Miles davis and lena horne, generation africanamericans who found success in their respective fields during the start of a broader Civil Rights Movement. Wil haygood discusses his book with dave cybercom sports columnist for the nation magazine and author of a peoples history of sports in the United States. Host welcome to after words. I am days island, the Sports Editor for the nation magazine and an absolutely thrilled to be interviewing a man who has written a tremendous biography about the greatest out for pound boxer of the 20th century. That boxers name is walker smith, jr. , better known as Sugar Ray Robinson. And the author is will haywood. Will come how are you doing . Guest good to be here. Host great to have you. I really do think this book is worthy of sugar sugar ray robi. Instruments achieve it so congratulations right away trade to thank you. Host you are not a sports biographer of by trade. Guest right. Host why did you decide to spend five years of your life writing that Sugar Ray Robinson . Guest well, i had written to make previous biographies, one of Adam Clayton Powell, the new york court and the other, the entertainer sammy davis, jr. Saw started thinking if i could find another subject that interested me i would have a trilogy, three major biographies and i wanted adam powell of course a politician, sammy davis, jr. Entertainer, i wanted a sports figure what i wanted an athlete who transcended their sport and some of you had a life as fascinating in the ring because were talking about a boxer, he is equally a fascinating life outside of the ring and i wanted somebody who was known but still have a lot of mystery around his life, and that figure for me was Sugar Ray Robinson, absolutely. He is one of the most underwritten about boxes of thee 21st century, particularly considering every major boxing writer would consider him to have that title of greatest pound for pound fighter of the 20th century which is quite a title to have. Guest yes, it is. Host it seems theres a lot of very interesting comment threads between the people you focus on in your biographical career. Adam clayton powell, sammy davis, jr. , Sugar Ray Robinson. I see some very interesting Common Threads and i dont just mean the appropriation of a very smooth hairstyle. I see three people who challenged you could say may be challenged institutional racism with a great deal of style and personal flair. What do you think about when you think of these three men . What Common Threads do you see that you to their stories . Guest they all were in their own way fighters. They all were fighters. They all were hungry, hungry for success. They all had harlem roots in a way adam powell more so than the other two, but both of them, i mean all of them lived in harlem. They all sort of sifted some of the smoke from the harlem renaissance. Each man had a sense of poetry, music, of style, of grace. And i think that infused their respective lives. I think music was important to all three, and i think all three sort of achieved a great deal of notoriety in the socalled quiet 1950s. Host do you think its fair to say that all three also represent archetypes that are not normally talked about in terms of race history or popular culture, that idea of being caught somewhere between the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement and the ideals of the harlem renaissance, or the ideals of booker t. Washington, like you make it on the basis of your own individual greatest and the ideals of seeing some sort of collective responsibility . I keep thinking of the three of them belong in that kind of almost Middle Passage between two eras. Guest they were and thats a great observation. And i think because they were caught between those two eras, before the 1964 civil rights act, they were already engaged in their own civil rights, personal civil rights. And i think that they all three had sort of a hellbent energy to make themselves successful against the backdrop of segregation in america. And i think that they thought if they could fight their way into the headlines, Adam Clayton Powell and Church Politics around america and the u. S. Congress, sammy davis, jr. , night clubs in the 1940s and 50s, event Sugar Ray Robinson as a pure championship athlete. Host i think we are very bad at teaching history in this country, and oftentimes the Civil Rights Movement is taught as if it sprung fully formed from the head of dr. King in the mid1950s, as if it wasnt groundwork laid before then. In all three men as well, you see evidence of that groundwork, and the id of we are going to racism in ways that may be will inspire people and the law of unintended consequences, if you will. About to take it to Sugar Ray Robinson kavanaughs is brilliant chap in a book about his experience in the u. S. Army and comparing and contrasting his demeanor possibly a corporal in the u. S. Army with the experience of his sort of running buddy joe lewis. Can you speak about Sugar Ray Robinson army experience . He was still a young fighter at the time but very famous. Guest yes. Host what was his experience and out dp for the lack of a better term but conviction convention . Guest it was a fascinating experience. