foodbank of Santa Barbara County CEO Erik Talkin, who distributed food to furloughed workers during the 35-day partial government shutdown.
Rep John Carter, R-Texas: Robert Chody, the Williamson County sheriff. Carter said in a statement that Chody was a U.S. Army veteran and served in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice before taking the helm in Williamson County.
Rep. Judy Chu, D-California: Ryan Hampton, an advocate who was able to receive treatment for opioid addiction only to see his friend die in a sober-living facility due to lack of training and resources. Hampton will argue Trump is ignoring the opioid crisis by obsessing over a non-solution.
Rep. David Cicilline, D-Rhode Island: Jamie Green, an air traffic controller at T.F. Green International Airport.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-New Jersey: Victorina Morales, an undocumented immigrant who worked as a housekeeper at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Virginia: Amer Al-Mudallal, a chemist and 22-year veteran of the chemical safety division of the Environmental Protection Agency. Both Amer and his wife, another EPA employee, were furloughed and missed their paychecks during the partial government shutdown.
Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minnesota: Katie Brenny, who Craig describes as a cattle farmer, businesswoman, and community advocate.
Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Florida: “Coast Guard family” Petty Officer Chris Gutierrez and Chelsey Gutierrez. Gutierrez is stationed at Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater.
Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-South Carolina: Folly Beach Mayor Tim Goodwin, a Republican, who endorsed Cunningham over his GOP opponent Katie Arrington last year.
Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas: Laura Robeson, a mother and health care advocate from Prairie Village, whose 7-year-old son Danny was born prematurely and has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and cortical vision impairment.
Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Illinois: Taylorville Fire Chief Mike Crews, who was instrumental in the emergency notification and disaster recovery efforts when a tornado struck the congressman’s hometown on Dec. 1, 2018.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pennsylvania: Jami Amo, a survivor of the 1999 Columbine school shooting. Amo became a gun safety activist after the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year.
Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-New York: Michael Hickey, who exposed elevated levels of toxic PFOA chemicals in Hoosick Falls and Petersburgh after his father died of cancer.
Rep. Val Demings, D-Florida: Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and Ralph Velez, a federal employee at Orlando International Airport who worked without a paycheck during the partial government shutdown.
Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Florida: Manny Oliver, who started the organization Change the Ref after losing his son Joaquin in the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán, D-California: Charlene Downey, a retired U.S. Coast Guard Captain.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas: Senaida Navar, a DACA recipient and an adjunct instructor at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-New York: Yeni Gonzalez Garcia, a Guatemalan mother separated from her three children at the Arizona border last year.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania: Justin Cangro, 16, whose 20-year-old brother Jared died of an overdose in July 2016.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tennessee: Gov. Bill Lee will join Fleischmann as his guest and meet with the entire Tennessee delegation.
Rep. Bill Foster, D-Illinois: Marilyn Weisner, executive director of the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry.
Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Florida: Kim Churches, CEO of the American Association of University Women, an organization that promotes education for women and girls.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida: Carlos Trujillo, U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States. Gaetz tweeted Trujillo has been a “key advisor” to the Trump administration on Venezuela policy.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona: Beth Lewis, chair of Save Our Schools Arizona, an organization that advocates for strong public schools.
Rep. Sylvia R. Garcia, D-Texas: Devani Gonzalez, a DACA recipient who aspires to be in law enforcement but is hindered due to her immigration status.
Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine: Cynthia Phinney, president of the Maine AFL-CIO.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-California: Sandra Diaz, another former housekeeper who worked at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, as an undocumented immigrant. Diaz endured coercion, physical and verbal abuse, and threats of deportation from her supervisors there, Gomez said in a statement.Diaz, who emigrated from Costa Rica, is now a legal resident and does not have to worry her attendance will tip off U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-New Jersey: Annette Leo, the mother of two who have been diagnosed with Ataxia Telangiectasia, a rare, progressive neurological disorder.
Rep. Deb Haaland, D-New Mexico: Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Rep. Josh Harder, D-California: John Casazza, a Central Valley walnut farmer from Hughson and lifelong Republican. Recent Chinese tariffs are “significantly hurting his business due to the lowered demand,” according to a statement.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Connecticut: Lane Murdock, a junior at Ridgefield High School student and co-founder of National School Walkout, which organized a massive student protest in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia: Faye Smith, a member of 32BJ SEIU, a contracted Smithsonian security officer who was facing eviction because of the shutdown.
Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, D-Maryland: Jacqueline Beale, Maryland state lead ambassador for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington: Lisa J. Graumlich, climate scientist and Dean of the College of the Environment at the University of Washington.
Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio: Chris Green, a police officer who nearly overdosed after being exposed to fentanyl during an arrest.
Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Michigan: Cathy Wusterbarth, of Oscoda, who has advocated for all levels of government to more urgently address toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination that has been found in drinking water in her community.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa: Far-right Fox News personalities “Diamond and Silk.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois: Dixon High School Resource Officer Mark Dallas, who intervened when a former student started firing in the school auditorium last year.
Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pennsylvania: Darrin Kelly, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, firefighter and president of the Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
Rep. Jim Langevin, D-Rhode Island: Stephen Cardi, the chief operating officer of the Cardi Corporation and president of Construction Industries of Rhode Island.
Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nevada: Sergeant Isaac Saldivar, who served in the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. Saldivar lost two years of G.I. Bill benefits when the for-profit college he was enrolled in closed.
Rep. Mike Levin, D-California: Lucero Sanchez, a DACA recipient, student in environmental science at UC San Diego, and former intern on Levin’s campaign.
Rep. Daniel Lipinski, D-Illinois: Chicago police officer Gino Garcia and advocate for the organization WINGS, which provides shelter and job training for victims of domestic violence.
Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa: Jeff Chapman, battalion chief of the Clinton Fire Department, who has served with the department since 1995.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California: Shaima Swileh, a Yemeni national, and Ali Hassan, a U.S. citizen, to spotlight the impact of the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban. Though their 2-year-old son is receiving treatment for a terminal genetic brain condition in the U.S., the couple struggled to obtain a visa for Swileh, his mother. After a public outcry, Swileh was able to visit the U.S. weeks before her son died. Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., will also host the couple.
Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-New Jersey: Hing Foo Lee, brother of the late patient advocate John Lee, who was profiled in the Washington Post for his determination to vote in NJ-07 while dealing with stage IV cancer.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-New York: Sydney B. Ireland, a high school student who successfully lobbied to join the Boy Scout Troops and is now fighting to be officially recognized as a member with a rank of Eagle Scout.
Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah: McAdams will bring his brother-in-law Sam, who voted for Trump in 2016.
Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-California: Shaima Swileh, a Yemeni national, and Ali Hassan, a U.S. citizen, to spotlight the impact of the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., will also host the couple.
Rep. Grace Meng, D-New York: Jin Park of Flushing, Queens, the first Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient to be awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Park is to study at the University of Oxford in England in the fall but fears he will not be permitted to re-enter the country.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Florida: A 15-year-old student, Uma Menon of Winter Park, the winner of the congresswoman’s State of the Union essay contest.
Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colorado: Elias, a DACA recipient and student in chemical and biological engineering, as well as biomedical engineering at Colorado State University. Elias emigrated from Mexico at a young age.
Rep. Donald Norcross, D-New Jersey: Robert Martinez Jr., who is the International President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. Norcross has introduced a bill to grant federal contractors back pay for income lost during the shutdown.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York: Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy. Archila made national headlines last year when she confronted then-Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, in a Capitol elevator and challenged him to vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Arizona: Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota: Linda Clark, who fled Liberia and found refuge in the U.S. two decades ago under Deferred Enforced Departure, but who faces deportation as soon as March because the Trump administration has shuttered the program.
Rep. Chris Pappas, D-New Hampshire: Pappas invited transgender veteran Tavion Dignard in order to call attention to the transgender military service ban.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California: The House Speaker’s guest list includes active duty transgender members of the military, Chef José Andrés, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and DNC Chair Tom Perez. The Leader’s other State of the Union guests are President Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, President Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Mrs. Dorothy McAuliffe.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine: Joel Clement, a former Department of the Interior policy expert and whistleblower, who alleged the Trump administration retaliated against him for speaking out about the threat climate change poses to Native communities in Alaska after department higher-ups moved the biologist into the accounting department.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin: Aissa Olivarez, staff attorney for the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, a nonprofit resource center which helps low-income immigrants with legal services.
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-California: Kenia Yaritza Arredondo Ramos, a mother, DACA recipient and nursing student at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio: Dave Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, which represents General Motors workers at the Lordstown plant, one of five North American plants GM is closing.
Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Washington: Issaquah resident Jenell Payne Tamaela. Jenell was diagnosed with stage 3c colon cancer in Summer, 2016. She has since become an advocate for better access to health care for people with pre-existing conditions, and lower costs of prescription drugs and health care coverage. Jenell and Rep. Schrier are two of an estimated 300,000 people with pre-existing conditions in the 8th District.
Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Alabama: Tiphanie Carter, wife of Birmingham Police Sergeant Wytasha Carter, who was killed on duty last month.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Michigan: Amanda Thomashow, a sexual assault survivor advocate. Thomashow, a former Michigan State University student, brought the first Title IX case against Larry Nassar at MSU in 2014, which led to an investigation and contributed to Nassar’s eventual firing from the university.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California: United States Air Force Staff Sergeant Logan Ireland, who served in Afghanistan and Qatar.
Rep. Darren Soto, D-Florida: Doug Lowe, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Federal Aviation Administration specialist at the Orlando International Airport.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Arizona: Ellie Perez, a DACA recipient, and the first undocumented City of Phoenix employee, the first undocumented member of the Democratic National Committee, and a former campaign aide.
Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Michigan: Jean Buller, former teacher at Walled Lake Middle School, who recently retired after 30 years in the school district, and 2018 Michigan Science Teacher of the Year.
Rep. Norma J. Torres, D-California: Joe Rodgers, a Federal Aviation Administration Engineer Technician at Ontario International Airport.
Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, D-New Mexico: Arlean Murillo, ambassador to the New Mexico Secretary of Education’s Family Cabinet and, as the wife of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, a volunteer with the Border Patrol Agent Family Network.
Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Massachusetts: Lawrence Police Officer Ivan Soto, worked tirelessly during the gas explosions in his community last year, responding to fires even when his own house went up in flames.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Michigan: Haley Petrowski, a cyberbullying prevention advocate and Adrian College student.
Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Florida: Senior Chief Jeffery S. Graham, officer in charge of Coast Guard Station Ponce de Leon Inlet in New Smyrna Beach.
Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Virginia: Linda McCray, a constituent who works at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center and was furloughed during the shutdown.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-New York: Commissioner Geraldine Hart, who previously led Long Island’s Federal Bureau of Investigations field office and gang task force.
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vodoinstalatermilan-blog · 6 years ago
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Kursus Teknikal Separuh Masa Percuma
A person who installs and repairs piping, fixtures, appliances, and appurtenances in connection with the water supply, drainage systems, etc., both in and out of buildings. The best of the best plumbers practice the fine art of water balancing. Our focus of providing quality plumbing service and products combined with honesty has made our plumbers the first choice of many residential and commercial clients worldwide. If you've ever been caught in the middle of lathering up or ready to rinse the shampoo out of your hair only to be shocked by the sudden blast of ice cold water spewing from the shower head during your morning shower then you've no doubt experienced a water heater failure. First we're going to assume your pipes are clear and clean and the water flows freely. Say goodbye to plumbing and heater related worries with Blocked Drains Elwood No plumbing problem is too big or too small with NLK Plumbing. Don't be tricked by our name, we also offer service excellence when it comes to heating systems.
Pour in one cup steaming hot water to flush to Clorox from your pipes. If the pipes can be connected in the center of your plumbing layout then a better balance can be achieved. For example, they all install pipes and fittings that carry water, steam, air, or other liquids or gases. Both systems generally use conventional water heating methods as a backup or to augment the solar system. There are thousands of people who realize Milan vodoinstalater majstor the importance of Licensing Plumbers through the State. Moreover, the top 10% of plumbers earn more than $79,000, and the job segment is projected to grow 26% through 2020, with new construction and a wave of baby boomer retirements among older plumbers spurring employment. At times, a plumber may have to keep an eye on dials or gauges while performing a repair or installation, so being able to multitask can be an asset.
