Looking back at Cincinnati’s historical Black figures

Boxer Ezzard Charles He became world heavyweight champion on June 22, 1949. Growing up in the West End, “Cincinnati Cobra” did his hometown proud. And the city never forgot him.

In 1977, the City Council renamed Lincoln Park Drive, the street on which he grew up, as Ezzard Charles Drive. It stretches from the West End to the Music Hall, where he held many of his early fights.

Charles was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 1921. His family went to Dr. for the birth. He was too poor to pay Ezzard, so they named their son after him.

When Charles was 9 years old, his mother sent him to live with his grandmother in Cincinnati rather than grow up poor in the Deep South.

In the 1930s, prizefighting was one of the few options for a young Black boy to achieve fame and fortune, and Charles idolized Kid Chocolate and champion Joe Louis. Learning the ropes as an amateur boxer, Charles turned professional in 1940 and won his first 17 fights.

He was quiet, durable and the best in the world from 1949 to 1951 and was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. Charles was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1966 and was confined to a wheelchair. He died in 1975 at the age of 53.