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to convey to the American People that they can exist racial harmony on u. S. Army basis. And so army bases. She came up with a plan, her and the secretary of the army to have two highprofile blacks who were around u. S. Army bases and engage in physical training for the soldiers. The first person she picked was the heavyweight champion of the world joe lewis. Joe lewis had a young cat who is a friend of his who he had known, who is actually road in a vote, joe lewis and his girlfriend, lena horne, and the person who was rowing the vote was young Sugar Ray Robinson. And so anyway the war comes. There are riots in southern cities of blacks who say that they are being asked to go to war and die, but they cant get equal treatment in the u. S. Host fighting for democracy abroad but being treated terribly and in the vey army bases where they are being trained to fight. Guest right, right. So joe lewis and Sugar Ray Robinson lead this physical training troop from army base to army base. Up north on the army bases that are fine. Everything goes okay. And they get, go to the masondixon line, alabama and mississippi, and thats when all hell breaks loose. One day joe lewis is using a telephone on army base in alabama. A white officer white card tells him that he should be at the phone booth for black soldiers. Lewis gets upset. Young Sugar Ray Robinson known as walker smith in the army thinks that the officer is going to hit joe lewis. And sugar ray, like a panther, jumps on the white army guard, and theres a tussle. Now why anybody would want to tangle with joe lewis and Sugar Ray Robinson on an army base is unimaginable trend what it says something about the times. Guest it does. So they are both taken to an officer to be disciplined. But now the army has a pr nightmare at its throat. What if the two black public relations, figures who were being engaged to tour the south are arrested because they oppose segregationists, segregationist policies. So the army backed off and didnt press any charges. But it really i think cut to the bone of each man was. Joe louis is willing to accept it. Sugar ray robinson came from a different newer, era, and he wasnt willing to accept it. Joe louis could not keep the notion of control of Sugar Ray Robinson. He was more he was more prone to react very quickly if his pride was insulted. Host thats an interesting Common Thread of all groundbreaking political africanamerican athletes is that they tend to not come from the south of the United States, or they tend to be refugees from the south. Jackie robinson went from georgia to pasadena, california, or curt flood who came from oakland, california. Publishers talk with someone about that the other day about the way that when Marvin Miller was looking for someone to challenge the reserve clause he was looking for an africanamerican athlete who was not from the south but who was influenced by the broader tenor of the times. It seems Sugar Ray Robinson was very influenced by what it meant to live in harlem at that time. And harlem is in many ways a character in the story and people should know this is not a typical biography. Its certainly not a typical sports biography. You have these marvelous personifications ended of harlem, of jazz music, of esquire magazine and they in effect become characters in the story. Why is it important to understand harlem to understand Sugar Ray Robinson . Guest well, people always say a statement, you know, people always say he had such style, or she had such style. Well, what does that mean . I was intrigued with that. Host what is style . Guest yeah, what is style . I didnt just want to write the book until the reader that Sugar Ray Robinson its style and class without giving them an explanation of how it grew with him. He grew up in detroit when he was about 12 years old. His mother moved in to harlem and their host leaving his father behind. Guest he was always estranged from his father, just like joe louis. Thats a good point. I think both joe louis and Young Walker Smith come later Sugar Ray Robinson, lived for father figures. And i think both of them found father figures in the jazz men who were falling in and out of harlem tremor harlot itself becomes almost a father figure to sugar ray. Guest right. Because harlem was that one place in america at the time where there was black political muscle. There was a great pride left over from the harlem renaissance, and that was still flowing up and down the streets. There were black owned nightclubs and blacks might not have been welcomed downtown at six stork club at they could come up that and go to some of the black owned nightclubs. Joe louis owned a nightclub. The fighter and armstrong owned a nightclub. And later Sugar Ray Robinson owned a nightclub. They all felt very comfortable in harlem. It was the black mecca. It was where you could go and beat Langston Hughes, wallace thurman, you know, all of the poets and the writers of the harlem renaissance if they were not still around, their friends were still around. So it was a mecca and i think it informed Sugar Ray Robinson greatly. Host it gave him a certain confidence not to mention a certain style which he carried into the ring and popularized in a way that people had not seen before. Guest right, right. Host you think style is a form of resistance . Guest well, great point. Yes, i do. I think thats how that Sugar Ray Robinson loved load out of arnold gingrichs esquire magazine flowed out there was a article print in 1944 and it was huge amongst harlem ites. It was kind of the first time that we, the american readers really saw black and white musicians sidebyside on the printed page and it was a huge success in harlem. And i think to Sugar Ray Robinson, his mindset was im going to win in the ring but i aim to be more than just an athlete and going to let style and class and grace inform how i