If you find any, the pipe will have to be repaired. The main energy source for water heating is natural gas, followed by fuel oil and district steam from Con Edison. A review of the existing domestic plumbing services led us to specify the installation of a Salamander Shower Pump Right Hand Twin 75 model. If frozen pipes are a recurring problem at your house, heating cable would be a wise investment. The last thing that we want any of our customers to have to do is live with leaky pipes, a clogged sink, or a toilette that does not work. Attempting an involved plumbing project without the proper knowledge and experience can result in expensive repairs, and sometimes entire re-installations. It is administered in Ontario by the Apprenticeship Client Services Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges & Universities.
I found him in this forums and he came round to do two small jobs - fix a leaky toilet bowl and a broken waterpipe. Properly adjusting or repairing your sprinkler system will require some basic plumbing knowledge, a few tools, and most of all, the ability to follow some simple instructions. Then it was off to the nearby Hotel Albatros, while we killed time had some refreshments until it was time to head for the airport and our LAN charter flight back to Buenos Aires. Galvanized steel potable water supply and distribution pipes are commonly found with nominal pipe sizes from 3⁄8 inch (9.5 mm) to 2 inches (51 mm). Whether your pipes are leaking or your furnace needs routine maintenance, the professionals at Hartlaub Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electric are here to help.
Day four has started in a fairly uninteresting manner—out of bed, into the shower, wash my face with just water (is that really washing?) then reapply at 6:30 am. Pumps- Plumbers service, maintain and replace the faulty pumps. They also install specialized systems such as medical gas, process piping, compressed air, water conditioners, fuel piping, sewage and water treatment, and storage and flow equipment. So it is necessary to avail the professional PLUMBING SERVICES, SYDNEY for keeping hygiene to your home. Once the tub is drained pour one cup steaming hot water into the drain. Yesterday, I was out in Pasir Ris in the afternoon, my mum called me and complained the shower water got choke again. All it takes is one lousy morning with no running water (or a clogged sink or phantom-flushing toilet) to remind us how dependent we are on the expertise of plumbers.
Install pipe assemblies, fittings, valves, appliances and fixtures (e.g. sinks, toilets, dishwashers, heating and cooling systems, gas appliances, water tanks), e.g. using hand and power tools. Apart from the normal pipe fittings in the house, even water and sewer lines require enough time for inspections from time to time. Licensed plumbers, electricians, mechanics, insulators and Milan Vodoinstalater drywall installers are all great examples of skilled tradespeople. For plumbing services in the Atlanta area, Mr. Plumber is the number one choice. A lot times when I talk to plumbers they're sometimes using all these code words to keep me on the 'outside' if you know what I mean. Many plumbing problems in Los Angeles ,i.e. burst pipes or repairing leaks crop upon on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, I had started late in the day and it was starting to get dark; no time to fix it. So I spent a night with egg on my face and a night without water. To drain a water heater, you will need a regular home and garden water hose. Let Plumbers Today help connect you with a local plumber for your residential, commercial and emergency plumbing needs. Pay for plumbers, gasfitters and drainlayers depends on experience. Cold weather can also cause sink drainage problems through clogged or frozen drain pipes. Many people don't have the time or skill to do this job themselves. Plumbing services are so important; we need them time and again. We seek a Qualified and Experienced Plumber to join our new & expanding Plumbing division at Sharpe Group. With one service truck and the notion to give people a quality job at a fair price.
Give us a call at (760)780-9365 to schedule plumbing service and get your free estimate… and we will make sure that your plumbing troubles are a thing of the past in no time. You can count on Jakarta Plumber to take care of your plumbing and drainage needs-day or night with never an overtime charge. Ideally, the homeowner would have a plumber remove the toilet before the wallpaper goes up. But removing and then replacing plumbing fixtures can be expensive, you have to coordinate the plumber with the paperhanger, and you have to live with a non-functioning toilet for a period of time. Sometimes you can get by very inexpensively with something like the Drano Snake Plus Kit and other times depending on where the clog is you might need to rent or buy a plumbing snake tool or call a plumber.
That's why when you need us for a plumbing repair or installation, you can consider it done. Although there are significant energy savings to achieve by upgrading from steam to hot water systems, the conversion cost is high. Let Plumbers Today's professionals handle that for your company storefront or building. Another option is to replace piping at the origin of the system with larger diameter pipe that will carry more water to the center of the system and therefore deliver more pressure as it branches out to the smaller pipes running into bathrooms, kitchens and laundry rooms. Plumbers lay out, install, test and maintain pipes, fixtures, metal roofing, fittings, gas meters and regulators. All buildings covered by LL84 and its amendment are required to submit energy consumption data, but water consumption data is not required unless the property has been equipped with an automatic water meter, for at least a full calendar year before the data submission date.
The tankless heater can only move water through its pipes so fast. Our team of qualified professionals are committed to providing Apprentice plumbers, Journey plumbers and their skilled workforce with the highest quality competitive training that will enable them to excel in their professional career. Top companies provide same day repairs - This means that the professionals at this company work diligently to fix your problems within a day. Bringing it back into the house, and transferring it to pots and pans on my stove, heating it until it melted, letting it cool enough so that it was not boiling, and poured some down my bathroom drains, which by the way are the closet to the outside water supply. Instead, just shut off the water supply valve, cut the copper pipes with an inexpensive pipe cutter so at least several inches of copper pipe extend from the floor or wall, then lift out the old faucet.
Plumbers receive training in general and specialist vehicle operation and are required to support other trades in the performance of their duties. Which is why the Real Plumbers team has been the local leading service provider for these types of services, for 30 years now. On "workman who installs pipes and fittings" as lead water pipes became the principal concern of the trade. The Containers Micro-conference at Linux https://vodoinstalater-odgusenje.com Plumbers is the yearly gathering of container runtime developers, kernel developers and container users. Our master plumbers at Kevin Ginnings Plumbing Service, Inc., are the most trusted plumbers in South Kansas City, Overland Park and all of Johnson County, KS. Our commercial and residential plumbing company is backed by more than 30 years of experience, and we have proudly served the area for more than 28 years.
Just reliable plumbing services from one of the most experienced plumbing contractors in the entire west Portland metro area. The plumber comes out and says yes, your water heater needs replacing and yes he has one in stock and can install it the first thing in the morning and estimates it will cost $1400. Our professional Plumbers in Carroll County MD provide quick service to: Westminster , Finksburg , New Windsor, Union Bridge, Upperco, Union Mills, Taneytown, https://vodoinstalater-odgusenje.com Manchester , Hampstead , Keymar, Lineboro, Linwood, Woodbine, Gamber , Eldersburg , Sykesville, Marriottsville, Mt Airy, Winfield, Taylorsville. Here, you learn about water supply, heating systems and roofing. While plumbers usually stick to copper and PVC pipes and fittings, pipefitters are more on the industrial side and tend to deal with slightly different materials when it comes to the pipes, hardware, and what's being contained in the pipes.
The term of apprenticeship for apprentice plumbers in Alberta is four years (four 12 month periods) that include a minimum of 1,500 hours of on-the-job training and eight weeks of technical training in each year. We specialize in a variety of services from basic plumbing and sewer repair to water line repair, rodding, ejector and sump pump installation and repair, laundry tub installs, floor drains and basement flooding services. This new qualification also www.vodoinstalater-odgusenje.com incorporates the BPEC Water Regulations qualification and is designed solely for plumbers with at least 5 years industry experience on the job. Licenses required for plumbing, electrical, HVAC, heating, and hydronics trades. If you've got a major leak on Christmas Day and need a plumber, you may be glad to find anyone who will fix it. However, if you're planning a costly renovation, take the time to interview more than one plumber before picking one.
Our certified technicians are highly trained in repairing and installing plumbing and HVAC systems, ensuring your Milwaukee-area home stays comfortable and functional all year long. If you are looking to hire a professional Plumber Mill Park then it is important for you to trust and bank on the plumbers who are just the best in their job. Although a tankless on demand water heater will give you unlimited hot water continually, you will still have to run the water for some time, while waiting for the hot water to get to your location. Every time I talk to someone about plumbing, they comment on how gross it must be and every time I reply, that is why they pay us the big bucks.” People, of course, think I am kidding, but the average starting salary for a licensed plumber in our shop is $45,000 per year with full health benefits, life insurance, a paid cell phone, a take home vehicle and matched retirement savings.
Cracked pipes can cause major flooding and incur thousands of dollars in water damage. However, maintenance and repair of plumbing and pipe systems must continue even during economic downturns, so plumbers and fitters outside of construction tend to have more stable employment. With very few people left on deck, we cruised through the famous Lemaire Channel, a narrow body of water surrounded by high peaks, snow, and glaciers. Many vodoinstalater-odgusenje.com of these depend on how easy it is to access the existing pipes in your plumbing system. Speaking from experience, I would suggest a unit that you can stretch your legs out when you sit in them for a walk in model, if you have the space, because you will find yourself spending a lot more time relaxing in a steam shower than just a normal shower so being able to sit down and stretch out your legs will be greatly appreciated.
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local-roofing-news · 2 years ago
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Commercial Roofing Repair in Syracuse NY
Commercial Roofing Repair in Syracuse NY If you need commercial roofing repair in Syracuse NY, you have a few options. Among these options are CentiMark Roofing, Van Derhoof Roofing, Empire State Professionals, and Capital Home Improvements. Each of these companies specializes in a particular area of roofing. Each of them has a team of professionals who are highly experienced in a wide range of projects. CentiMarkCentiMark offers a wide range of roofing services, including full roof replacement and specialized repairs. Its roofing contractors are industry leaders and provide expert installation according to CentiMark standards. Additionally, the company adheres to a strict safety plan and shares it with customers. CentiMark also provides a Single Source Warranty on workmanship. CentiMark has locations across New York, including Buffalo and Albany. Interested candidates should have a valid driver's license, be able to lift fifty pounds, have previous roofing experience, and be willing to undergo a drug test. CentiMark has a friendly, professional workplace with great career opportunities. Empire State ProfessionalsWhether you need a new roof or an emergency roof repair, you can rely on Empire State Professionals to get the job done correctly and quickly. Their certified team of technicians specializes in GAF, Owens Corning, and James Hardie roofing systems. They can also perform gutter installation. Their expert team is EPA certified, HUD certified, and fully insured. Each project is overseen by Patrick Johnson, the company's owner and managing partner. All of the company's projects are carefully managed and ensure quality work and a smooth transition from beginning to end. Other services include kitchen and bathroom remodeling, basement and attic refinishing, floor plans, and gutter and siding replacement. In addition, they install decks, driveways, and patios. Capital Home ImprovementsCapital Home Improvements has been helping people improve the value of their homes since 1979. Whether you're looking for a new roof or need a roof repair, they're the company to call. Our general contracting services are designed to help people improve the value of their home and build equity. With years of experience, Capital Home Improvements is well-equipped to handle everything from single-family home roof repair to a complete home remodel. They have a team of roofing specialists with more than 15 years of experience. They use industry-standard asphalt shingles and WeatherLock waterproofing underlayment, and all of their contractors are OSHA-certified. They also provide siding, window replacement, and barn construction. Forte RoofingIf your roof has been damaged or needs a new one, you can call a roofing company like Forte Roofing to help. They offer top-notch roofing services at competitive prices. Not only do they offer roof repair services, but they also install new roofs. Contact them today for a free estimate! Forte Roofing is a local Syracuse company with over seventeen years of experience and highly-trained roofing contractors. They are dedicated to establishing a stellar reputation among their customers. They provide quality roofing services for homes, retail stores, restaurants, apartment buildings, schools, and more. Onondaga County ConstructionOne of the most beautiful places to live in the United States is Syracuse, New York. This city offers natural beauty and a unique sense of community. Because homes in this city are exposed to all four seasons, they require a reliable roofing system. Onondaga County Construction provides commercial roofing repair services to homes in Syracuse, NY and surrounding areas. Repairs vary in cost depending on the type of roof and the severity of the damage. Sometimes the roof needs a simple patch, while other times a full replacement may be necessary.
