World War II, Boxing, And Detroit’s Champion

A heavyweight crown can change a career. Fighting for dignity can change a country. We sit down with historian Randy Roberts to explore how Joe Louis moved from Detroit icon to global symbol during World War II, turning quiet resolve into a powerful stand against Jim Crow while uniting millions under one flag.

Randy takes us inside The Fight of His Life, the book he coauthored with Johnny Smith, drawing on thousands of newspaper archives, Army and State Department records, and on‑the‑ground reports from bases in the United States, England, and Italy. We retrace Louis’s transformative wartime years: the relief title defenses where he donated his entire purses, the morale‑boosting exhibition tours with Sugar Ray Robinson, and the tense showdown at Camp Sibert when an MP tried to force him from a whites‑only area. These moments reveal how a soft‑spoken champion found his political voice and insisted the Army live up to American ideals.

We also unpack the long shadow of Jack Johnson and how Louis was crafted as his public opposite, only to outgrow the script when justice demanded it. The conversation follows Louis beyond the ring: helping Jackie Robinson into officer candidate school at Fort Riley, pushing the PGA to grant an exemption that cracked golf’s color line, and ultimately earning an Arlington burial waiver with an assist from Ronald Reagan. Along the way, we reflect on Detroit’s own story—from the famed fist on Jefferson to a new statue honoring Louis the golfer, and the memory of Black Bottom as the city aims to rebuild with respect for what was lost.

If you care about sports history, World War II, civil rights, or Detroit’s legacy, this deep dive offers fresh insight into a champion whose greatest victories happened outside the ring. Listen, share with a friend, and tell us your takeaway—and if you enjoy the show, subscribe and leave a review so more people can find these stories.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Detroit’s Champions
• 0:25 Listener Support And Housekeeping
• 1:03 Introducing Joe Louis’s Unmatched 1935
• 2:08 Meet Historian Randy Roberts
• 3:20 Coauthor Journey And Past Books
• 4:36 Separating Art From The Artist
• 6:08 Joe Louis In WWII: The Core Story
• 8:36 Research Trail: Archives And Documents
• 9:39 Camp Sibert Confrontation With Jim Crow
• 11:43 Overseas Discrimination And De Facto Segregation
• 12:56 Jack Johnson Vs. The “Anti‑Johnson” Model
• 14:46 Postwar Life And Breaking Golf’s Color Barrier
• 16:07 Jackie Robinson, Fort Riley, And OCS
• 17:30 Relief Fights And Donating His Purses
• 19:18 Legacy Honors: Arlington And Reagan Link
• 20:24 Bourbon, Branding, And Detroit Tributes
• 22:05 Who The Book Is For
• 23:12 Detroit’s Past Riot And Black Bottom
• 27:40 Closing Thanks And Where To Find The Book

Transcript

Jamie Flanagan: 0:03

1935. The Lions win the NFL Championship. The Detroit Tigers take the world series. The Red Wings bring home Lord Stanley's Cup. Joe Lewis begins his rise to world domination. This transforms the motor city into Detroit City of Champions. And there you go with the crack of the bat. We are back with another episode of Detroit City of Champions, Jamie Fly It Solo. What I'm going to ask you to do right now, we appreciate everybody who joins us on this journey through these amazing, amazing stories. And I ask that you do something right now is just simply like, subscribe, leave a comment, do all those podcast things in all those podcast places. We truly, genuinely appreciate it. Uh the time you spend with us. And if you've enjoyed it, uh share it with a friend. That's all. That's all Charles and I ask you to do. And tonight, though, talking about stories, and and we did, we'll put it, we'll link them down in the description. We did the whole series on on Joe Lewis, which is interesting because Joe Lewis, all the champions in in 1935, right? The the Lions, the Tigers, the what Red Wings all won their first championships, plus 30 other champions, all in Detroit, all in 35, and Joe Lewis wasn't one. And we go through that whole story, but uh we did contend and we did argue that Joe Lewis had the greatest season of any individual season of any individual athlete ever, bar none. And I think we made that case pretty decisively. And Joe Lewis is a it was a very multifaceted individual, and yet he was a boxer, and that was he was very single-minded and single single-focused. And Johnny Smith and Randy Roberts were diving into the simplicity, complexity uh of the man and their book, The Fight of His Life, Joe Lewis, Battle for Freedom During World War II. And we got some interesting stuff to share, and we're gonna bring on the author of that book, Randy Roberts. Randy, welcome to Detroit City of Champions.

