Q 01/05

What was Joe Louis's famous nickname?

A) The Cinderella Man

B) The Manassa Mauler

C) The Ambling Alp

D) The Brown Bomber

Answer · why

D) The Brown Bomber

The Brown Bomber. Sportswriters ran through alliterative coinages such as the Mahogany Mauler and the Chocolate Chopper before this one stuck.

Q 02/05

What was Joe Louis's full birth name?

A) Joseph Louis Brooks

B) Joseph Louis Reese

C) Joseph Louis Barrow

D) Joseph Louis Brown

Answer · why

C) Joseph Louis Barrow

Joseph Louis Barrow. In one telling he wrote his first two names so large on an amateur entry form that the surname would not fit; in another he dropp...

Q 03/05

Louis and Jesse Owens were born eight months apart in which state?

A) Arkansas

B) Mississippi

C) Georgia

D) Alabama

Answer · why

D) Alabama

Alabama. Both sharecroppers' sons went north as boys in the Great Migration, and each later embarrassed Nazi racial theory: Owens on the track in 1936...

Q 04/05

To which city did Louis's family move in 1926, where he grew up and learned to box?

A) Cleveland

B) Detroit

C) New York

D) Chicago

Answer · why

B) Detroit

Detroit. His stepfather had gone ahead for work in the car plants, and the family followed in the Great Migration when Joe was 12; he took up boxing a...

Q 05/05

Which instrument was Louis meant to be learning with the lesson money he secretly spent on a boxing gym?

A) Violin

B) Piano

C) Trumpet

D) Guitar

Answer · why

A) Violin

Violin. His mother paid for the lessons to keep him off the streets, and he reportedly boxed as plain Joe Louis so that she would not find out where t...