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broadult516 · 2 years ago
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mobikefed · 3 years ago
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Rock Island Trail - Jackson County segment Grand Opening Saturday, completing statewide trails vision
Grand Opening for the final section of the Rock Island Trail in Jackson County is Saturday, July 10th, 2021, 10am at the Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City. Details below. 
The next section of Jackson County's Rock Island Trail is finally opening!
This is the last big piece of the statewide Katy-Rock Island trail system we've been envisioning for more than 25 years. There are, as always, some gaps in the system - but in the grand outline, this is it.
  What does this day mean for people who walk, bicycle, and use trails across Missouri?
New Rock Island Trail section enables major regional and statewide bicycle & trail connections
In preparation for this day, we've been working with partners across the state to develop hundreds of miles of high-quality bicycle routes, using existing trails and low-traffic roads, that will connect you to the new trail:
You can ride from just about anywhere in the KC area--including the airport, northland, KCK, Johnson County, and Independence--to the Jackson County Rock Island Trail and from there access the statewide Rock Island/Katy Trail system.  MoBikeFed has compiled downloadable GPS routes & maps showing how.  
If you are worried about crossing the Greenwood Gap, MoBikeFed has you covered there, too. The Greenwood Gap is about 10 miles between the Jackson County Rock Island Trail (13.5 miles) and Missouri State Parks Rock Island/Katy Trails (257 miles). Bridge that gap with our downloadable GPS routes and maps for the Greenwood Gap. 
With the recently completed Rock Island Trail sections, the entire Kansas City metro area is well connected to statewide trails
    Want to fly or Amtrak in or out of Kansas City to ride the trail? We've got you covered there, too, with a 52-mile route connecting the Rock Island Trail with KC's airport and Amtrak station. It's not just a route, but a historical and cultural tour of the region, with literally hundreds of points of interest along the way--where to stay, where to eat, where to drink, what to see and do. And . . . it's also the quickest, easiest low-stress way to get there on your bicycle.
Details about Saturday's Rock Island Trail Grand Opening
Now here are the details about the new section of Jackson County's Rock Island Trail and the celebration for it on July 10th:
Jackson County is excited to announce the grand opening of the much-anticipated phase two of the Rock Island Trail. The “Ride the Rock” ribbon cutting celebration will take place on Saturday, July 10 at 10:00 a.m. starting at the brand new stadium trailhead, located at the Truman Sports Complex, Lot L, accessible through Gate 3 off of Blue Ridge Cutoff.
Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr., Jackson County Parks + Rec and the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) invites local officials, community members and media to celebrate the occasion and enjoy a great day on the trail. Additionally, guests will have an opportunity to leave their mark on the project by signing a piece of rail from the historic Rock Island line. The rail piece will then be displayed at to-be-determined Jackson County Parks + Rec facility.
What: Ride the Rock - Ribbon Cutting Celebration Rock Island Trail Phase Two
When: Saturday, July 10 at 10:00 a.m.
Where: Truman Sports Complex Trailhead Lot L, Accessible through Gate 3 off of Blue Ridge Cutoff
The second phase of the Rock Island Trail is seven miles long and runs from Brickyard Road in Kansas City, through Raytown, to the Truman Sports Complex. Combined with phase one, which opened in June 2019, the entire trail is 13.5 miles in length. With completion of the Rock Island Trail, Jackson County now has more than 150 miles of trails in its parks system for people to enjoy.   
The Wildwood Bridge on the Rock Island Trail in Raytown is one of the longest trail bridges in the region
The new trail segment includes three new trailheads and parking areas, the preservation and re-use of four former railroad bridges and five new trail-only bridges, including the new Wildwood Bridge, which at over 300 feet in length is one of the longest trail bridges in the region.
“The County had a vision to revitalize and energize our community in a way we have never seen before, and now that it has finally come to life, I am so proud and excited to celebrate this major accomplishment,” said Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. “With the support of the Legislature, our visitors will enjoy an experience like no other on the Rock Island Trail, including riding a bike all the way from Lee’s Summit to a game, concert or event at the Truman Sports Complex. I am deeply grateful to our Parks + Rec leadership, Rock Island team, contractor and partners for their hard work and perseverance to see this beautiful project through to the very end.”
“We are very excited to open phase two and celebrate the completion of the Rock Island Trail,” said Rock Island Project Manager Matt Davis. “This project transformed a blighted railroad corridor into a beautiful place for Jackson County residents to exercise, recreate and connect with their community. We are proud to finally share this wonderful amenity with the community.”
Following the County’s ribbon cutting ceremony, visitors can walk or bike the Rock Island from the stadium trailhead, encountering other fun activities along the way, including a dedication of the Raytown Chamber Trailhead at Noon.
  The trail passes under Raytown's historic trestle bridge (Raytown Road overpass). The original Raytown Rock Island Station stood here.
  Total construction costs for phase two of the trail was $11.6 million, paid for by Jackson County with generous grants from the Missouri Department of Transportation and Kansas City, Missouri. Radmacher Brothers Construction of Pleasant Hill, Missouri built all 13.5 miles of the trail for Jackson County.
Jackson County acquired the 17.7-mile Rock Island Railroad Corridor in May 2016, in partnership with the KCATA to preserve the corridor for multi-modal transportation opportunities. Additional information about the Rock Island and other Jackson County trails can be found online at www.makeyourdayhere.com and makeyourdayhere.com/Parks-Lakes/Trails-At-a-Glance
  By all accounts, Jackson County, the KCATA, and the Rock Island Corridor Authority have done an excellent job bringing this trail together.  It is a top quality trai in a beautiful location--and a location where hundreds of thousands of residents live within bicycling and walking distance. 
This new trail segment is a fitting western capstone to the statewide Katy/Rock Island Trail System.
What this grand opening means: Finally, Missouri has a truly statewide trail system
MoBikeFed and our allies across Missouri have been working for decades to complete the envisioned statewide trail system connecting the St Louis and Kansas City metro areas. When the Katy Trail was created in the early 1990s, everyone involved saw that it was a long and important trail to the state. 
But it lacked one thing: Easy connections from the trail to the two major metro areas in Missouri--at the far east and far west sides of the state.  
  MoBikeFed "Complete the Katy Trail" petition dating to 2005
The Katy went from almost St Louis to almost Kansas City.  But it didn't quite get to either.
Katy Trail visionaries Ted & Pat Jones saw how important the Katy-KC connection would be--leaving $1 million in a fund specifically earmarked for finalized the connection.  That million dollars sat unused for more than 20 years.
With the Taum Sauk disaster of 2006, an opportunity opened.  Taum Sauk was owned by energy giant Ameren, which also owned the Rock Island railroad corridor across Missouri. 
In 2012, MoBikeFed worked with Missouri Rock Island Trail Inc, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and many supportive organizations across Missouri and the Midwest to present Ameren with over 12,000 citizen signatures and statements of support for the Rock Island Trail
With the opening of the 47-mile Rock Island section of Katy Trail State Park in 2016--on the corridor of the former railroad, until recently owned by Ameren--the possibility of a truly cross-state trail system came a lot closer to reality.
Then Jackson County and the KCATA acquired 17.7 miles of Rock Island Corridor from Union Pacific. Since then, they have been working diligently to raise needed funding and build the trail.  
And now it is complete--and open to the public.
We want to express our gratitude and thanks to everyone involved in making this long-temr vision become a reality: Jackson County, KCATA, Missouri State Parks, many cities, counties, and staff, numerous elected officials across Missouri, organizations of all kinds who have stepped up to support the vision, and to many hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of ordinary people who walk, bicycle, and use trails who have taken the time to express their support for the statewide trail vision.   
Thank you.
The work continues . . .
Like any major trail system, we are always left with some gaps.  These gaps shouldn't at all subdue our celebration for what we, as a state, have accomplished--for the connections we HAVE made.
We know that the major pieces of the job are done--the pieces so hard many thought they would never be completed. But we also know, the work continues.
In fact, it never ends.  Every trail connection made creates a dozen or five dozen more opportunities.
The major gaps that remain in the statewide Katy/Rock Island Trail system--and opportunities created by the completion of these major trail segments:
The fate of the 192-mile Rock Island Trail section Windsor-Washington remains to be determined.  Missouri State Parks is working with allies and supporters across Missouri right now to raise the $10 million dollars it needs to accept the corridor.  Deadline is December 2021. More info.
The Katy Trail-Chesterfield connector over the Missouri River was opened in 2016. The bike/ped path was added to the I-64/40 interstate highway bridge by MoDOT, who had identified the need and the priority of this river crossing.
The trail still lacks a complete, seamless connection from St Charles through St Louis County to St Louis, the Arch, and the Riverfront. Great Rivers Greenway and many allies in the St Louis region are working to make that happen, and in general bicycle/pedestrian/trails connectivity from St Louis County and St Charles County to the Katy Trail has improved dramatically in the past 10 years.    
On the Kansas City side, seamless trail connections from the terminus of the Rock Island Trail to downtown, the Brusch Creek Trail, the Trolley Track Trail, and Indian Creek Trail, and Little Blue Trail, the Blue River Trail, and Line Creek Trail, and other places around the metro area are under consideration and development.  Again--you don't have to wait: You can make those connections via low-traffic bicycle routes right now. But creating seamless trail connections among all those existing regional trails is a regional priority that is underway but far from complete as of 2021.  
The current Katy/Rock Island Trail System connects the Kansas City metro area, Columbia, Jefferson City, and the St Louis metro area.  But what about other major metro areas like St Joseph and Springfield? What about other parts of the state, like northern and NE Missouri, south-central and SE Missouri? In the long term, we would like to see seamless trail connections to all regions and sections of Missouri. Work on some of these is underway already.  
Will the Katy Trail every continue west past Clinton, Missouri?  The railroad corridor stretches west to Nevada, MO and on through Kansas.  Right now the corridor is in active use as a railroad.  But . . . the railroad's largest customer, by far, is a coal-fired power plant near Clinton.  What will happen when that plant is reconfigured or decommissioned?  Who knows--but possibilities may open up in upcoming years or decades.  
The Greenwood Gap. The trail connection across this gap of about 10 miles between Lee's Summit and Pleasant Hill is currently the longest gap in the existing Katy/Rock Island Trail System. Work is underway to create a seamless trail connection to plug this gap.  (Keep in mind trail riders can bridge the gap right now with a short ride on existing low-traffic paved or gravel roads.) 
Governor Parson, state, county, city, and citizen leaders break ground on the Sedalia Katy Connector in 2019
    The Pleasant Hill Overpass. Just south of Pleasant Hill the original Rock Island railroad crossed another railroad.  The trail crossing will require a complex and expensive new bridge.  In the meanwhile, the trail is detoured through a piece of private property and along a MoDOT highway. State Parks, Pleasant Hill, and other interested parties are working on solutions to this gap, which amounts to about one mile.    
And finally, a something to celebrate!  The largest gap in the Katy Trail was finally closed just last month.  After nearly two decades of diligent work, local supporters, the City of Sedalia, and Missouri State Parks held the grand opening of the Sedalia Katy Trail Connector in May 2021.  This project closed the three-mile gap in the Katy Trail at Sedalia.
  Work to build citizen support for statewide trial connections, and keeping people across Missouri informed about trail connections and successes is one way MoBikeFed helps build a world-class bicycle and pedestrian network across Missouri. That is one of the four major goals of MoBikeFed's Vision for Bicycling and Walking in Missouri and MoBikeFed has been involved in building public support for this statewide trail connection for over 25 years.
Your ongoing membership and generous financial support helps turn our Vision into reality.
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newstfionline · 4 years ago
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Headlines
Trump administration backs off plan requiring international students to take face-to-face classes (Washington Post) The Trump administration on Tuesday dropped its much-criticized plan to require international college students to leave the United States unless they are enrolled in the fall term in at least one face-to-face class. The abrupt reversal, disclosed in a federal court in Boston, came a little more than a week after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued an edict that stunned U.S. higher education leaders and students worldwide. Under the July 6 policy from ICE, international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities for the fall semester faced a mandate to take at least one course in person. Those students, ICE said, “may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States.” That mandate posed a major obstacle to plans for online teaching and learning that colleges are developing in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had sued to block the new policy. In a hearing in that case on Tuesday, held before U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, the judge announced that the schools and the federal government had reached an agreement that made the lawsuit moot. Separately, 20 state attorneys general had also challenged the guidance in court in recent days.