Randy Roberts: 2:10

Hi, thanks a lot, Jamie. Jamie, he 35 was a great year for Lewis. I mean, you know, he beat Primo Canarin 35, he beat Max Bear in 35. Oh, yeah, two two world champions in 35. Oh, yeah, but he just it wasn't shorter, I think, was 35.

Jamie Flanagan: 2:28

The championship. I mean, his career that's the year his career uh bolstered and grew, and and and yeah, he did decidedly have the best season of any individual athlete ever, but it wasn't for the championship. No, no, darn it, Max Bear, you goofball, yeah, you Cinderella man losing goofball. Yeah, so but Randy, before we get into this, tell me about your childhood. My childhood, yeah. Tell me a little bit about you.

Randy Roberts: 2:55

Uh yeah, I I I was born in the Pittsburgh area. Oh, okay, right. A lot like Detroit, yeah, and you know, became interested in boxing at a very young age, mostly interested in the history of boxing, more interested in the history of boxing than the sport, than actually boxing. But and I became interested in when went good. Then I went to college and did my graduate work, PhD work at LSU, which was a good time if you like college football. And since then I've been teaching, I've been since 1988, I've been teaching at Purdue University, mostly courses on World War II and sport history.

Jamie Flanagan: 3:34

All right, all right. And so what was Johnny Smith? How did you guys hook up? And what was the what was the precipice for diving into this book?

Randy Roberts: 3:45

Johnny and I have that's our fourth book together. Initially, yeah, initially we were uh Johnny was one of my PhD students, and but you know, he's not a student anymore. Uh he's an accomplished author, and we we did our first book we did was on Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, all right, which was a good book to uh uh to do. Then we did one on World War One and some Babe Ruth and some other uh characters in World War One, and also one on Mickey Mantle, that's our fourth book.

Jamie Flanagan: 4:17

Oh, Mickey. That's that's not a problematic individual at all, there.

Randy Roberts: 4:22

No, no, nothing problematic about the men.

Jamie Flanagan: 4:28

Yikes. Sometimes people don't know all the history, and that's why professors of history uh are important to shed the light.

Randy Roberts: 4:37

Sometimes Mickey Meandle, it's best to not know the full story, you know.

Jamie Flanagan: 4:40

And it's it's like today, there's so many people like you know, you you threw out like you know, Bill Cosby and Puff Daddy, and it's it's you know, Art Kelly is I as a D I DJ stuff too, and it's like, do you play the music or like I teach a broadcast class in high school? You know, do you not show Bill Cosby? Because it was that was like that was like the pivotal black comedy changing things. So, you know, where do you separate the art and the artist again with somebody like Mickey Mantley? I mean, you gotta you guess sometimes you gotta peel those layers back and and tell the full story, but does that negate everything else, right?

Randy Roberts: 5:13

Yeah, well, I I don't think Mickey was trying quite in the R. Kelly category.

Jamie Flanagan: 5:17

No, no, I know, you know, but uh, you know, Pete Rose, right? Pete Rose, should he be in the Hall of Fame? I mean, Pete Rose was another problematic. Uh has he got a Pete Rose book on the horizon?

Randy Roberts: 5:27

No, I don't, but I could tell you a cool story about Pete Rose. Oh, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Okay, a friend of mine graduated from Yale, and he has a PhD, his gra his PhD when he graduated, and he had Pete Rose sign it at one of the signings. I don't know, a hundred dollars, whatever Pete Rose. Yeah, signed his PhD, and now also signing that PhD was the president of the Yale at the time. All right, Bart Giamatti. So he's got Bart Giamatti and Pete Rose signed the same document.

