[b. 1874 – d. 1910]

Born in Baltimore, Maryland he was the first native-born black American to win a world title. Joe Gans impressed the boxing community with his scientific approach to the sport. Never moving more than a few inches to avoid a punch, studied his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses much more intently than other fighters of the time, and directed his punches with pinpoint accuracy to key points of weakness.

His first-known boxing experience took place at the Monumental Theater in Baltimore when he won a “battle royal,” a wild contest in which several black fighters entered the ring at once to fight until one remained. Gans’s superiority in this brutal exhibition attracted the interest of boxing manager Al Herford, who directed Gans to a professional career. Gans started boxing professionally in 1891 in Baltimore. Over the rest of the decade, he compiled an enviable record of 58-3-6 with two no-decisions.

In 1900, Gans, then 26 years old, faced Frank Erne for the world lightweight title. Erne peppered Gans with a blistering left jab throughout the fight, seriously cutting Gans’ left eyelid. Realizing that to continue would risk blindness, Gans asked that the fight be stopped in the twelfth round. Gans spent hours analyzing Erne’s style until he developed a strategy to counteract that murderous left. In their rematch two years later, Gans executed his plan perfectly and knocked Erne out in one round to recapture the lightweight title.

Gans’s ability in the ring, as well as his charm and professionalism, won him a cross-section of fans in Baltimore and around the country. He used his boxing earnings to improve the welfare of his extended family, at the same time living in “fine style.” Gans owned and operated the Goldfield Hotel in downtown Baltimore that housed his residence, plus a gymnasium, saloon, and nightclub. He entertained famous world class sports figures such as “Battling”Nelson and Jack Johnson at the Goldfield, Eubie Blake played piano there, and George M. Cohan and Edie Foy came to hear him. Gans is reported to have been the first African American in Baltimore to have purchased an automobile.

Gans’s death from tuberculosis on August 19, 1910, in Baltimore, just two years after he lost his boxing championship, shocked his fans. They gave him a hero’s funeral as thousands attended the service and lined Baltimore’s streets to witness the colorful funeral procession taking his casket to Mount Auburn Cemetery. In recognition of his outstanding boxing career, he was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame in 1973.

A 2012 bio has just come out about Gans: “The Longest Fight: In the Ring with Joe Gans, Boxing’s First African American Champion” by William Gildea