Patients are still delaying essential care out of fear of coronavirus (Washington Post) Jim Johnson was elated when his hip replacement, canceled in March along with other elective surgeries, finally was performed in May. For months, his pain had been so severe he couldn’t sleep, golf or do his job. Just a few weeks after the operation, he tossed his cane away. Hospitals and doctors practices across the country are hoping there are a lot more Jim Johnsons out there—patients willing to shake off fears about the coronavirus and come back for tests and treatments put on hold early in the pandemic. Yet persuading them to return for non-emergency care is a tricky message right now, with the virus slamming the South and West. In parts of Texas, Arizona, Florida and other states, elective procedures have been halted again. For some patients, the spike in infections is reigniting fears about catching the virus in a hospital or a doctor’s office. Doctors worry that could undermine their efforts to win people back, and lead to more lives being lost from other, often preventable causes, such as cancer and heart disease. Doctors say “elective procedures,” including for cancer, can’t be delayed indefinitely without ill effects. Hospitals, meanwhile, see orthopedic, cardiac and cancer surgeries as their key to survival after losing billions of dollars on the shutdown of lucrative procedures.
Global surge in coronavirus cases is being fed by the developing world—and the U.S. (Washington Post) When the United States began shutting down this spring, a virus that emerged months earlier as a mysterious outbreak in a Chinese provincial capital had infected a total of fewer than 200,000 people worldwide. So far this week, the planet has added an average of more than 200,000 cases every day. The novel coronavirus—once concentrated in specific cities or countries—has now crept into virtually every corner of the globe and is wreaking havoc in multiple major regions at once. But the impact is not being felt evenly. Poorer nations throughout Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa are bearing a growing share of the caseload, even as wealthier countries in Western Europe and East Asia enjoy a relative respite after having beaten back the worst effects through rigorously enforced lockdowns. And then there’s the United States, which leads the world in new cases and, as with many nations that possess far fewer resources, has shown no sign of being able to regain control.
Rules once lifted are reimposed to try to curb new outbreaks (AP) Virus restrictions once lifted are being reimposed, shutting businesses and curbing people’s social lives as communities try to curb a disease resurgence before it spins out of control. Residents of Australia’s second-largest city were warned on Wednesday to comply with lockdown regulations or face tougher restrictions. Melbourne’s 5 million people and part of the city’s semi-rural surroundings are a week into a new, six-week lockdown to contain a new outbreak there. Indian authorities will impose lockdowns in high-risk areas in nearly a dozen states as the nation’s coronavirus caseload approaches 1 million. Renewed restrictions took effect in Hong Kong on Wednesday, with public gatherings limited to four people, restaurants restricted to takeout after 6 p.m., and a one-week closure for gyms, karaoke bars, and selected other businesses. Masks also are mandated on public transit for the first time, with the non-compliant being fined. In the U.S., places including Washington state are delaying timetables for reopening their economies. Gov. Jay Inslee said counties will remain at their current stage of economic reopening at least until July 28.
Chaotic protests prompt soul-searching in Portland, Oregon (AP) Nearly two months of nightly protests that have devolved into violent clashes with police have prompted soul-searching in Portland, Oregon, a city that prides itself on its progressive reputation but is increasingly polarized over how to handle the unrest. Divisions have deepened among elected officials about the legitimacy of the more violent protests—striking at the heart of Portland’s identity as an ultraliberal haven where protest is seen as a badge of honor. Small groups of protesters have set fires, launched fireworks and sprayed graffiti on public buildings, including police precincts and the federal courthouse, leading to nearly nightly clashes with police who have used force that’s caused injuries. Similar unrest engulfed many U.S. cities when Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck on May 25. But in Portland, which is familiar ground for the loosely organized, far-left activists known as “antifa,” or anti-fascists, the protests never stopped. Lost in the debate are the downtown businesses racking up millions in property damage and lost sales and the voices of the hundreds of thousands of Portland residents who have stayed off the streets. “The impact is terrible because what people have seen on the TV ... has scared people who live outside the downtown. They feel it’s that way 24 hours a day,” said David Margulis, who said the protests have caused sales at his jewelry store to drop more than 50%. “I talk to people, on the phone, who tell me: ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever come downtown again.’”
Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexico’s cell tower repairmen (Reuters) The young technician shut off the electricity at a cellular tower in rural Mexico to begin some routine maintenance. Within 10 minutes, he had company: three armed men dressed in fatigues emblazoned with the logo of a major drug cartel. The traffickers had a particular interest in that tower, owned by Boston-based American Tower Corp, which rents space to carriers on its thousands of cellular sites in Mexico. The cartel had installed its own antennas on the structure to support their two-way radios, but the contractor had unwittingly blacked out the shadowy network. The visitors let him off with a warning. The contractor had disrupted a small link in a vast criminal network that spans much of Mexico. In addition to high-end encrypted cell phones and popular messaging apps, traffickers still rely heavily on two-way radios like the ones police and firefighters use to coordinate their teams on the ground, six law enforcement experts on both sides of the border told Reuters. Traffickers often erect their own radio antennas in rural areas. They also install so-called parasite antennas on existing cell towers, layering their criminal communications network on top of the official one. By piggybacking on telecom companies’ infrastructure, cartels save money and evade detection since their own towers are more easily spotted and torn down, law enforcement experts said.
Massive flooding in Southern China (Foreign Policy) Floods in Southern China are a recurring threat, but they are worse than ever this year—with some 38 million people evacuated and at least 141 dead. Rainfall has been double than the predicted amount in many places, threatening millions of lives and numerous important cultural sites. Thousands of soldiers have been dispatched to help shore up defenses against the rising tides. Water control has been a preoccupation for every Chinese ruler, and it will only worsen with climate change. China’s worst-known flooding, in 1931, killed over 2 million people.
South China Sea positions (Foreign Policy) The United States has dispatched two aircraft carriers—likely to be backed by British support—to the South China Sea, increasing the possibility of a regional flash point. It has also declared its formal alignment against China’s disputed claims for the first time, saying that it would use “all tools” to oppose them. In the last decade, China has made significant gains in the South China Sea, building a formidable infrastructure of artificial islands to act as bases while strengthening its naval militia. It is also increasingly aggressive in challenging rival claimants, including stalking Vietnamese oil ships and clashing with fishing boats. The U.S. move is long overdue, but it’s also risky: Xi stakes considerable credibility on the South China Sea claims, and there’s no likelihood of Beijing backing down. The pressure on Chinese officials and military personnel to demonstrate their nationalist enthusiasm is growing, increasing the chance of serious conflict similar to the deadly clash on the Indian border.
Trump signs Hong Kong sanctions law (Foreign Policy) On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump continued a week of moves against China by signing a new law that imposes sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Chinese officials involved with new national security laws in Hong Kong. The president also signed an executive order, largely mirroring existing policy, that revokes the special treatment Hong Kong had received from the United States under the “One Country, Two Systems” doctrine.
Red alert in Tokyo (Reuters) Tokyo raised its coronavirus alert to the highest “red” level on Wednesday, alarmed by a recent spike in daily new cases to record highs, with Governor Yuriko Koike describing the situation in the Japanese capital as “rather severe”. The resurgence of the virus could add to the growing pressure on policymakers to shore up the world’s No. 3 economy, which analysts say is set to shrink at its fastest pace in decades this fiscal year due to the pandemic. “We are in a situation where we should issue warnings to citizens and businesses,” Koike told a press conference, urging residents to refrain from unnecessary travel.
Lebanon looks to China as US, Arabs refuse to help in crisis (AP) Facing a worsening economic crisis and with little chance of Western or oil-rich Arab countries providing assistance without substantial reforms, Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is looking east, hoping to secure investments from China that could bring relief. But help from Beijing risks alienating the United States, which has suggested such a move could come at the cost of Lebanese-U.S. ties. A tiny nation of 5 million on a strategic Mediterranean crossroads between Asia and Europe, Lebanon has long been a site where rivalries between Iran and Saudi Arabia have played out. Now, it’s becoming a focus of escalating tensions between China and the West. In recent months, the Lebanese pound has lost around 80% of its value against the dollar, prices have soared uncontrollably, and much of its middle class has been plunged into poverty. Talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout have faltered, and international donors have refused to unlock $11 billion pledged in 2018, pending major economic reforms and anti-corruption measures. Left with few choices, Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government—supported by the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies—is seeking help from China.
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swarajya7793 · 4 years ago
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Significant COVID-19 Impact on Ceramic Frit in Chemical and Materials Industry| Data Bridge Market Research
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COVID-19 Impact on Ceramic Frit in Chemical and Materials Industry
INTRODUCTION
In the glass industry, each dealer has predicted the crises that will occur due to the pandemic situations that the COVID-19 is generating globally in the glass market but COVID-19 has the mixed pattern situation for the glass companies in developing countries. At the same time, the demand for ceramic frit that are not used on a more frequent basis has decreased as a result of lock-down and halting of manufacture units in various regions. For the product ranges sold by manufacturers / dealers, the effect of COVID-19 on the glass industry can be seen.
In the glass industry, each dealer has predicted the crises that will occur due to the pandemic situations that the COVID-19 is generating globally in the glass market but COVID-19 has a mixed pattern situation for the glass companies in developing countries. At the same time, the demand for ceramic frit that is not used on a more frequent basis has decreased as a result of lockdown and halting of manufacturing units in various regions. For the product ranges sold by manufacturers/dealers, the effect of COVID-19 on the glass industry can be seen.
The glass industry plays a vital role in the development of the economy as with the increase in the construction activities in the region or in the country more employment will be generated and which leads to more income generation and which helps to increase in the demand of the products. As Glass involves different materials that are manufactured by several industries so with the increase in the glass industry in the developing nations will increases the revenue generation for several manufactures.
IMPACT ON BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
Developed countries such as the U.S. relies on the shipments of 30% of its construction materials such as steel, iron, insulating materials, wood, stones, copper, aluminum from China. Due to the disruptions in the supply chain from one country to another and reductions in imports and exports of goods widely affected the building and construction industry.
The construction companies are taking all the safety measures and provident their employees with the safety kits, hand sanitizers, masks before they initiate their work but this is not enough to stop the spreading of the virus. In various counties where construction activities are essential, restrictions to public transportation detrimentally impact workers' ability to work. Numerous construction companies already implemented the travel bans for the employees originating from high-risk states which will lead to the shortage of labor.
Even in cities and states where construction activities are considered essential, restrictions to public transportation and the closure of schools, child care facilities, and businesses are expected to detrimentally impact workers’ ability to work. Many construction companies, site owners, and contractors are already implementing travel bans for employees or travel restrictions on those workers originating from high-risk states. The progression of some projects will inevitably be impeded by a shortage of skilled labor.
The governments of various countries have halted various business activities to reduce the spread of the novel virus. However, the building and construction activity is halted in the initial days of lockdown only but the government permits most of the construction activities to resume in the second month of lockdown in most of the countries. The health and safety risks of COVID-19 vary from project to project such as consumers who are working outside in an open field and are taking proper safety precaution and are not physically in touch with each other are in a low risk as compare to the consumers who are working in the corporates and offices.
As compared to last year, residential property sales have dropped on a wider range from 78,510 units in 2019 to 45,200 units in 2020. The sales of residential as well as commercial sectors declined by 30% in major metropolitan cities. In Mumbai, there was a huge decline of 42% in the sale of units and on the other hand, Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad’s sales decreased by 25%. Due to the huge drop in the sales, most of the companies are not taking new construction projects due to the crisis and reduction in the supply of the construction materials as well as a shortage of labor in the country which is causing a huge loss. The country has faced a loss of USD 14.17 billion in 2020.
