Just before the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Howell King of Detroit beat the city’s and the country’s best boxers in the ring. But King had no defense against the US Olympic officials who dashed his dreams.
The boxers vying for medals and glory at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris hope to build on a rich legacy that at times was a bit reminiscent of Detroit.
For example, Detroit natives Frank Tate and the late Steve McCrory, who represented the Motor City’s fabled Kronk Gym, won gold medals in the light middleweight and flyweight divisions respectively at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
However, at perhaps the most infamous Olympic Games in history, a boxer from Detroit never got the chance to make an impression in the ring.
This boxer was Howell King.
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where legendary runner Jesse Owens struck a “blow against the Nazi myth of Aryan superiority” by winning four gold medals (100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and 4 x 100 meter relay) in athletics, King – a protégé of famed Detroit boxing coach Atler Ellis at Detroit’s Brewster Center – was not allowed to throw a punch of any kind.
“He was a teenager on a boat with 400 athletes traveling from America to ‘Nazi Germany,'” explained Deborah Riley Draper, who wrote, directed and produced the 2016 film “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice,” as she described King’s trip to Berlin as a 17-year-old. He earned the trip after defeating Chicago’s Chester Ruteski in the final of the 147-pound class at the U.S. Boxing Tryouts tournament on May 20, 1936, at Chicago Stadium.
King’s fate after his arrival in Berlin was summarized by the boxer himself – to the best of his knowledge and belief – in an article written by WT Patrick Jr. for the Detroit Tribune on August 15, 1936.
“I really don’t know why I was sent home, but I think they just didn’t want me to fight because they didn’t want too many black athletes there,” King was quoted as saying in the article. He also denied that he was seasick or had violated any team rules or laws, which – along with homesickness – were some of the excuses used by U.S. Olympic officials to explain his exclusion from the team.
And such was life for King, who was one of 18 black men who overcame challenges – inside and especially outside the sporting arena during the Jim Crow era – to secure a coveted spot on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. As Draper’s film shows, several black athletes from that group of 18 – not just Jesse Owens – won medals at the Berlin Olympics, including: Jackie Wilson (bantamweight), silver medalist in boxing, John Woodruff, gold medalist in the 800-meter run, Archie Williams, gold medalist in the 400-meter run, gold medalist in the high jump Cornelius Johnson, silver medalist in the high jump David Albritton, bronze medalist in the 400-meter run Jimmy LuValle, bronze medalist in the 100-meter hurdles Fritz Pollard Jr. and silver medalist in the 200-meter run Mack Robinson – the big brother of MLB barrier-breaker Jackie Robinson; and Ralph Metcalfe, who finished second in the 100-meter final at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles in a photo finish behind Eddie Tolan (Cass Technical High School, University of Michigan) of Detroit, returned to the Olympic Games in 1936 and won a silver (100-meter dash) and a gold medal (4 x 100-meter relay).
The group, affectionately called “The Black Eagles” by the Pittsburgh Courier, also boasted black men and women who went on to make their mark in life after the Berlin Olympics. A sampling includes Albritton, an Ohio state legislator; LuValle, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA who helped the Eastman Kodak Company improve color film processing techniques; Metcalfe, a World War II Army veteran, college professor, longtime Chicago alderman and co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus; Woodruff, who retired from the Army in 1957 as a lieutenant colonel; Williams, a pilot, flight instructor and coach for the Tuskegee Airmen; and Tidye Pickett, a hurdler at the Berlin Olympics who became principal of a school in East Chicago Heights, Illinois, later renamed in her honor.
Then there was Howell King’s story that took place much different.
Without an Olympic medal or even an actual Olympic fight record on his resume, King, who was joined on the 1936 U.S. Olympic boxing team by two Detroit substitutes—featherweight Jimmy Urso and light heavyweight Willis Johnson—fought his way forward as a professional boxer. Fighting as a professional from October 12, 1936, to April 2, 1946, King compiled a record of 45 wins, 23 losses, and 1 draw. Ironically, King, who was reportedly “too homesick to be of any use to the team in any capacity,” according to one of the boxing officials connected to his 1936 Olympic release, decided to leave Detroit and head east to begin his professional boxing career. And it was on the East Coast that King’s life ended when he was stabbed to death in Buffalo on May 21, 1949—four months before his 31st birthday.
“It broke my heart for that young man when I learned of his story,” said Draper, who spoke July 30 about King’s treatment in Berlin that ended when he was ordered by U.S. Olympic boxing team officials to return to America on a ship before an Olympic bout alongside Joe Church of Batavia, New York, a featherweight alternate for the U.S. team, even though there was no evidence that King had done anything to Church or anyone else. “Mr. King was a very, very young man when he was put on the Olympic team, and it was such an injustice. It showed the uglier side of world politics. At 17, he was a pawn in a plot by Avery Brundage (the Detroit-born former chairman of the American Olympic Association who opposed the boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics called for by human rights activists and later served as president of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972) to marginalize athletes.”
Draper, an award-winning filmmaker also known for “James Brown: Say It Loud (2024),” “The Legacy of Black Wall Street (2021), “Versailles ’73 American Runway Revolution (2012)” and other films, brought to light the contributions of the 18 Black Olympians to sports, diplomacy and civil rights with “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice,” which also served as the inspiration for a book published in 2020. One of Draper’s most dramatic discoveries concerns the respect and kindness shown to Black members of the U.S. Olympic team in the Olympic Village and surrounding community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
And while boxing victories and medals continue to be handed out at the Paris Olympics through Aug. 10, the question remains: How would Detroit’s Howell King have fared if given the chance to represent the United States in the Olympic ring in the 147-pound class? Instead, King’s spot on Team Chester Ruteski was given, even though King defeated Ruteski at tryouts and again during a fight that King had to fight aboard the SS Manhattan while the U.S. Olympic team members and alternates were transported across the sea to Germany. And while there’s no way to say how far King would have gotten in the 1936 Berlin Olympics had he been allowed to fight, a description of King in the July 30, 1996, Detroit Free Press as “a fast, clever boxer with a powerful punch” seems to suggest the world missed a great show.
“His story shocked me,” Draper said of King, who lived on Cardoni Street near Holbrook in Detroit around the time he won the 1936 Detroit Free Press Golden Gloves welterweight championship. “But I hope that all 18 black athletes who made the 1936 U.S. Olympic team get as much attention as possible. It was more than the story of a magical ‘Negro’; there were other gold medalists, and they were scientists, politicians and other amazing people too. It’s something the world should know about.”
Scott Talley is a Detroit native, proud student of Detroit Public Schools and lifelong lover of Detroit culture in all its many forms. On his second tour with the Free Press, which he began reading as a child, he reports with enthusiasm and humility about the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who make up its diverse communities. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott’s stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Please help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.