Jamie Flanagan: 6:04

Oh boy, oh boy, that's very interesting. All right, but we're talking about Joe Lewis in your book, The Fight of His Life. It it's interesting about Joe, and there was like how I was name-dropping earlier before we went live, and Jojo, his son Joe Lewis Barrow Jr. the third, right? Because he named all his like he named all his kids Joe Lewis. So JoJo was in town launching Joe Lewis Southern Kitchen, and he brought us down for the grand opening of that Jojo there, and it was fun. But they had also prior prior to that, and how I connected with Jojo was that I do another podcast, The Man Cave Happy Hour, which is all about bourbons, whiskies, cocktails, spirits. And like right before COVID, they or right during COVID, they launched Joe Lewis bourbon, right? So the family, because the family is very, very, very, very tight with the the Joe Lewis name, and they don't let just anybody do anything. And and so they did the Joe Lewis bourbon and they were very, very careful about everything and the packaging, and they did this really cool thing. And in the background, so you had the label on the front, and you had your label on the back, and the back of the label on the back had a they wanted a picture of like you know, up front on the label is Joe, and then in the background they had like a crowd from one of his fights, but most of the fights were fairly segregated, so it was either all white folk or all black folk in most of the pictures because it was pretty segregated. And the only fights that were like really not segregated were the ones during World War II and the fights that he did and the exhibitions that he did, because all the servicemen were just servicemen and they were all just there together, and so that's finally how they settled on the picture for the back is because you know it was a mixed crowd, they wanted it, they wanted a diverse crowd, and it was really hard to find a photo of it of a diverse crowd, and so that's what you're talking about. So, walk me through the book. What are people uh what's the story that you tell about Joe in the fight of his life?

Randy Roberts: 8:06

The story we tell is one that really hadn't been told to the extent that we did, and it was about Joe Lewis in World War II. It's about Joe Lewis finding his voice politically and opposing Jim Crow and opposing segregation in the in the United States Army, but at the same time acting as a symbol of unity in America.

Jamie Flanagan: 8:31

So with the sources that you went to, who were you able to talk to about this?

Randy Roberts: 8:37

Well, there's not many people left around to talk to about Joe Lewis.

Jamie Flanagan: 8:41

Yeah, there's not many World War II guys left for sure.

Randy Roberts: 8:44

We talked to his son who was born in World War II, right?

Jamie Flanagan: 8:47

Right. The older son, yeah.

Randy Roberts: 8:48

And but he but you know, he didn't have much memory memories of his father at an early age. He did at a later age. But what we did is uh, you know, we went through tons of newspaper files, just thousands of different newspaper articles, government documents, department of the army documents, department of state documents, you know, followed him overseas in his tours of England and and and Italy mostly, and just and just went on to the army bases with him, the where he faced discrimination and what he did, what he did for the government, what he did for America as a symbol of democracy and and republicanism during World War II. Of course, you know, he he became famous. His most famous fight was in 1938, June 22nd, 1938, when he fought Max Schmelling, right? The Nazi hero and knocked him out in one round. So after that, Joe Lewis was a natural to represent America and its fight against Nazism.

Jamie Flanagan: 9:59

So what's uh what is one of the interesting tidbits? What's one of the interesting stories in in here that you uncovered in your research? What's something that uh is gonna surprise me as I as I get into this?