conduct myself as an athlete. I think that was huge to him to get to know Lionel Hampton and earl hines and woody herman and Langston Hughes. Those kind of people gave him a sense of self. Host that since the self gave him a sense of something that far too few boxes historically have had. Thats the fierce desire for like a better term to not be screwed by the system. Guest right. Host what was that informed by, and how successful was he in the mobbed up red light district of boxing of carving out space for himself where he was, i do want to say not explode because that doesnt exist in boxing but at least exploited last than the typical fighter with approximate of his gifts . Guest it was very difficult. It was very difficult for robinson when he turned pro. He was feared because of this left hook. He was just absolutely feared. He had bed and new york Golden Gloves champion and his reputation had grown east coast all the way up to the west coast. And yet if you were a fighter in the early 40s, all throughout the 40s, many of the boxing organizations had shadowy figures running them. Host people like frankie cargo. Guest you had to navigate that terrain and it upset Sugar Ray Robinson, which he had a reputation where if you didnt like his contract he would pull out of the fight after it had already been announced and newspapers, and that was his way of saying i do want to play with the mob cats. Host wow. Not playing with the mob cats brings its own cost. Did you think he was able to dance that dance successfully . Guest later not in the early years. Remember, it took him from 1940 to 1946 to get his championship bout, even though he was winning all of his fights. The powers that be the ran the sport never gave him a title shot until six years into his career as a pro. Host he had a a difficult time getting that title shot. Do you think that some of the circumstances by which he left the army may have played a role in his inability to get traction for public support for that title fight . I guess thats also a segue if you could talk about something that did sort of follow him like a gray cloud, the shadowy circumstances by which he left the armed forces. Guest yes. Sugar ray robinson was very, very afraid of dying. He had it imagined in his mind that if you went overseas, even on a Goodwill Mission, that he could be killed. And so on the eve of him and joe louis, and some other soldiers going overseas on a Goodwill Mission, robinson left his barracks in long island. He disappeared and he woke up in the hospital in new york, and he claimed amnesia. Army officials thought it was laughable. They thought he had gone awol just to escape staying in the army. Robinson wanted to get out of the army. He wanted to fight again. He thought that if he stayed in the army much longer he was going to start losing some of his skills, which as we now know certainly didnt happen. But there were many, many sportswriters in new york. There were eight or nine newspapers, and many sportswriters and many of those sportswriters had gone to war, and when robinson was honorably discharged there had been stories about him leaving the barracks and being found and being taken to the hospital and he told the doctors he didnt know what happened. He didnt know how he got on the street. These sportswriters, they really came after him. They called him a coward, and they absolutely thought he was thinking and that he was lying. And that did haunt him for years. Host do you think some of that has to do with the sort of lowfrequency hysteria that did exist about africanamericans and patriotism . Because there is that tradition of africanamerican war resistance that existed during world war ii as well, refusing to fight. Thats of course was origin of the Goodwill Mission to begin with with louis and robinson. Guest right. Host did you think they were particularly hard on him, and for the too hard on him . What do you think happened . Guest well, i think robinson really had fought to get the championship fight. I think he was miffed at the shadowy powers that be that ran the sport. I think he felt that if he didnt get back out there and get back into the limelight and start winning again, i think he feared that he was going to end up a broken down has been fighter. I just think he became very paranoid. And i think he saw the army after that experience in the south as being a very unfair place. So i think he just thought of a way to escape and leave the army. Host there is a vivid scene that you paint of what its like for robinson to be in the American South at the time. I kept thinking of this line from Roberto Clemente who said he did know didnt know he wask actually visited the American South. His sense of not being sugar ray anymore, but just walker smith. Guest right, right. Host and you feel that almost insecurity bubbling within him. Guest yes. I mean, you know, especially coming from a championship fighter. The doors are always open for that person, you are practically royalty in new york city. Guest right. And now hes in the south took our places he cant go. Hes in the u. S. Army, you know, hes looking around seeing his friend joe louis who he looked up to greatly, he looked up and he saw joe louis treated almost like a secondclass citizen. I think that did something to the psyche. Host robinson eventually becomes the champion. He becomes the kind of fighter who is praise from coast to coast as really being the best in the business, found for pound. What kind of fan base did he have from coast to coast . This is a little story for you