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New York Herald Tribune, June 23, 1935

LOUIS-CARNERA BOUT DRAWS 15,000 NEGROES, 1,300 POLICE

Fifteen thousand Negroes, it was estimated by police officials, were in the throng of 60,000 who attended the international heavyweight bought between Joe Louis, of Detroit, and Primo Carnera, of Italy, in the Yankee Stadium last night.
  
They helped to make the crowd one of the most unusual fight gatherings New York has seen. They came from Harlem just across the river, from Brooklyn, from Detroit, where Louis lives; from Chicago, where he fought his way to sudden fame is less than a year; from Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and way stations, all desirous of seeing the most publicized and spectacular heavyweight of their race since Jack Johnson fought James J. Jeffries at Reno twenty-five years ago.
  
The crowd was in an excited and expectant mood. Whipped to frenzied interest by the paeans of praise for the murderous punch, defensive skill and all-around fighting prowess of the beardless youth of twenty-one who won the national amateur championship fifteen months ago and made his professional debut last Fourth of July, the customers turned out to see the first significant mixed heavyweight bout that has been staged in New York in modern times, since the turn of the century, if not longer.
  
Harry Wills, who came closest to being a challenger, although he was never permitted a shot at Jack Dempsey's title, was past his prime when he fought Luis Firpo in a no-decision bout in Jersey City in 1924, and he was much further in his decline when he was knocked out by Jack Sharkey in Brooklyn, These were the last mixed heavyweight bouts here until Louis entered the ring against the Italian.
  
The crowd of 60,000 and the estimated receipts of $340,000 were, respectively, the largest attendance and the largest gate for a nonchampionship bout here since Schmeling and Paulino Uzcudun met in the same stadium, six years ago. Because it was a mixed bout, and the officials here have long looked upon mixed heavyweight bouts with mixed emotions, Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine made the most elaborate precautions ever undertaken by the police at a sporting event in this city. He assigned an army of 1,300 police for duty in and around the arena. There were emergency squads with hand grenades and tear-gas bombs, also four patrol wagons stationed a block from the stadium. Three hundred extra detectives aided the regular Bronx detail by mingling with the crowd inside and outside. In command was Assistant Chief Inspector John J. Sullivan. Also on duty this tumultuous night were two motorcycle sergeants and ten motorcycle police, five mounted sergeants and fifty-four mounted men; 816 patrolmen afoot under seven captains, nine lieutenants and five sergeants, with Valentine himself in supreme command. All because a fighting youngster named Joe Louis, né Joseph Louis Barrow from Alabama, has captured the fancy of the boxing public as no other heavyweight since Dempsey himself.
  
Mike Jacobs, one-time silent adviser of Tex Rickard and promoted of this mixed bout which Rickard himself might not have touched, beamed with pleasure at the social and financial success of his enterprise. He saw the mayors of three cities, our own Mayor La Guardia, Frank Hague of Jersey City and Mayor Ellenstein of Newark, also the bigwigs from political arena, the judiciary, the stage and screen, the sporting field.
  
Negro celebrities from the political, sporting, business and theatrical world were conspicuous around the ringside. There were Ferdinand Q. Moron, civil service commissioner; Hubert Delany, tax commissioner; Dr. C. B. Powell, Harlem's X-ray specialist and chairman of the board of Victory Life Insurance Company; Assistant State Attorney General Harry Bragg; Elmer Carter, editor of Opportunity magazine; Assemblyman William T. Andrews; Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Dr. Louis T. Wright, New York police surgeon and only Negro fellow of the American College of Surgeons; the Rev. Adam Powell, Jr., assistant pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church; Fritz Pollard, one-time All-American back at Brown University; Claude Hopkins and Duke Ellington, orchestra leaders; Police Lieutenant Samuel Battle; Fire Lieutenant Wesley Williams; Cecil Cook, one-time American quarter-mile champion from Syracuse University; Dr. Binga Dismond, one-time Big Ten 440-yard champion at the University of Chicago; George Gregory, caption of one of Columbia's championship basketball teams; Dr. Willis Cummings, former Pennsylvania cross-country captain; Dr. Thornton Wood; Aldermen Charles Bradford, and Conrad and U. Johnson; Dr. Wiley Johnson; Dr. Arthur Paine; and of course Jack Johnson and Harry Wills.
  
Negro visitors included Congressman William Mitchell of Chicago; Professors Ralph Bunche, Emmett Dorsey and Abram Harris, of Howard University, Washington; Carl Murphy, editor of the Baltimore Afro-American; William C. Vann, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier; and Robert Abbott, editor of the Chicago Defender, of Chicago. They were house guests over the weekend on Strivers' Row and on Sugar Hill.

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