Randy Roberts: 10:10

Well, there's a number of stories. Uh yeah, an interesting one takes place at Camp Sybert in Alabama, where Joe Lewis was going to go into town with Sugar A. Robinson. Sugar A. Robinson, the great fighter, was uh a friend of Joe Lewis and was in on Joe Lewis's boxing troupe that he took around to various bases. And they were going to go into town, and there was only one bus for black soldiers and two for white soldiers. And it was they were waiting a long time, and they went over and to to the to to the white side because to call a taxi. The taxi was on the white side, so they called a taxi and then sat down to wait. And it's an MP came up to Joe Lewis and said, You can't sit here. You're in a white section. And Joe Lewis said, This is a segregated base. I can sit here. No, you can't. And before you know it, they were wrestling around. Joe Lewis was was was a was taken to the MP, was taken to the uh prison, not prison, but a kind of a local jail, just kind of didn't put him in jail, was sent to see the commanding officer and it became a but Joe Lewis held his ground. He said, no, this is this is we may not have a segregated army, but the bases are segregated that I can the I can go on whatever bus I want. I don't have to follow the Jim Crow laws.

Jamie Flanagan: 11:37

Right. Wow. I did that that story I had not I had not heard before.

Randy Roberts: 11:43

So and also segregated bases, the bases were not segregated overseas, right? But there was de facto segregation. So where black soldiers would go to the white say bars, the white officer would say, no, you're not allowed here. Or or if if they allowed black soldiers into it, the bars were disc uh continued for all white soldiers. So he faced terrible discrimination overseas as well.

Jamie Flanagan: 12:14

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. So what do you think? Because you said you you're you're uh an advocate of boxing history. So now am I getting the name right? Jack Johnson, right? Yes. Uh so what do you think the role because Jack Johnson was kind of uh a very flamboyant, very outgoing, and and it would that was like the the the 20s and earlier, right? Teens in the teens, yeah. So it and and and his behavior, you know, even was uh shocking for the the racial divide at the time. Uh what do you think? J his Jack Johnson's uh existence and and and his behavior impacted Joe and and and his his ability to be a boxer.

Randy Roberts: 12:59

Jack Johnson was his own man, lived a fast life. You know, there's a the story that Jack Johnson was going through some section of the Jim Crow South, and he was he always went too fast. He was driving fast, and he was stopped by a white sheriff, and the white sheriff said, You know, you're going you're passing exceeding the speed limit, boy. He said, Yeah, I suppose I was. And and he said, Well, it's gonna cost you, and Jack Johnson said, How much? And the sheriff said, $50. And Jack Johnson pulled a big roll out of his pocket and peeled off a hundred dollar bill and gave it to him. And it and the and the cop said, I can't change a hundred-dollar bill. And Jack Johnson said, Keep the chains, I'm coming back the same way as I went through. But that was Jack Johnson. Sure. Jack Johnson was the fast life. He he he did what he wanted, he married white women. Joe Lewis was consciously developed into the anti-Jack Johnson. You know, America, after Jack Johnson lost the title, it won't be until Joe Lewis that until another black man gets a chance to fight for the title. So Jack Johnson would became the antithesis of Joe Lewis. Joe Lewis's manager, particularly John Roxbury, made sure that Joe Lewis never was seen in the company of white women, that he was always soft-spoken, that he was not outspoken, that he did not drive depart opponents. Everything that that that Johnson did, Lewis didn't do.

Jamie Flanagan: 14:31

Right. So that's the thing. So it made it even more of a challenge for Joe, I believe, to to to get his leg up and and and and do the amazing things that he did. It just facing facing those challenges ahead of time. So through the 30s and the 40s, this book kind of focuses on that time frame.

Randy Roberts: 14:52

Yes, yes, from the late 30s uh to the early 50s.

Jamie Flanagan: 14:57

After that, right? I wanted to talk about uh what came after boxing and after his service. Do you did you dive into that at all? Have you I mean not necessarily for the book, but the movements and uh especially the into uh professional golf?

Randy Roberts: 15:12

Yeah, I uh we have we we deal with that in the book.

Jamie Flanagan: 15:16

Okay, good.