here, but my grandfather once as an exercise wrote an essay about the time he saw Sugar Ray Robinson against carmen. My grandfather, a firstgeneration american come tolerance of english and all the stuff, theres an almost glee on the page of my grandfathers essay which has a racial edge undeniably. It has the pride and immigrant, pride in the underdog, as if being a black fighter from rural georgia doesnt make it under doctor its very interesting how it plays itself. But is there something about that essay and sites like the ones like that that tells about robinson acceptance or lack thereof among national fight fans . Was he always the guy who white fight fans want to see knocked off the pedestal . Guest fighters, to know, so many of the fighters in the 20th century were immigrants, ethnic fighters. And then you had black fighters who automatically seem to be fighting not only for themselves but for the race as a whole. And so with robinson there was great jealousy because he looked good. He was a very handsome man. He was suave. He dressed elegantly. She gave you the impression that he didnt have to box. That he boxed by choice. He gave you a feeling that he could go over to esquire and be one of its male fashion models. Of course esquire at the time didnt have any black male fashion models, but he gave you that since that he was doing more for boxing and boxing was doing for him. And i think that made some folks jealous. And, and he won with style. He won with something approaching beauty in the rain. He was very sharp. He wasnt wild. He thought about his punches, and after his fight, his crowd became a crowd of poets, writers, horn players, miles davis, lena horne. He just attracted a whole nother crowd. Host theres always this cultural disconnect when you have in the black community, and you saw this with certainly the Young Cassius clay, a willingness to speak of yourself as being pretty and a willingness to look pretty and look stylish. This is a broad generalization but among white fight fans you almost get a homophobia that results from that. And what in the black community sees like you are pretty toney, you are styling, and the white unity is all of a sudden seen as suspect and something to keep at arms length. You always hear why cant you be more like joe louis . Guest right. Host which means more humbled. Guest right. Host theres that disconnect which it also makes Sugar Ray Robinson a very fascinating man of his times. Guest right, right. He had vanity as well. I mean it takes a a vain persoo purchase a pink cadillac. Host yes. Guest he had banded vanity. He had a nightclub. His wife had a lingerie business, and he had a hair salon. I mean, these are things that robinson was saying to the world i look good. Host no doubt there were going to go to a break right now. If you been listening to this interview you know two things. The first is Sugar Ray Robinson is an absolutely fascinating figure of the second thing is when i said the words jake lamotta yet so will be speaking about that after the break. Host we are back on after words. Were speaking with wil haygood, the author of the new book sweet thunder the life and times of Sugar Ray Robinson. How are you doing . Guest good. Host excellent. There are a couple of characters in the book who we have not mentioned yet. Miles davis and lena horne and that is one of the many things that makes the books interesting is that its about Sugar Ray Robinson but its also about an era, a cultural era, political era. Initially terrific stuff. Why do you feel like it was important to make miles davis and lena horne so much a part of the story . Guest for several reasons. Because when i started doing the book, started researching the book five years ago i started coming across all of these interconnecting people in sugar ray slice. From miles davis first came to new york city win and got hooked on drugs, he wanted to get off drugs and you wanted to find somebody who could help him physically train. And so we went and introduced himself to Sugar Ray Robinson and they became friends intel sugar ray staff. Lena horne sugar rays death. Lena horne would always be at joe louis Training Camp and thats where she met Sugar Ray Robinson. Langston hughes the poet lived right down the street from sugar rays nightclub, Langston Hughes in the 50s started writing plays with hope in mind that sugar ray to be able to take a part in some of those plays. And so there were friendships forged with those three people, and they were steady customers at Sugar Ray Robinsons nightclub. Nightclub. I just thought it was fascinating. I kept coming across links between all four of them and i decided to write it as a group portrait, you know. So becomes not just a book about a fighter. Its also a book about Langston Hughes and lena horne and miles davis and other jazz artists and other fighters who had links to Sugar Ray Robinson. Its a book about cultural, about culture. Its a book about seeking your dreams. Its a book about the unknown america that didnt always get into the headlines or the mainstream newspapers or didnt always make it onto the arts pages of the mainstream newspapers in the 40s and 50s. Host how do you explain to young people today how important jazz music was to that era, and to a broader feeding of cultural resistance . How do you explain that . Guest that jazz was its own language. Jazz brought people together. Jazz was one of the first art forms, you might say, i was accepted on a racially integrated level. I think that the jazz the float out of the harlem renaissance