For instance,
·         In April 2020, KPMG announces that more than Rs 59 lakh crore construction projects in India are under development and impacted severely by Covid-19
STRATEGIC INITIATIVES DURING COVID-19
·         In May 2020, Johnson Matthey was donated assemble ventilators to DHL. This step as help to creat market goodwill ant intract more customer.
·         Johnson Matthey has take a initiated to manufactoer a vital drug ingredients and medical devices for healthcare industry.
To be back on track, the glass market now needs to identify critical building materials and focus there. The meaning of analyzing the critical building materials is to classify the building materials among long-lead-time requirement and short term requirement, availability of suppliers in COVID-19 affected countries, and their exposure to COVID-19 regions. Another aspect of manufacturers has realized is their over-dependency on one supplier. Its time for the firms to start looking for alternative suppliers, mostly local suppliers to avoid any further risk and to be prepared for any such crises in the future. Though it’s not certain by when businesses will be on track, whenever they will, there will be a demand crunch for raw materials. All will rush to procure raw materials.
Through adopting different strategies such as growing manufacturing efficiency, new product launches, and product distribution, the manufacturers seek to achieve optimal market development. The exponential growth of transformer oil in sectors such as electrical distributions is projected to provide attractive prospects for key market players. This is anticipated that variables such as the locations for distribution and sales can help boost the overall position of the business. Small domestic players and especially emerging players in developed countries are likely to obtain opportunities to position themselves in the marketplace.
CONCLUSION
COVID-19 has crashed the glass industry as the demand for the ceramic frit has fallen due to which the price has also fallen. Even the price of the glass during the lockdown has gone in negative also. Demand from the different regions has deceases due to a long-term halt in production. COVID-19 have impacted the connection between different regions as import and export have stopped due to which oil manufacturing companies have to face losses. Most of the construction labor is already headed to their homes or villages and doing other work and they are not willing to return and resume their construction work again which causes the shortage of skilled laborers in urban areas due to which large projects are running out of time.
Several manufactures closed the factory due to heavy losses. Companies are making the strategic action to increase the demand of the ceramic frit in the market and to increase the price so to earn revenue and government also helping the manufactures by making policies which help manufacture to maintain stability.
Many manufacturers are adopting new technologies to gain profit and turns down the situation into their favor. Most of the countries are importing their construction materials from China and other countries and due to the restriction in the export and import of goods from one country to another is widely impacting the construction activities. The increase in government initiatives and increases workforce in the industry will help to increases the market growth in the future.
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blackkudos · 5 years ago
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Joe Louis
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Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981), known professionally as Joe Louis, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1934 to 1951. He reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1937 to 1949, and is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis' championship reign lasted 140 consecutive months, during which he participated in 26 championship fights. The 27th fight, against Ezzard Charles in 1950, was a challenge for Charles' heavyweight title and so is not included in Louis' reign. He was victorious in 25 consecutive title defenses. In 2005, Louis was ranked as the best heavyweight of all time by the International Boxing Research Organization, and was ranked number one on The Ring magazine's list of the "100 greatest punchers of all time". Louis had the longest single reign as champion of any heavyweight boxer in history.
Louis' cultural impact was felt well outside the ring. He is widely regarded as the first person of African-American descent to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II. He was instrumental in integrating the game of golf, breaking the sport's color barrier in America by appearing under a sponsor's exemption in a PGA event in 1952.
Detroit's Joe Louis Greenway and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County's Joe Louis "The Champ" Golf Course, situated south of Chicago in Riverdale, Illinois, are named in his honor.
Early life
Born in rural Chambers County, Alabama (in a ramshackle dwelling on Bell Chapel Road, located about 1 mile (2 kilometres) off state route 50 and roughly 6 miles (10 kilometres) from LaFayette), Louis was the seventh of eight children of Munroe Barrow and Lillie (Reese) Barrow. He weighed 11 pounds (5 kg) at birth. Both of his parents were children of former slaves, alternating between sharecropping and rental farming. Munroe was predominantly African American, with some white ancestry, while Lillie was half Cherokee.
Louis spent the first dozen years growing up in rural Alabama, where little is known of his childhood. He suffered from a speech impediment and spoke very little until about the age of six. Munroe Barrow was committed to a mental institution in 1916 and, as a result, Joe knew very little of his biological father. Around 1920, Louis's mother married Pat Brooks, a local construction contractor, having received word that Munroe Barrow had died while institutionalized (in reality, Munroe Barrow lived until 1938, unaware of his son's fame).
In 1926, shaken by a gang of white men in the Ku Klux Klan, Louis's family moved to Detroit, Michigan, forming part of the post-World War I Great Migration. Joe's brother worked for Ford Motor Company (where Joe would himself work for a time at the River Rouge Plant) and the family settled into a home at 2700 Catherine (now Madison) Street in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood.
Louis attended Bronson Vocational School for a time to learn cabinet-making.
Amateur career
The Great Depression hit the Barrow family hard, but as an alternative to gang activity, Joe began to spend time at a local youth recreation center at 637 Brewster Street in Detroit. His mother attempted to get him interested in playing the violin. A classic story is that he tried to hide his pugilistic ambitions from his mother by carrying his boxing gloves inside his violin case.
Louis made his debut in early 1932 at the age of 17. Legend has it that before the fight, the barely literate Louis wrote his name so large that there was no room for his last name, and thus became known as "Joe Louis" for the remainder of his boxing career. More likely, Louis simply omitted his last name to keep his boxing a secret from his mother. After this debut—a loss to future Olympian Johnny Miler—Louis compiled numerous amateur victories, eventually winning the club championship of his Brewster Street recreation centre, the home of many aspiring Golden Gloves fighters.
In 1933, Louis won the Detroit-area Golden Gloves Novice Division championship against Joe Biskey for the light heavyweight classification. He later lost in the Chicago Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions. The next year, competing in the Golden Gloves' Open Division, he won the light heavyweight classification, this time also winning the Chicago Tournament of Champions. However, a hand injury forced Louis to miss the New York/Chicago Champions' cross-town bout for the ultimate Golden Gloves championship. In April 1934, he followed up his Chicago performance by winning the United States Amateur Champion National AAU tournament in St. Louis, Missouri.
By the end of his amateur career, Louis's record was 50–3, with 43 knockouts.
Professional career
Joe Louis had only three losses in his 69 professional fights. He tallied 52 knockouts and held the championship from 1937 to 1949, the longest span of any heavyweight titleholder. After returning from retirement, Louis failed to regain the championship in 1950, and his career ended after he was knocked out by Rocky Marciano in 1951.
Early years
Louis's amateur performances attracted the interest of professional promoters, and he was soon represented by a black Detroit-area bookmaker named John Roxborough. As Louis explained in his autobiography, Roxborough convinced the young fighter that white managers would have no real interest in seeing a black boxer work his way up to title contention:
[Roxborough] told me about the fate of most black fighters, ones with white managers, who wound up burned-out and broke before they reached their prime. The white managers were not interested in the men they were handling but in the money they could make from them. They didn't take the proper time to see that their fighters had a proper training, that they lived comfortably, or ate well, or had some pocket change. Mr. Roxborough was talking about Black Power before it became popular.
Roxborough knew a Chicago area boxing promoter named Julian Black who already had a stable of mediocre boxers against which Louis could hone his craft, this time in the heavyweight division. After becoming part of the management team, Black hired fellow Chicago native Jack "Chappy" Blackburn as Louis's trainer. Louis' initial professional fights were all in the Chicago area, his professional debut coming on July 4, 1934, against Jack Kracken in the Bacon Casino on Chicago's south side. Louis earned $59 for knocking out Kracken in the first round. $59.00 in 1934 is equivalent to $1,148.60 in 2020 dollars. Louis won all 12 of his professional fights that year, 10 by knockout.
In September 1934, while promoting a Detroit-area "coming home" bout for Louis against Canadian Alex Borchuk, Roxborough was pressured by members of the Michigan State Boxing Commission to have Louis sign with white management. Roxborough refused and continued advancing Louis's career with bouts against heavyweight contenders Art Sykes and Stanley Poreda.
When training for a fight against Lee Ramage, Louis noticed a young female secretary for the black newspaper at the gym. After Ramage was defeated, the secretary, Marva Trotter, was invited to the celebration party at Chicago's Grand Hotel. Trotter later became Louis's first wife in 1935.
During this time, Louis also met Truman Gibson, the man who would become his personal lawyer. As a young associate at a law firm hired by Julian Black, Gibson was charged with personally entertaining Louis during the pendency of business deals.
Title contention
Although Louis' management was finding him bouts against legitimate heavyweight contenders, no path to the title was forthcoming. While professional boxing was not officially segregated, many white Americans had become wary of the prospect of another black champion in the wake of Jack Johnson's highly unpopular (among whites) "reign" atop the heavyweight division. During an era of severe anti-black repression, Jack Johnson's unrepentant masculinity and marriage to a white woman engendered an enormous backlash that greatly limited opportunities of black fighters in the heavyweight division. Black boxers were denied championship bouts, and there were few heavyweight black contenders at the time, though there were African Americans who fought for titles in other weight divisions, and a few notable black champions, such as Tiger Flowers. Louis and his handlers would counter the legacy of Johnson by emphasizing the Brown Bomber's modesty and sportsmanship. Biographer Gerald Astor stated that "Joe Louis' early boxing career was stalked by the specter of Jack Johnson".
If Louis were to rise to national prominence among such cultural attitudes, a change in management would be necessary. In 1935, boxing promoter Mike Jacobs sought out Louis' handlers. After Louis' narrow defeat of Natie Brown on March 29, 1935, Jacobs and the Louis team met at the Frog Club, a black nightclub, and negotiated a three-year exclusive boxing promotion deal. The contract, however, did not keep Roxborough and Black from attempting to cash in as Louis' managers; when Louis turned 21 on May 13, 1935, Roxborough and Black each signed Louis to an onerous long-term contract that collectively dedicated half of Louis' future income to the pair.
Black and Roxborough continued to carefully and deliberately shape Louis' media image. Mindful of the tremendous public backlash Johnson had suffered for his unapologetic attitude and flamboyant lifestyle, they drafted "Seven Commandments" for Louis' personal conduct. These included:
Never have his picture taken with a white woman
Never gloat over a fallen opponent
Never engage in fixed fights
Live and fight clean
As a result, Louis was generally portrayed in the white media as a modest, clean-living person, which facilitated his burgeoning celebrity status.
With the backing of major promotion, Louis fought thirteen times in 1935. The bout that helped put him in the media spotlight occurred on June 25, when Louis knocked out 6'6", 265-pound former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera in six rounds. Foreshadowing the Louis–Schmeling rivalry to come, the Carnera bout featured a political dimension. Louis' victory over Carnera, who symbolized Benito Mussolini's regime in the popular eye, was seen as a victory for the international community, particularly among African Americans, who were sympathetic to Ethiopia, which was attempting to maintain its independence by fending off an invasion by fascist Italy. America's white press began promoting Louis' image in the context of the era's racism; nicknames they created included the "Mahogany Mauler", "Chocolate Chopper", "Coffee-Colored KO King", "Safari Sandman", and one that stuck: "The Brown Bomber".
Helping the white press to overcome its reluctance to feature a black contender was the fact that in the mid-1930s boxing desperately needed a marketable hero. Since the retirement of Jack Dempsey in 1929, the sport had devolved into a sordid mixture of poor athletes, gambling, fixed fights, thrown matches, and control of the sport by organized crime. New York Times Columnist Edward Van Ness wrote, "Louis ... is a boon to boxing. Just as Dempsey led the sport out of the doldrums ... so is Louis leading the boxing game out of a slump." Likewise, biographer Bill Libby asserted that "The sports world was hungry for a great champion when Louis arrived in New York in 1935."
While the mainstream press was beginning to embrace Louis, many still opposed the prospect of another black heavyweight champion. In September 1935, on the eve of Louis' fight with former titleholder Max Baer, Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich wrote about some Americans' hopes for the white contender, "They say Baer will surpass himself in the knowledge that he is the lone white hope for the defense of Nordic superiority in the prize ring." However, the hopes of white suprematists would soon be dashed.