Randy Roberts: 15:18

Excuse me. I had I'd written another book on Joe Lewis as well, so I kind of covered the full range in professional golf in 1952. He was invited to uh uh play in a San Diego Open, uh in uh under the auspices of the PGA, although he was an amateur, he was invited to play in it. And when a guy by name Horton came down, who was the head of the PGA, said, No, you can't play. And Joe Lewis called all of his his friends in the media, Walter Winchel, Jimmy Cannon, people that knew Joe well, and they taught and Joe Lewis said, Look, I I I was part of the fight against Hitler. Okay, I don't want more Hitlerism in the United States. And Winchel and Cannon and the others said the same thing, and so an exemption was made for Joe Lewis to kind of break the color barrier in the PGA by playing in the San Diego Open as an amateur, right?

Jamie Flanagan: 16:18

So, and then he kind of that was kind of breaking the color barrier in in professional golf. He's kind of credited for for breaking that barrier, yes. From what I understand, it it it was that that and and it all ties in with you know another breaking the barrier with uh Jackie Robinson, right?

Randy Roberts: 16:38

Right, and Joe Lewis helped Jackie Robinson get into officer candidate school in World War II. They became very close friends in World War II, Jackie Robinson and and Joe Lewis.

Jamie Flanagan: 16:51

Do you have any stories in here about the the two of them in the in the book as well? And how in their call?

Randy Roberts: 16:55

Oh, yes. Okay, yeah, yes. As a matter of fact, towards the end, after after he integrated baseball, Joe Jackie Robinson said, I could not have integrated baseball without Joe Lewis. That's Joe Lewis was his model. And they were both at Fort Riley, Kansas together.

Jamie Flanagan: 17:13

So is there anybody, was there uh a military leader that was instrumental in in helping Joe while he was in the military? Who's who was he was his main liaison, or not really liaison, but you know, person that he worked with?

Randy Roberts: 17:29

He worked a lot with a guy by name out of Chicago named Truman Gibson, who was who was uh special assistant for African for Negro Affairs, they called it at the time, for the United States Army. And so Truman Gibson, who was black, worked with Joe Lewis. And when when Joe would see something was completely out of range, that it was just not right, he would oftentimes call Truman Gibson, and sometimes Truman Gibson could cure the problem. Truman Gibson also was instrumental in getting Jackie Robinson into officer candidate school at Fort Riley.

Jamie Flanagan: 18:05

Right on. All right. So how did where what's next for what's next for you, right? You said you wrote another book about Joe. What did the other book about Joe in encapsulate?

Randy Roberts: 18:16

Well, you know, it concentrated, although it dealt a little in World War II, it concentrated on his early on his on his main career, which was in the 1930s, you know, with Schmelling and through since tax problems, and it's just kind of a more full biography.

Jamie Flanagan: 18:35

Right, right, right. So the fights during World War II, these were more exhibition fights. They weren't, were they what were the what were the caliber of the of the things that Joe was doing during his enlistment?

Randy Roberts: 18:47

Well, he he fought two fights for the United States Navy and Army. He fought a fight for the Navy Relief Fund in 1942, and then he fought one for the Army Relief Fund. So and he he donated his entire purse. I mean, who's who's ever heard of that? Where a heavyweight champion fights it defends his title, risks his title, and gives his entire purse to the United States Army or the United States Navy. So he fought those. Then in he had a boxing troupe that would travel hundreds of places in the United States and Europe, and there he just put on exhibitions. He just fought with a star sparring partner, okay. Guy by the name of Nicholson. I can't I can't imagine what Nicholson's life was like fighting Joe Lewis and dying night after night after night. He's you know, after a while, he he had to take some time off, you know. Because you know, one thing about boxing, when you box, you're bound to get hit in the face. Okay, you're gonna get hit multiple times, and poor Nicholson. Uh he long suffering. And sure, Ray Robinson was in that, like I said, in that troop too.

Jamie Flanagan: 19:57

Wow. All right. That it's quite quite the adventure that he had. It's it's very interesting. And then his work there with in World War II and all the work that he did and the money that he helped raise and the awareness that he raised, and then the barriers he broke down, ultimately led to him being able to be buried, well, him being buried in in Arlington, right?