had such a fixture in the minds of people in other cities like los angeles, kansas city and seattle. I think that jazz had such a staying power and jesuit its own art form that it became a kind of language that lean horne could speak to come the Langston Hughes could speak to, that miles davis lived and that Sugar Ray Robinson loved. Lets get to the opera and six brutal acts because you spent considerable time in the book speaking about the size between Sugar Ray Robinson and jake lamotta. Why have these sites are deeply entered the fever dream of the american imagination . Before he answered that i just wanted to make one correction. It is wil haygood. Host i knew that. Guest just so the readers out there vote think ive changed my name. Host as soon as i said it, even like wrote that down here. Im so embarrassed. Im sorry. Guest its quite all right. Host i misspoke. Guest its all right. But those six fights between robinson and jake lamotta, they seized the imagination of the american populace. Because they thought six fights. They fought starting with the administration of truman and they went into the administration of eisenhower, you know, so that was fairly amazing. And one was italian, lamotta, and one was black. There were street gangs in new york that at ethnic rivalries, italian, black. They were two two titanic figus but they had different sensibilities. Robinson thought jake lamotta was a rough house, exconvict thug. Jake lamotta thought robinson was the feet, was more playboy been tough fighter. Host and that issue again, tough this question because he had style. Guest right. Because he had style, because it slicked back hair, because had pink cadillac. Not a black cadillac laura blue cadillac but think pink cadille color of flower. Those fights became to me very important in the book, and i was sort of confused how to write about them because i didnt want, you know, to keep taking the reader back and forth, back and forth, okay, hes fighting lamotta again. He cited jake lamotta again. So i decided to put all of the fights in one chapter, and i think it works. Host its a very intense experience though because you do this great job in the book sort of threading the fights through this larger cultural tabloid and this one chapter you feel like a bolo punch because its all about the fighting and you almost forget when you read about ray robinson exactly how pilot is trade is. Its almost like lamotta reminds us that this isnt a dandy who was sort of a model but also fired and also less jazz and has a nightclub by the assembly of us to engage in the brutal art that is boxing. Guest right. For some reason it is sort of seared into the american mindset that they split those fights three to three. I mean, there was the Martin Scorsese movie raging bull and it made it, i mean, it didnt leave you with the impression that Sugar Ray Robinson 15 out of six of those fights, and he won five out of six. Mr. Lamotta who interviewed for this book contains to this day that two of the fights were stolen from him. So in his mind even it breaks down three to three. In reality, sugar ray did when five fights and jake lamotta one. , theres that famous scene enraging all were ten euros says you never knocked me down, ray. As if that is somehow his victory to the charismatic personage of Robert De Niro and the camera work of Martin Scorsese. Ray robinson is almost a spectral figure in the movie. Theres even scenes where you cannot see his face and theres just smoke and the hand pulled back. Guest right, right. Host what does this say about hollywood such as this movie about jake lamotta prays as a great movie of the the 19s and theres no movie about ray robinson . Guest was the film critic David Thompson who wrote on the 20th anniversary of a rerelease of raging bull. He said, and are right about this in the book, he said that something very funny is going on in that movie. He says scorsese missed the Sugar Ray Robinson story. Host yes. Guest and i think thats true. People watching the movie, you leave with the feeling that jake lamotta got the best of Sugar Ray Robinson. Hardly so. Hardly so. Host hardly so. And i think in a weird way its affected our memory of Sugar Ray Robinson, the Cultural Impact of that movie is that hes more spectral than he should be as the person is considered the best pound for pound fighter of the 20th century. Its such a interesting subject matter, sugar ray come to submit questions that keeps coming back to the lets try to flesh out more about the tabloid going about it. So Sugar Ray Robinson is entering sort of the end of this fight career as the Civil Rights Movement explodes around him. What was his posture, if you will, towards first the Civil Rights Movement and then to fires like muhammad ali who were making even more bold challenges to power . Where was sugar ray in this . Guest well, first, there was also a gap, 19521955. He leaves middleweight boxing to become, of all things, a tap dancer, and travels to nightclubs in the usa. He goes to europe. Its not a very good nightclub act, but because he is Sugar Ray Robinson he gets on with some pretty big names. He travels with the count basie band. Pretty amazing. He comes back and he regains his middleweight belt again, in astonishing astonishing comeback. Just a fierce fighter and he tries to move up to heavyweight to take on joey maxim, and he loses. His fight career starts to go downhill. The 60s hit. He loses his nightclub. He and his wife, edna mae, divorce. So you have riots in america. He retires, moves out to l. A. In 