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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a feature that originally ran in the Valley Living, a quarterly magazine of the Valley Times-News.

Riding down the road, red dust billowing in a thick cloud behind you, it’s like time has not touched the land. It has somehow been preserved, untouched by industrialized development. The green fields of farmland have not yet been marred by the encroaching, developing world.

In fact, you might never know the small 135-year-old farmhouse was even there. There are no road markers or historical signs indicating the turnoff from Highway 50. All that’s there to mark the nondescript house is a 30-year-old wooden sign engraved with the words, “Birthplace of Joe Louis” weathering under decades of moss.

Joe Louis, the King of Boxing’s Golden Age, was the longest-running boxing world champion in history, holding the title for nearly 12 years. Louis became a national hero in 1938 when he defeated German boxer Max Schmeling in a rematch.

“The fight was viewed by the press as a battle between American and Nazi ideologies, although Schmeling himself was not a member of the Nazi party,” said Jada Jones, African American Heritage & Alabama Register Coordinator for the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC). “Louis’ victory over Schmeling came to symbolize the strength and success of America, and its values of independence, and freedom.”

Not only that, Jones said, but Louis — born in the Jim Crow South — represented the epitome of the American dream.

“From a small one-bedroom house on an Alabama farm to the global stage, Louis represented the opportunity of upward mobility America afforded, even within the constraints of its own problematic race relations,” she said.

In the ’60s, Black and white people alike huddled around radios to listen to Joe Louis’ fights. When he won, the Black listeners in the South, where he’s from, couldn’t get excited. According to a VT-N article, Joe Barrow Jr. described in his book “Joe Louis Barrow: American Hero,” they would walk passively back to their neighborhoods and only then, out of sight of the white folks, were they able to let loose their excitement. That’s when the celebration began.

Recently, LaFayette Fire Chief James Doody, a community mover and shaker, has been advocating for funds to be allocated to maintaining this hidden local landmark.

When a family traveled all the way from California in March of this year, Doody tasked himself with guiding them to the birthplace of the famous boxer. Rama and Malathy Ramanujam travel all around the country with their son Bharat Ramanujam to see historical sites and post about them on their blog, GoHistoryTravel.org.

Until several years ago, Louis’ birthplace location was contested, with many believing him to have been born on Buckalew Mountain. But this family was determined to see the true site.

Surprisingly, the house proved much harder to locate than he would’ve thought possible.

That’s when Doody met Arthur Shealey, Louis’ third cousin, who currently lives on the land behind the house. He and Doody hope that the historic spot could reach its potential and become a site for field trips and tourism.

The AHC listed the Joe Louis Birthplace in the Alabama Register on August 6, 1993. But that sign from the Alabama Historical Places registrar is the last thing that has been done to preserve the memory of Joe Louis’s place of birth, the only true connection tethering Louis to Chambers County.

The old house was built by Peter Shealey, a sharecropper and former enslaved man, in 1889 after the Civil War, according to the Alabama Historical Places registrar.

In an interview in 1990, Turner Shealey, a first cousin once removed from Louis, said the originally 120-acre property was bought for $5 per acre by Shealey.

“For over a hundred years, these stones have held up the house — only a few sections have been replaced by concrete blocks,” Shealey said.

Jones said that the four-bedroom house is a one-story wood frame house constructed in the Dogtrot vernacular form. When Louis lived there, the front porch, back porch, kitchen and back bedroom had not been added yet.

Slave-made bricks from a house that had burned down were added to dress up the chimney. In a May 6, 1993 interview, Turner said the bricks were beginning to crumble due to the sand content. The siding was placed on weatherboard in the 40s. The exterior chimney on the left gable side was built in 1910.

Now, in 2010, the county erected a larger-than-life statue to honor Louis at the courthouse downtown, an easy ten miles away from the sharecropper home where he was born. When the statue was funded, there was also talk of adding a Joe Louis museum in one of downtown LaFayette’s historic buildings. Judge Calvin Milford, a historian of local lore, was at the forefront of that project, according to a LaFayette Sun news clipping.

But despite the worries of Louis’ last remaining local family, there have been very few new efforts to better mark or maintain the geriatric house.

“There’s a lot of history here for us, black people I’m speaking of,” Shealey said to the VT-N from his front yard in April 2024.

“When we achieve something, we ought to try to hold on to it,” he added.

For a decade, he has worked to keep the house from falling into disrepair. Several years ago, he replaced the sagging roof with a new tin roof to protect the rest of the house from water damage. But at 83 years old, it’s getting harder and harder for him to maintain the home on his retirement savings.

Driving down the road where the farmhouse has historically sat is like stepping back in time. Though he was willing to give the property and an acre of land to the county, Shealey said he would not want the house moved or destroyed.

“I still would like to see the house stay here,” he said. “And I don’t know if that’s going to happen because nobody seems interested in the family.”

Besides that, Shealey said he was told by the county historical board not to make any changes to the house. Later, the board did not have the funding to take on the house.

Though it’s difficult to find, it’s not just the Ramanujam family that has been drawn to the home over the years. Shealey told the VT-N that he has seen a few boxing fans stop by to visit the site of the Brown Bomber’s birthplace since he moved onto the property.

“One day, when I was living alone out here, there was a big old bus full of people who wanted to see Joe Louis’ birthplace,” he remembered.

Shealey has been asking for help for two decades now. In an Associated Press article from 2002, Shealey talked about living in the house and maintaining the upkeep. Though he has fitted it with the new roof, Shealey said in his older years he can’t keep up with the renovations like he once could.

The Alabama Historical Commission (AHC) offers the Education Trust Fund grant for the National Register of Historic Places sites owned and operated by a public or non-profit entity.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer any programs for privately owned structures.

This October, inspired by their visit, Doody said, the Ramanujam family has decided to print historical markers for Highway 50, the turnoff onto the dirt road and a new sign to be placed in front of the building — all to be donated to the county.

After returning from their next trip in November, they plan to begin the marker project. They also plan to donate $1,000 to the preservation cause.

The rich historical significance of Joe Louis’ boxing reign is deeply rooted in the South. In fact, its roots go right here into Chambers County. Louis represents an important cultural figure, not just for our country’s racial past but specifically for those of the Black community in the South.

So why is this boxing legend’s birthplace — hidden away along one of America’s few preserved pieces of country road — falling into shambles?

Well, if Shealey, Doody and the Ramanujam family have anything to say about it, it won’t.