Randy Roberts: 20:22

So Right Ronald Reagan gave him the exemption to be buried in Arlington.

Jamie Flanagan: 20:27

Yeah, so what why who gets to be buried in? Do you know the story on that? Who gets to be buried there and why he had the what exemption they had to give him?

Randy Roberts: 20:34

Well, service man, but uh for usually you won't bury a sergeant there, uh, but but he Ronald Reagan was a great admirer. As a matter of fact, there was a movie, This is a This Is the Army, was made. It was the most popular movie, the most widely seen movie in World War II. And Joe Lewis played an instrumental role in it, and so did the main character was Ronald Reagan. So they they were in the same film together.

Jamie Flanagan: 21:03

Oh my goodness! All right, I just all the time it's I talk about Reagan. He was in the fraternity I was in, but just back to the future. Who was the president? Ronald Reagan? The actor. It's like that's my favorite bit. All right, excellent. So this the book is out, right? It came out mid-October. It's out. Where can people where can people find it?

Randy Roberts: 21:25

Well, they can find it in most bookstores, or at least I hope they can find it in most bookstores now, but also of course, Amazon.com and any of the places online that you buy books.

Jamie Flanagan: 21:36

All right, so who's the who is the book for? Do you need to be a boxing fan? Do you need to be a Joe Lewis fan? Who do you who is this book for?

Randy Roberts: 21:45

I think it's for a person that likes boxing, but also likes likes politics, that has that's interested in World War II. You know, to me, World War I teach World War II. It's my favorite class to teach. And if you're interested in kind of the combination of sports and world war two, this is this is a book for you. And also kind of uh the a person with a tremendous amount of dignity that does a great deal for America during the war, and a person that some people look at as Joe Lewis didn't say anything. You know, if you're raised like I was in the 1960s, you know, that was the age of Muhammad Ali, who was a very different character than Joe Lewis, but each in their own way, made terrific uh strides for their own people.

Jamie Flanagan: 22:33

So that and that's kind of that's what I started out with that Joe was a very complex and multifaceted person, and yet very simple. He was just a dude that wanted to box and excel in boxing, right? And just the fact that he was black was just like, okay, I'm just a boxer and I want to fight, you're right, and I want to do well, and and all those other things I think came to him. I don't think he went actively looking for it so much as as just you know, him as a person uh pushed through it and it it it happened for him, right? So hard at his craft, yeah.

Randy Roberts: 23:12

And world war two is where he finds his political voice, where he stands up, he stands up for causes, he supports America, but he supports his own people. I mean, he he has to treat he has to be both an American and an African American, all right. Uh which was a pretty hard line to walk in the 1940s in World War II, because the army was segregated. You know, we hadn't our Stimson, the Secretary of War, at the very beginning said the army will not fight with an integrated army.

Jamie Flanagan: 23:46

Amazing. Amazing. So yeah, so Detroit has some tributes to Joe. There's right downtown Detroit on the main drag there on Jefferson. This is the big fist, y'all see it all the time, and whenever there's a major sporting event in the TV, they do cutaways to that. But there's a brand new, there's a thing called the DeQinder Cut, and there's like some rail lines that uh are defunct, and they turned them into pathways in the city, green spaces, and they're very, very cool. And in one of them, they were doing a tribute to Joe because they we had a whole arena, Joe Lewis Arena, where our Red Wings used to play, and they they uh in concerts would happen in there, they they tore it down, right? They got rid of Joe Lewis Arena, now it's like condos or something, but it was Joe Lewis Arena for forever, and so they were looking to do another tribute to Joe because the you know JLA went away. And it's very cool in the De Quinter Cut they put up uh a statue for Joe, but this statue depicts him as a golfer.