1963, there is a march march in washington. He doesnt go. Robinson didnt like clicks. He thought unwisely that may be all of the socalled hip people were going to go to the march on washington. I think if he had it all to do over again, he would have went, but he didnt. He wasnt actively involved in civil rights. He thought his civil rights took place in the middle of the ring. I would say this will not end well, look at his overbearing handlers. Look at the way people imagine him in such a way and are treating him like a child, this will not end well but if i was reading a biography of Sugar Ray Robinson i would think this could end well why didnt it and well for sugar ray . I think in his mindset it ended well. He wasnt broke, he wasnt out in the streets. Mind you, at one point he had been working on the streets ofharlem. Hustling pop bottles and spelling through of fruit stands so he went out to california and started the Sugar Ray RobinsonYouth Foundation and he no longer had his pink cadillac, he had a little red pinto, a small info raising himself in going over to see movie moguls, asking them to make contributions to his Youth Foundation so in a way, he went back to his former self. He went back to the poor kid who. He became smith junior again whose eyes lit up in detroit when he saw his first rec center. Exactly what you wanted to create that experience for young people. In fact i title that chapter saving all those walker smith juniors. So he really in his mind at the end of his career, he thought his Mount Olympus was saving children. Getting up there on the mountaintop and reaching back down and pulling the children and i think that gave him great joy. So you think by the time it was time for him to pass this world he was a happy man. Yes, very much so. I really do. He was living with a woman that he loved and he could walk into the youth center and the children would see him and they would come and hopped up in his lap and i dont think anything made walker smith junior more happy. We need to explain this for people who are just tuning in half way throughand i apologize for the huge discursive back to the beginning but i just love the story so much. How did walker smith junior become Sugar Ray Robinson . Can you speak about how that name change happened . Sugar ray joined the Salem Methodist Church boxing team. I mean, walker smith junior did. And George Sanford was the team manager and they traveled to upstate new york and they were in watertown new york in 1937. Walker smith junior and even half a uniform. He was trying to get on the team. He was like say the last man on the football squad only this was like a 10 member aau boxing program. So walker smith had been training at the church, hoping at some point that george gave her would give him a chance. He was just 16 years old. One day in Watertown Newyork , ray robinson, he was a fighter. Didnt show up. Didnt make the trip. And game for didnt want to miss that fight. He wanted to have like 4 bouts in that town and ray robinson wasnt there and the more he thought about it he had Young Walker Smith who was harassing him said come on coach, please, let me have a chance coach. I just want to show you what ive been doing in the basement. Please, imbegging you. George gain for said all right smitty. Go downstairs and put on some gloves. Walker smith junior came back up, fought and knocked the guyout. The Sports Editor at the watertown newspaper, a gentleman by the name of jack case asked george gain for what that fighters name. Game for had the card that he had given walker smith junior. The card said ray robinson. Sanford told the boxing officials his name is ray robinson. A lady next to the sportswriter, jack case said thats a sweet fighter right there. By the time jack case i got back to the newsroom, sweet as sugar and he wrote in the paper the next day Sugar Ray Robinson knocked out his opponent last night and jack case started going on the radio saying theres a fighter out of harlem by the name of sugarray robinson and he is out of sight. These so dynamic and hes going to be back in watertown in a few months so jack case in watertown really made that name stick. That are people who believe names are destiny. John kennedy would not have been john kennedy if he was more tomorrow diphthong. If ray robinson, walker smith junior. You think this somehow had a profound effect on his destiny as a fighter . I think he started living the name Sugar Ray Robinson. Terrific alliteration, style. All the style issues we spoke about in the first half hour, they shine through when your name is Sugar Ray Robinson in a way walker smith junior which is a name that sounds a little bit as they say, a little country. It sounds a little different. It does and look at sugar ray. He would walk down the street to madison avenue, harlem, anywhere and women would spot him and they would say sugar. A sugar ray. Real sweetly. He just had the name and he knew the name had a stylish cachet to it. And he played on that, he really did. Why do you think boxers like sugar ray, jackthompson, joe lewis , joe frazier , why do you think boxers particularly africanamerican but not solely africanamerican boxers enter the american psyche so much as political symbols, culturalsymbols in a way that does transcend other sports . I think the cause boxing is still a mystery. Its still a sport where very few can rise to as high, its highest level. Its very violent and i think in a way, mohammed ali got a lot of you might say style from Sugar Ray Robinson. I think we tend to follow doctors a