Although Baer had been knocked down only once before in his professional career (by Frankie Campbell), Louis dominated the former champion, knocking him out in the fourth round. Unknowingly, Baer suffered from a unique disadvantage in the fight; earlier that evening, Louis had married Marva Trotter at a friend's apartment and was eager to end the fight in order to consummate the relationship. Later that year, Louis also knocked out Paolino Uzcudun, who had never been knocked down before.
Louis vs. Schmeling I
By this time, Louis was ranked as the No. 1 contender in the heavyweight division and had won the Associated Press' "Athlete of the Year" award for 1935. What was considered to be a final tune-up bout before an eventual title shot was scheduled for June 1936 against Max Schmeling. Although a former world heavyweight champion, Schmeling was not considered a threat to Louis, then with a professional record of 27–0. Schmeling had won his title on a technicality when Jack Sharkey was disqualified after giving Schmeling a low blow in 1930. Schmeling was also 30 years old at the time of the Louis bout and allegedly past his prime. Louis' training retreat was located at Lakewood, New Jersey, where he was first able to practice the game of golf, which would later become a lifelong passion. Noted entertainer Ed Sullivan had initially sparked Louis' interest in the sport by giving an instructional book to Joe's wife Marva. Louis spent significant time on the golf course rather than training for the match.
Conversely, Schmeling prepared intently for the bout. He had thoroughly studied Louis's style and believed he had found a weakness. By exploiting Louis's habit of dropping his left hand low after a jab, Schmeling handed Louis his first professional loss by knocking him out in round 12 at Yankee Stadium on June 19, 1936.
World championship
After defeating Louis, Schmeling expected a title shot against James J. Braddock, who had unexpectedly defeated Max Baer for the heavyweight title the previous June. Madison Square Garden (MSG) had a contract with Braddock for the title defense and also sought a Braddock–Schmeling title bout. But Jacobs and Braddock's manager Joe Gould had been planning a Braddock–Louis matchup for months.
Schmeling's victory gave Gould tremendous leverage, however. If he were to offer Schmeling the title chance instead of Louis, there was a very real possibility that Nazi authorities would never allow Louis a shot at the title. Gould's demands were therefore onerous: Jacobs would have to pay 10% of all future boxing promotion profits (including any future profits from Louis's future bouts) for ten years. Braddock and Gould would eventually receive more than $150,000 from this arrangement. Well before the actual fight, Jacobs and Gould publicly announced that their fighters would fight for the heavyweight title on June 22, 1937. Figuring that the New York State Athletic Commission would not sanction the fight in deference to MSG and Schmeling, Jacobs scheduled the fight for Chicago.
Each of the parties involved worked to facilitate the controversial Braddock–Louis matchup. Louis did his part by knocking out former champion Jack Sharkey on August 18, 1936. Meanwhile, Gould trumped up anti-Nazi sentiment against Schmeling, and Jacobs defended a lawsuit by MSG to halt the Braddock–Louis fight. A federal court in Newark, New Jersey, eventually ruled that Braddock's contractual obligation to stage his title defense at MSG was unenforceable for lack of mutual consideration.
The stage was set for Louis's title shot. On the night of the fight, June 22, 1937, Braddock was able to knock Louis down in round one, but afterward could accomplish little. After inflicting constant punishment, Louis defeated Braddock in round eight, knocking him out cold with a strong right hand that busted James' teeth through his gum shield and lip and sent him to the ground for a few minutes. It was the first and only time that Braddock was knocked out (the one other stoppage of Braddock's career was a TKO due to a cut). Louis's ascent to the world heavyweight championship was complete.
Louis's victory was a seminal moment in African American history. Thousands of African Americans stayed up all night across the country in celebration. Noted author and member of the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes described Louis's effect in these terms:
Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions—or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too.
Initial title defenses
Despite his championship, Louis was haunted by the earlier defeat to Schmeling. Shortly after winning the title, he was quoted as saying, "I don't want to be called champ until I whip Max Schmeling." Louis's manager Mike Jacobs attempted to arrange a rematch in 1937, but negotiations broke down when Schmeling demanded 30% of the gate. When Schmeling instead attempted to arrange for a fight against British Empire champion Tommy Farr, known as the "Tonypandy Terror",—ostensibly for a world championship to rival the claims of American boxing authorities—Jacobs outmaneuvered him, offering Farr a guaranteed $60,000 to fight Louis instead. The offer was too lucrative for Farr to turn down.
On August 30, 1937, after a postponement of four days due to rain, Louis and Farr finally touched gloves at New York's Yankee Stadium before a crowd of approximately 32,000. Louis fought one of the hardest battles of his life. The bout was closely contested and went the entire 15 rounds, with Louis being unable to knock Farr down. Referee Arthur Donovan was even seen shaking Farr's hand after the bout, in apparent congratulation. Nevertheless, after the score was announced, Louis had won a controversial unanimous decision. Time described the scene thus: "After collecting the judges' votes, referee Arthur Donovan announced that Louis had won the fight on points. The crowd of 50,000 ... amazed that Farr had not been knocked out or even knocked down, booed the decision."
It seems the crowd believed that referee Arthur Donovan, Sr. had raised Farr's glove in victory. Seven years later, in his published account of the fight, Donovan spoke of the "mistake" that may have led to this confusion. He wrote:
As Tommy walked back to his corner after shaking Louis' hand, I followed him and seized his glove. "Tommy, a wonderful perform—" I began ... Then I dropped his hand like a red-hot coal! He had started to raise his arm. He thought I had given him the fight and the world championship! I literally ran away, shaking my head and shouting. "No! No! No!" realising how I had raised his hopes for a few seconds only to dash them to the ground ... That's the last time my emotions will get the better of me in a prize fight! There was much booing at the announced result, but, as I say it, it was all emotional. I gave Tommy two rounds and one even—and both his winning rounds were close.
Speaking over the radio after the fight, Louis admitted that he had been hurt twice.
In preparation for the inevitable rematch with Schmeling, Louis tuned up with bouts against Nathan Mann and Harry Thomas.
Louis vs. Schmeling II
The rematch between Louis and Schmeling would become one of the most famous boxing matches of all time and is remembered as one of the major sports events of the 20th century. Following his defeat of Louis in 1936, Schmeling had become a national hero in Germany. Schmeling's victory over an African American was touted by Nazi officials as proof of their doctrine of Aryan superiority. When the rematch was scheduled, Louis retreated to his boxing camp in New Jersey and trained incessantly for the fight. A few weeks before the bout, Louis visited the White House, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt told him, "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany." Louis later admitted: "I knew I had to get Schmeling good. I had my own personal reasons and the whole damned country was depending on me."
When Schmeling arrived in New York City in June 1938 for the rematch, he was accompanied by a Nazi party publicist who issued statements that a black man could not defeat Schmeling and that when Schmeling won, his prize money would be used to build tanks in Germany. Schmeling's hotel was picketed by anti-Nazi protesters in the days before the fight.
On the night of June 22, 1938, Louis and Schmeling met for the second time in the boxing ring. The fight was held in Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 70,043. It was broadcast by radio to millions of listeners throughout the world, with radio announcers reporting on the fight in English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Before the bout, Schmeling weighed in at 193 pounds; Louis weighed in at 198¾ pounds.
The fight lasted two minutes and four seconds. Louis battered Schmeling with a series of swift attacks, forcing him against the ropes and giving him a paralyzing body blow (Schmeling afterward claimed it was an illegal kidney punch). Schmeling was knocked down three times and only managed to throw two punches in the entire bout. On the third knockdown, Schmeling's trainer threw in the towel and referee Arthur Donovan stopped the fight.
"Bum of the Month Club"
In the 29 months from January 1939 through May 1941, Louis defended his title thirteen times, a frequency unmatched by any heavyweight champion since the end of the bare-knuckle era. The pace of his title defenses, combined with his convincing wins, earned Louis' opponents from this era the collective nickname "Bum of the Month Club". Notables of this lambasted pantheon include:
world light heavyweight champion John Henry Lewis who, attempting to move up a weight class, was knocked out in the first round by Louis on January 25, 1939.
"Two Ton" Tony Galento, who was able to knock Louis to the canvas with a left hook in the third round of their bout on June 28, 1939, before letting his guard down and being knocked out in the fourth.
Chilean Arturo Godoy, whom Louis fought twice in 1940, on February 9 and June 20. Louis won the first bout by a split-decision, and the rematch by a knockout in the eighth round.
Al McCoy, putative New England heavyweight champion, whose fight against Louis is probably best known for being the first heavyweight title bout held in Boston, Massachusetts, (at the Boston Garden on December 16, 1940). The popular local challenger dodged his way around Louis before being unable to respond to the sixth-round bell.
Clarence "Red" Burman, who pressed Louis for nearly five rounds at Madison Square Garden on January 31, 1941, before succumbing to a series of body blows.
Gus Dorazio, of whom Louis remarked, "At least he tried", after being leveled by a short right hand in the second round at Philadelphia's Convention Hall on February 17.
Abe Simon, who endured thirteen rounds of punishment before 18,908 at Olympia Stadium in Detroit on March 21 before referee Sam Hennessy declared a TKO.
Tony Musto, who, at 5'7½" and 198 pounds, was known as "Baby Tank." Despite a unique crouching style, Musto was slowly worn down over eight and a half rounds in St. Louis on April 8, and the fight was called a TKO because of a severe cut over Musto's eye.
Buddy Baer (brother of former champion Max), who was leading the May 23, 1941, bout in Washington, D.C., until an eventual barrage by Louis, capped by a hit at the sixth round bell. Referee Arthur Donovan disqualified Baer before the beginning of the seventh round as a result of stalling by Baer's manager.
Despite its derogatory nickname, most of the group were top-ten heavyweights. Of the 12 fighters Louis faced during this period, five were rated by The Ring as top-10 heavyweights in the year they fought Louis: Galento (overall #2 heavyweight in 1939), Bob Pastor (#3, 1939), Godoy (#3, 1940), Simon (#6, 1941) and Baer (#8, 1941); four others (Musto, Dorazio, Burman and Johnny Paychek) were ranked in the top 10 in a different year.
Billy Conn fight
Louis' string of lightly regarded competition ended with his bout against Billy Conn, the light heavyweight champion and a highly regarded contender. The fighters met on June 18, 1941, in front of a crowd of 54,487 fans at the Polo Grounds in New York City. The fight turned out to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxing fights of all time.
Conn would not gain weight for the challenge against Louis, saying instead that he would rely on a "hit and run" strategy. Louis' famous response: "He can run, but he can't hide."
However, Louis had clearly underestimated Conn's threat. In his autobiography, Joe Louis said:
I made a mistake going into that fight. I knew Conn was kinda small and I didn't want them to say in the papers that I beat up on some little guy so the day before the fight I did a little roadwork to break a sweat and drank as little water as possible so I could weigh in under 200 pounds. Chappie was as mad as hell. But Conn was a clever fighter, he was like a mosquito, he'd sting and move.
Conn had the better of the fight through 12 rounds, although Louis was able to stun Conn with a left hook in the fifth, cutting his eye and nose. By the eighth round, Louis began suffering from dehydration. By the twelfth round, Louis was exhausted, with Conn ahead on two of three boxing scorecards. But against the advice of his corner, Conn continued to closely engage Louis in the later stages of the fight. Louis made the most of the opportunity, knocking Conn out with two seconds left in the thirteenth round.
The contest created an instant rivalry that Louis's career had lacked since the Schmeling era, and a rematch with Conn was planned for late 1942. The rematch had to be abruptly canceled, however, after Conn broke his hand in a much-publicized fight with his father-in-law, Major League ballplayer Jimmy "Greenfield" Smith. By the time Conn was ready for the rematch, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place.
World War II
Louis fought a charity bout for the Navy Relief Society against his former opponent Buddy Baer on January 9, 1942, which raised $47,000 for the fund. The next day, he volunteered to enlist as a private in the United States Army at Camp Upton, Long Island. Newsreel cameras recorded his induction, including a staged scene in which a soldier-clerk asked, "What's your occupation?", to which Louis replied, "Fighting and let us at them Japs."