Randy Roberts: 24:43

Oh, I'd like to see that. Yeah, it's an interesting story. You you talked about Joe Lewis bourbon, you know, there in World War uh in the 30s and 40s, there was a Joe Lewis Punch that was named after him, and when he was out kind of trying to get people to buy it, somebody asked him, a reporter asked him, Joe, what's your favorite drink? And they thought he'd say Joe Lewis Punch, and Joe Lewis said, I'm a Coca-Cola man myself.

Jamie Flanagan: 25:09

Joe, you don't know anything about marketing, do you? Wide open, spiking over the net. Oh my god, yeah. So but Joe Lewis Bourbon, yes, he did in his lifetime have a Joe Lewis bourbon. And and the it just it it just came and went and it didn't really go anywhere. And then they did a relaunch a couple years ago, and that bottle with the with the the you know the the verse crowd in the background, it was one of my favorite bottles on the shelf. I was like sad to see that one go when I emptied out. It's uh have you ever had you seen the Joe Lewis bourbon?

Randy Roberts: 25:44

I haven't. I haven't, but I will I would be look forward to drinking a glass.

Jamie Flanagan: 25:48

Yeah, yeah. Very corn forward. It's uh like 70, 80 percent corn mash. Where's it made?

Randy Roberts: 25:53

Is it made down in uh Kentucky or Tennessee?

Jamie Flanagan: 25:56

Tennessee, but it's a part of Tennessee that's it, it's actually before state lines were redrawn. It was actually the part of Tennessee, like right in the the the part there that was Kentucky at one point. So it's that limestone water, that's uh nice water. It's it's a it's a it's a it's a fair bourbon. It's uh it's it's nice, it's a little hard to find. I I think it might be going away again. But I'm glad I got one on the shelf because it's a it's a it's a very cool package and it's it's a very cool bottle.

Randy Roberts: 26:22

Well, I certainly want to get one.

Jamie Flanagan: 26:24

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, Randy, I I I appreciate I know we uh played a little phone tag basically trying to connect and get on here. I'm glad I'm glad we had a minute to talk about uh about your book and then because we are just we are just massive, massive fans of uh of Joe. So I invite people. Is there a website that people can go to? Do you guys have a website for your books or just Amazon and search your name and your your come up?

Randy Roberts: 26:50

I say yeah, Amazon.

Jamie Flanagan: 26:52

All right, so you just Randy Roberts and that uh Joe Lewis boxing books and all your other books. How many books do you have? Oh, I don't know about 30. Holy smokes, publisher parish, right?

Randy Roberts: 27:05

I'm getting old. I'm getting old.

Jamie Flanagan: 27:10

All right, so Randy, I appreciate the time this evening. And anything else we need to add? Anything, did I miss anything?

Randy Roberts: 27:17

Uh well, you know, what uh sadly what in Detroit was one of the worst right race race riots during World War II was in Detroit.

Jamie Flanagan: 27:25

Yep.

Randy Roberts: 27:26

And right in Joe Lewis's old neighborhood.

Jamie Flanagan: 27:30

The the black bottom, yeah. Yeah, uh the that area. Yeah, that was they're looking to to revitalize that uh because they they they destroyed that area to put in a freeway. And so they're looking at reconfiguring our freeways downtown, and because the part that's there is kind of unnecessary, they feel. And so they're gonna they want to revitalize and bring back that neighborhood, but to something better and different, but kind of with a homage to where it was and what it was when it was when it was great, when it was a great, culturally diverse, you know, black, you know, and really rich and vibrant neighborhood. So they're looking to do that. So I hope that comes together. That's uh be a cool project for our city. And and and Randy, this is a cool book again. Thank you for being with us.

Randy Roberts: 28:16

I appreciate it. Great time.

Jamie Flanagan: 28:18

All right, thanks a lot. And everybody like, subscribe, leave a comment, all those podcast things and all the podcast places. We do appreciate you joining us, Chris. And the other folks connecting with us there. We thank you for for being with us and Detroit City of Champions, Detroit City of Champions.com. Thanks so much, and we'll see you all again very, very soon.