lot. It is the ultimate one on one sport. Its just you and your guts and your courage facing somebody across the rain who is trying to get you with such fierceness that you might think that person is trying to kill you. In the days beforesmoking bans you would have to smoke rising up from the front row. There would be a mystery and an all or two it. You think theres something to it also about boxing has been this almost like a canvas where our conception of alevel Playing Field of america is put to the test . So people then project this political importance like will mom and ali get the shop to be the champion after his belt is stripped or was he right to oppose the war . We will find out when he goes into the ring against fraser or is there even basic biological equality . Jack johnson will answer that question. These things become so sharp. Joe lewis fighting max snelling, worldwar ii. Robinson had a moment like that . Thats what ive been taking a long trip towards. What do you think was hismost politically symbolic about . Was it a common facility, was it the tragedy fight with doyle . Jimmy doyle who he killed in the ring. I think robinson had a steady , rising art of style. I dont think it was one moment that fascinated the american public. I think he put in their minds that im your stylish arbiter. Im the person who you look to for grace and elegance and style in the rain and i will never let you down. By the way, im on my way to paris and just watch how i carried through in europe. Youll see how the people there love me as well. I dont think robinson looked at boxing with the idea that he would have to be compared to other fighters. I really think he thought he was a solo voyager. I really think he thought he set his own style. He set his own musical notes. Ray smith the great sportswriter said robinson lived in his own world and that he was almostunknowable. That he was a brooding genius. And wc heinz a great sportswriter youquote as calling him a con artist. Where do you fallon this . Im more in the red smith and i am in the heinz camp. I think he was a genius and i think he was an original. I dont think, there was not as Sugar Ray Robinson before Sugar Ray Robinson. There were other fighters who tried to exude style, but nobody could approach it like robinson. He believed in style. He wore a suit just right. He wore a hat just right. You think this book has relevance today . Would you like to discuss this book on espn for example and for a modern sports audience to speak about what style can bring to an athletes game . Because there have been all kinds of debates about this issue of style in sports recently. The whole idea of having a dress code in the nba and the question of how an athlete, particularly africanamerican athletes should or should not have to comport themselves in everything from end zone celebrations to the way they interact with coaches. When you see someone like they and alan iversen do you say to yourself that man has 21st century style or do you say it would be nice if they knew the history of robinson so they could see what style really is. Where do you fall on that . I would love for athletes today to read the book. To read this book because there was something about Sugar Ray Robinson that was very humbling. If he hurts someone he would go to the locker room to see how that person was doing. If he hit somebody in the ring and knocked out their mouthpiece he would pick it up. It was a very gracious fighter and he cared about what the public thought about athletes. He really did. And i think just the way he carried himself. Could really teach athletes. He showed it, he didnt say it. I keep expecting him in the book to pull a young cash display and start yelling about howhes the prettiest but he almost didnt have to. Exactly right. Im sorry, go ahead. He didnt like rudeness. He didnt like loudness. He didnt like vulgarity. He was a very elegant, gracious champion. And i think he has been too long forgotten and not appreciated enough in what he contributed to the cultural swirl of this country. Used the word genius several times in the last hour to describe Sugar Ray Robinson. At the risk of venturing towards the land of treacle i think this book is touched by genius area you just did a brilliant job ringing his life to the page and making his life really seem like something that was living and breathing right in front of you with every page so wil haygood, just a tremendous accomplishment. Thank you for writing it. Thank you very much. A book worthy of the greatest fighter of the 20th century. This is ben after words, the book is called weak thunder, you need to buy it and buy five copies to give to your friends as it will teach yousomething not just about boxing but about this country. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs as a preview of whats available everyweekend on cspan2. Today beginning at eight eastern we look at essays and opinions. First, essayist amanda kirby sharing her thoughts on identity, body image and her writing style then douglas murray, associate editor at the spectator talking about brags it, the culture wars in the United Kingdom and impact of Lelia Nebeker on the country and later Barbara Ehrenreich on economic inequality in the United States in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Enjoy book tv on cspan2. Another conversation with author wil haygood on tv with a discussion of race in america in the like 1960s through the lens of a High School Sports team in columbus ohio. We are good to go welcome everybody. We are back