Another military charity bout on March 27, 1942, (against another former opponent, Abe Simon) netted $36,146. Before the fight, Louis had spoken at a Relief Fund dinner, saying of the war effort, "We'll win, 'cause we're on God's side." The media widely reported the comment, instigating a surge of popularity for Louis. Slowly, the press began to eliminate its stereotypical racial references when covering Louis and instead treated him as an unqualified sports hero. Despite the public relations boon, Louis's charitable fights proved financially costly. Although he saw none of the roughly $90,000 raised by these and other charitable fights, the IRS later credited these amounts as taxable income paid to Louis. After the war, the IRS pursued the issue.
For basic training, Louis was assigned to a segregated cavalry unit based in Fort Riley, Kansas. The assignment was at the suggestion of his friend and lawyer Truman Gibson, who knew of Louis's love for horsemanship. Gibson had previously become a civilian advisor to the War Department, in charge of investigating claims of harassment against black soldiers. Accordingly, Louis used this personal connection to help the cause of various black soldiers with whom he came into contact. In one noted episode, Louis contacted Gibson in order to facilitate the Officer Candidate School (OCS) applications of a group of black recruits at Fort Riley, which had been inexplicably delayed for several months. Among the OCS applications Louis facilitated was that of a young Jackie Robinson, later to break the baseball color barrier. The episode spawned a personal friendship between the two men.
Realizing Louis's potential for raising esprit de corps among the troops, the Army placed him in its Special Services Division rather than sending him into combat. Louis went on a celebrity tour with other notables, including fellow boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. He traveled more than 35,000 km (22,000 mi) and staged 96 boxing exhibitions before two million soldiers. In England during 1944, he was reported to have enlisted as a player for Liverpool Football Club as a publicity stunt.
In addition to his travels, Louis was the focus of a media recruitment campaign encouraging African-American men to enlist in the Armed Services, despite the military's racial segregation. When he was asked about his decision to enter the racially segregated U.S. Army, he said: "Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't going to fix them." In 1943, Louis made an appearance in the wartime Hollywood musical This Is the Army, directed by Michael Curtiz. He appeared as himself in a musical number, "The Well-Dressed Man in Harlem," which emphasized the importance of African-American soldiers and promoted their enlistment.
Louis's celebrity power was not, however, merely directed toward African Americans. In a famous wartime recruitment slogan, he echoed his prior comments of 1942: "We'll win, because we're on God's side." The publicity of the campaign made Louis widely popular stateside, even outside the world of sports. Never before had white Americans embraced a black man as their representative to the world.
Although Louis never saw combat, his military service saw challenges of its own. During his travels, he often experienced blatant racism. On one occasion, a military policeman (MP) ordered Louis and Ray Robinson to move their seats to a bench in the rear of an Alabama Army camp bus depot. "We ain't moving", said Louis. The MP tried to arrest them, but Louis forcefully argued the pair out of the situation. In another incident, he allegedly had to resort to bribery to persuade a commanding officer to drop charges against Jackie Robinson for punching a captain who had called Robinson a "nigger."
Louis was eventually promoted to the rank of technical sergeant on April 9, 1945. On September 23 of the same year, he was awarded the Legion of Merit (a military decoration rarely awarded to enlisted soldiers) for "incalculable contribution to the general morale." Receipt of the honor qualified him for immediate release from military service on October 1, 1945.
Later career and retirement
Louis emerged from his wartime service significantly in debt. In addition to his looming tax bill—which had not been finally determined at the time, but was estimated at greater than $100,000—Jacobs claimed that Louis owed him $250,000.
Despite the financial pressure on Louis to resume boxing, his long-awaited rematch against Billy Conn had to be postponed to the summer of 1946, when weather conditions could accommodate a large outdoor audience. On June 19, a disappointing 40,000 saw the rematch at Yankee Stadium, in which Louis was not seriously tested. Conn, whose skills had deteriorated during the long layoff, largely avoided contact until being dispatched by knockout in the eighth round. Although the attendance did not meet expectations, the fight was still the most profitable of Louis's career to date. His share of the purse was $600,000, of which Louis' managers got $140,000, his ex-wife $66,000 and the U.S. state of New York $30,000.
After trouble finding another suitable opponent, on December 5, 1947, Louis met Jersey Joe Walcott, a 33-year-old veteran with a 44–11–2 record. Walcott entered the fight as a 10-to-1 underdog. Nevertheless, Walcott knocked down Louis twice in the first four rounds. Most observers in Madison Square Garden felt Walcott dominated the 15-round fight. When Louis was declared the winner in a split decision, the crowd booed.
Louis was under no delusion about the state of his boxing skills, yet he was too embarrassed to quit after the Walcott fight. Determined to win and retire with his title intact, Louis signed on for a rematch. On June 25, 1948, about 42,000 people came to Yankee Stadium to see the aging champion, who weighed 213½, the heaviest of his career to date. Walcott knocked Louis down in the third round, but Louis survived to knock out Walcott in the eleventh.
Louis would not defend his title again before announcing his retirement from boxing on March 1, 1949. In his bouts with Conn and Walcott, it had become apparent that Louis was no longer the fighter he had once been. As he had done earlier in his career, however, Louis would continue to appear in numerous exhibition matches worldwide. In August 1949 Cab Calloway rendered homage to the “king of the ring” with his song Ol’ Joe Louis.
Post-retirement comeback
At the time of Louis's initial retirement, the IRS was still completing its investigation of his prior tax returns, which had always been handled by Mike Jacobs's personal accountant. In May 1950, the IRS finished a full audit of Louis's past returns and announced that, with interest and penalties, he owed the government more than $500,000. Louis had no choice but to return to the ring.
After asking Gibson to take over his personal finances and switching his management from Jacobs and Roxborough to Marshall Miles, the Louis camp negotiated a deal with the IRS under which Louis would come out of retirement, with all Louis's net proceeds going to the IRS. A match with Ezzard Charles—who had acquired the vacant heavyweight title in June 1949 by outpointing Walcott—was set for September 27, 1950. By then, Louis was 36 years old and had been away from competitive boxing for two years. Weighing in at 218, Louis was still strong, but his reflexes were gone. Charles repeatedly beat him to the punch. By the end of the fight, Louis was cut above both eyes, one of which was shut tight by swelling. He knew he had lost even before Charles was declared the winner. The result was not the only disappointing aspect of the fight for Louis; only 22,357 spectators paid to witness the event at Yankee Stadium, and his share of the purse was a mere $100,458. Louis had to continue fighting.
After facing several club-level opponents and scoring an early knockout victory over EBU champion Lee Savold (also defeating top contender Jimmy Bivins by unanimous decision), the International Boxing Club guaranteed Louis $300,000 to face undefeated heavyweight contender Rocky Marciano on October 26, 1951. Despite his being a 6-to-5 favorite, few boxing insiders believed Louis had a chance. Marciano himself was reluctant to participate in the bout, but was understanding of Louis's position: "This is the last guy on earth I want to fight." It was feared, particularly among those who had witnessed Marciano's punching power first-hand, that Louis's unwillingness to quit would result in serious injury. Fighting back tears, Ferdie Pacheco said in the SportsCentury documentary about his bout with Marciano, "He [Louis] wasn't just going to lose. He was going to take a vicious, savage beating. Before the eyes of the nation, Joe Louis, an American hero if ever there was one, was going to get beaten up." Louis was dropped in the eighth round by a Marciano left and knocked through the ropes and out of the ring less than thirty seconds later.
In the dressing room after the fight, Louis's Army touring companion, Sugar Ray Robinson, wept. Marciano also attempted to console Louis, saying, "I'm sorry, Joe." "What's the use of crying?" Louis said. "The better man won. I guess everything happens for the best."
After facing Marciano, with the prospect of another significant payday all but gone, Louis retired for good from professional boxing. He would, as before, continue to tour on the exhibition circuit, with his last contest taking place on December 16, 1951, in Taipei, Taiwan, against Corporal Buford J. deCordova.
Taxes and financial troubles
Despite Louis's lucrative purses over the years, most of the proceeds went to his handlers. Of the over $4.6 million earned during his boxing career, Louis himself received only about $800,000. Louis was nevertheless extremely generous to his family, paying for homes, cars and education for his parents and siblings, often with money fronted by Jacobs. He invested in a number of businesses, all of which eventually failed, including the Joe Louis Restaurant, the Joe Louis Insurance Company, a softball team called the Brown Bombers, the Joe Louis Milk Company, Joe Louis pomade (hair product), Joe Louis Punch (a drink), the Louis-Rower P.R. firm, a horse farm and the Rhumboogie Café in Chicago. He gave liberally to the government as well, paying back the city of Detroit for any welfare money his family had received.
A combination of this largesse and government intervention eventually put Louis in severe financial straits. His entrusting of his finances to former manager Mike Jacobs haunted him. After the $500,000 IRS tax bill was assessed, with interest accumulating every year, the need for cash precipitated Louis's post-retirement comeback. Even though his comeback earned him significant purses, the incremental tax rate in place at the time (90%) meant that these boxing proceeds did not even keep pace with interest on Louis's tax debt. As a result, by the end of the 1950s, he owed over $1 million in taxes and interest. In 1953, when Louis's mother died, the IRS appropriated the $667 she had willed to Louis. To bring in money, Louis engaged in numerous activities outside the ring. He appeared on various quiz shows, and an old Army buddy, Ash Resnick, gave Louis a job greeting tourists to the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas, where Resnick was an executive. For income, Louis even became a professional wrestler. He made his professional wrestling debut on March 16, 1956 in Washington, D.C. at the Uline Arena, defeating Cowboy Rocky Lee. After defeating Lee in a few matches, Louis discovered he had a heart ailment and retired from wrestling competition. However, he continued as a wrestling referee until 1972.
Louis remained a popular celebrity in his twilight years. His friends included former rival Max Schmeling—who provided Louis with financial assistance during his retirement—and mobster Frank Lucas, who, disgusted with the government's treatment of Louis, once paid off a $50,000 tax lien held against him. These payments, along with an eventual agreement in the early 1960s by the IRS to limit its collections to an amount based on Louis's current income, allowed Louis to live comfortably toward the end of his life.
After the Louis-Schmeling fight, Jack Dempsey expressed the opinion that he was glad he never had to face Joe Louis in the ring. When Louis fell on hard financial times, Dempsey served as honorary chairman of a fund to assist Louis.
Professional golf
One of Louis's other passions was the game of golf, in which he also played a historic role. He was a long-time devotee of the sport since being introduced to the game before the first Schmeling fight in 1936. In 1952, Louis was invited to play as an amateur in the San Diego Open on a sponsor's exemption, becoming the first African American to play a PGA Tour event. Initially, the PGA of America was reluctant to allow Louis to enter the event, having a bylaw at the time limiting PGA membership to Caucasians. However, Louis's celebrity status eventually pushed the PGA toward removing the bylaw, but the "Caucasian only" clause in the PGA of America's constitution was not amended until November 1961. It paved the way for the first generation of African-American professional golfers such as Calvin Peete. Louis himself financially supported the careers of several other early black professional golfers, such as Bill Spiller, Ted Rhodes, Howard Wheeler, James Black, Clyde Martin and Charlie Sifford. He was also instrumental in founding The First Tee, a charity helping underprivileged children become acquainted with the game of golf. His son, Joe Louis Barrow, Jr., currently oversees the organization.
In 2009, the PGA of America granted posthumous membership to Ted Rhodes, John Shippen and Bill Spiller, who were denied the opportunity to become PGA members during their professional careers. The PGA also has granted posthumous honorary membership to Louis.
Personal life and death
I did the best I could with what I had
Louis had two children by wife Marva Trotter (daughter Jacqueline in 1943 and son Joseph Louis Barrow Jr. in 1947). They divorced in March 1945 only to remarry a year later, but were again divorced in February 1949. Marva moved on to an acting and modeling career. On Christmas Day 1955, Louis married Rose Morgan, a successful Harlem businesswoman; their marriage was annulled in 1958. Louis's final marriage—to Martha Jefferson, a lawyer from Los Angeles, on St. Patrick's Day 1959—lasted until his death. They had four children: another son named Joseph Louis Barrow Jr, John Louis Barrow, Joyce Louis Barrow, and Janet Louis Barrow. The younger Joe Louis Barrow Jr. lives in New York City and is involved in boxing. Though married four times, Louis discreetly enjoyed the company of other women like Lena Horne and Edna Mae Harris.
In 1940, Louis endorsed and campaigned for Republican Wendell Willkie for president. Louis said:
This country has been good to me. It gave me everything I have. I have never come out for any candidate before but I think Wendell L. Willkie will give us a square deal. So I am for Willkie because I think he will help my people, and I figure my people should be for him, too.
Starting in the 1960s, Louis was frequently mocked by segments of the African-American community (including Muhammad Ali) for being an "Uncle Tom." Drugs took a toll on Louis in his later years. In 1969, he was hospitalized after collapsing on a New York City street. While the incident was at first credited to "physical breakdown," underlying problems would soon surface. In 1970, he spent five months at the Colorado Psychiatric Hospital and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Denver, hospitalized by his wife, Martha, and his son, Joe Louis Barrow Jr., for paranoia. In a 1971 book, Brown Bomber, by Barney Nagler, Louis disclosed the truth about these incidents, stating that his collapse in 1969 had been caused by cocaine, and that his subsequent hospitalization had been prompted by his fear of a plot to destroy him. Strokes and heart ailments caused Louis's condition to deteriorate further later in the decade. He had surgery to correct an aortic aneurysm in 1977 and thereafter used an POV/scooter for a mobility aid.
Louis died of cardiac arrest in Desert Springs Hospital near Las Vegas on April 12, 1981, just hours after his last public appearance viewing the Larry Holmes–Trevor Berbick Heavyweight Championship. Ronald Reagan waived the eligibility rules for burial at Arlington National Cemetery and Louis was buried there with full military honors on April 21, 1981. His funeral was paid for in part by former competitor and friend, Max Schmeling, who also acted as a pallbearer.
Film and television
Louis appeared in six full-length films and two shorts, including a starring role in the 1938 race film Spirit of Youth, in which he played a boxer with many similarities to himself.
He was a guest on the television show You Bet Your Life in 1955.
In 1943, he was featured in the full-length movie This is the Army, which starred Ronald Reagan, with appearances by Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" and Irving Berlin, and which was directed by Michael Curtiz.
In 1953, Robert Gordon directed a movie about Louis's life, The Joe Louis Story. Filmed in Hollywood, it starred Golden Gloves fighter Coley Wallace in the role of Louis.
Legacy
In all, Louis made 25 defenses of his heavyweight title from 1937 to 1948, and was a world champion for 11 years and 10 months. Both are still records in the heavyweight division, the former in any division. His most remarkable record is that he knocked out 23 opponents in 27 title fights, including five world champions. In addition to his accomplishments inside the ring, Louis uttered two of boxing's most famous observations: "He can run, but he can't hide" and "Everyone has a plan until they've been hit."
Louis was named fighter of the year four times by The Ring magazine in 1936, 1938, 1939, and 1941. His fights with Max Baer, Max Schmeling, Tommy Farr, Bob Pastor and Billy Conn were named fight of the year by that same magazine. Louis won the Sugar Ray Robinson Award in 1941. In 2005, Louis was named the #1 heavyweight of all time by the International Boxing Research Organization. In 2007, he was ranked #4 on ESPN.com's 50 Greatest Boxers of all-time list. In 2002 The Ring ranked Louis #4 on their 80 best fighters of the last 80 years list. Louis was also ranked #1 on The Ring's list of 100 Greatest Punchers of All Time.
Louis is also remembered in sports outside of boxing. A former indoor sports venue was named after him in Detroit, the Joe Louis Arena, where the Detroit Red Wings played their NHL games from 1979 to 2017. In 1936, Vince Leah, then a writer for the Winnipeg Tribune used Joe Louis's nickname to refer to the Winnipeg Football Club after a game. From that point, the team became known popularly as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
His recognition also transcends the sporting world. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Joe Louis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. On August 26, 1982, Louis was posthumously approved for the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given to civilians by the U.S. legislative branch. Congress stated that he "did so much to bolster the spirit of the American people during one of the most crucial times in American history and which have endured throughout the years as a symbol of strength for the nation". Following Louis' death, President Ronald Reagan said, "Joe Louis was more than a sports legend—his career was an indictment of racial bigotry and a source of pride and inspiration to millions of white and black people around the world."
A memorial to Louis was dedicated in Detroit (at Jefferson Avenue and Woodward) on October 16, 1986. The sculpture, commissioned by Time, Inc. and executed by Robert Graham, is a 24-foot-long (7.3 m) arm with a fisted hand suspended by a 24-foot-high (7.3 m) pyramidal framework. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring.
In an interview with Arsenio Hall in the late 1980s, Muhammad Ali stated that his two biggest influences in boxing were Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis.
On February 27, 2010, an 8-foot (2.4 m) bronze statue of Louis was unveiled in his Alabama hometown. The statue, by sculptor Casey Downing, Jr., sits on a base of red granite outside the Chambers County Courthouse.
In 1993, he became the first boxer to be honored on a postage stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
Various other facilities have been named after Joe Louis. In 1984, the four streets surrounding Madison Square Garden were named Joe Louis Plaza in his honor. The former Pipe O' Peace Golf Course in Riverdale, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), was in 1986 renamed "Joe Louis The Champ Golf Course". American Legion Post 375 in Detroit is also named after Joe Louis. Completed in 1979 at a cost of $4 million, Joe Louis Arena, nicknamed The Joe, was a hockey arena located in downtown Detroit. It was the home of the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League from 1979 until 2017. The planned demolition of the Arena prompted the City of Detroit in 2017 to rename the Inner Circle Greenway as the Joe Louis Greenway. When completed, this 39-mile (63 km) biking and walking trail will pass through the cities of Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park, and Dearborn.
In one of the most widely quoted tributes to Louis, New York Post sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, when responding to another person's characterization of Louis as "a credit to his race", stated, "Yes, Joe Louis is a credit to his race—the human race."
Cultural references
In his heyday, Louis was the subject of many musical tributes, including a number of blues songs.
Louis is played by actor Bari K. Willerford in the film American Gangster.
In 2009, the Brooklyn band Yeasayer debuted the single "Ambling Alp" from their forthcoming album Odd Blood, which imagines what advice Joe Louis's father might have given him prior to becoming a prizefighter. The song makes reference to Louis' boxing career and his famous rivalry with Schmeling in the first person, with the lyrics such as "Oh, Max Schmeling was a formidable foe / The Ambling Alp was too, at least that's what I'm told / But if you learn one thing, you've learned it well / In June, you must give fascists hell."
An opera based on his life, Shadowboxer, premiered on April 17, 2010.
The aforementioned sculpture of Louis's fist (see Legacy above) was one of several Detroit landmarks depicted in "Imported from Detroit", a two-minute commercial for the Chrysler 200 featuring Eminem that aired during Super Bowl XLV in 2011.
Louis is the inspiration behind Jesse Jagz's eponymous song from the album Jagz Nation Vol. 2: Royal Niger Company (2014).
The first track from John Squire's 2002 debut LP Time Changes Everything is titled "Joe Louis", and the lyrics include references to his boxing and army career.
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dipulb3 · 4 years ago
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Republicans continue their nationwide campaign to restrict voting
New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/republicans-continue-their-nationwide-campaign-to-restrict-voting/
Republicans continue their nationwide campaign to restrict voting
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The vote came after an often-heated debate on the floor of the Texas House with Democratic lawmakers pressing the bill’s author, GOP Rep. Briscoe Cain, to cite examples of the election fraud the bill sought to prevent.
“We don’t need to wait for bad things to happen” to take action, Cain responded at one point.
The vote moves Texas closer to joining a host of other states racing to change the ground rules for future elections, following former President Donald Trump’s repeated and unfounded claims that voter fraud contributed to his loss last November. Around the country, Republicans have cast their effort as needed to restore voter confidence in the integrity of elections. But critics say the nationwide push aims to retain GOP power in key battlegrounds by making it harder for people of color and younger voters to cast their ballots.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
“Most of these changes are unnecessary to make voting more efficient or to prevent fraud, which is quite rare in our elections,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine. “These measures are political and are being passed on a partisan basis for partisan reasons.”
The Texas measure, which now goes back to the state Senate, would empower partisan poll watchers, increase penalties for voting crimes and bar counties from sending unsolicited applications to vote by mail. It included Democratic amendments, including one that would allow election officials to call the police to remove disruptive partisan poll watchers.
“Under the cover of darkness, the Texas House just passed one of the worst anti-voting bills in the county,” Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director of the ACLU of Texas, said after lawmakers voted to advance the bill in the early morning hours Friday. “SB7 will target votes of color, voters with disabilities and the civil servants who run our elections.”
A separate measure approved previously by the Texas Senate is more expansive. It would allow poll watchers to videotape people receiving assistance to vote and would ban drive-thru voting and other measures employed in urban areas in 2020 that made it easier to vote in the pandemic.
Those provisions still could make into the final law.
State action
In Florida, DeSantis said the new law would “increase transparency and strengthen the security of our elections.” Its critics, such as NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, called it a “horrifying reminder” of democracy’s “fragility.”
The law brings sweeping changes to Florida’s election rules, such as imposing new identification requirements to request vote-by-mail ballots or to change an address. It also limits the location and hours of ballot drop boxes and requires election workers to monitor boxes. Election supervisors face a $25,000 fine for the failure to do so.
Texas and Florida — both populous and diverse states — are just the latest Republican-led states to move forward with voting restrictions.
Georgia and Iowa already have passed far-reaching election restrictions. Montana has tightened voter ID requirements and ended same-day voter registration. Bills to tighten voting rules also are advancing in the battleground state of Michigan.
And this week, the Republican majority in the Kansas legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes of controversial election bills. As a result, it’s now a misdemeanor for someone in Kansas to collect and return more than 10 ballots — which opponents say will hamper efforts by churches and other organizations to help the elderly and disabled vote.
Meanwhile, legislation introduced Thursday by Republicans in the Ohio House would significantly revise election laws there. Among other things, the GOP package co-authored by Republican state Rep. Bill Seitz would tighten voter ID requirements, eliminate a day of early voting and limit drop box locations to local election offices.
Asked about the moves in Texas and Florida, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday said, “The President’s view — the fact of the matter is that these laws make it harder to vote. That’s not a good thing.”
She said Biden will leave it up to the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to make any decisions about whether to intervene in states implementing restrictive voting measures.
Arizona ‘audit’
In Arizona — a state Biden narrowly won last November — a controversial election audit demanded by Republican state senators of the 2020 ballots cast in Maricopa County is underway. Two previous audits by county elections officials found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The state’s results have long been certified.
This week, the head of the US Department of Justice’s civil rights division wrote to the president of the Arizona Senate, suggesting that the recount by a private contractor of some 2.1 million ballots could violate federal law that requires state and local officials to maintain ballots and election materials for 22 months.
Justice Department official Pamela Karlan also warned that the plan by the recount contractor, Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, to knock on voters’ doors to confirm their addresses could violate federal laws banning voter intimidation.
Ken Bennett, the former Republican secretary of state who is acting as the liaison between the private contractor and Senate Republicans, said there’s no plan to intimidate voters. “If somebody knocks on your door and you don’t want to answer their questions, you don’t have to,” he said.
Senate Republicans in Arizona show no signs of retreat. One state lawmaker, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, tweeted this week: ” ‘Justice’ Department – you need to stay in your lane. Do not touch Arizona ballots or machines unless you want to spend time in an Arizona prison.”
Trump has cheered on the recount effort.
On Thursday, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and vocal Trump ally, said she “fully” supported the privately conducted audit in Arizona. Stefanik is the leading contender to replace Rep. Liz Cheney in US House Republican leadership following Cheney’s public repudiation of Trump’s election lies.
“When you talk to any voter across this country, certainly at any Republican event, they are focused on election security and election integrity,” Stefanik said during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s show this week.
“It is important to stand up for these constitutional issues and these are questions that are going to have to be answered before we head into the 2022 midterms so that the American people have faith in our election system,” she added.
Appradab’s Dianne Gallagher, Stephanie Becker, Maegan Vazquez and Wes Breur contributed to this story.
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