Detroit boxer Howell King dismissed from 1936 Olympics was ‘injustice’

The boxers who have vied for medals and glory at the 2024 Paris Olympics are hoping to build on a rich legacy that, at times, has had a little Detroit flavor.

For example, Detroit natives Frank Tate and the late Steve McCrory, representing the Motor City's fabled Kronk Gym, battled their way to gold medals in the light-middleweight and flyweight divisions, respectively, at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.    

However, at perhaps the most infamous Olympic Games in history, one Detroit boxer never got his opportunity to make his mark in the ring. 

That boxer was Howell King. 

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where legendary runner Jesse Owens registered what many called a “blow to the Nazi myth of Aryan supremacy” by winning four gold medals (100 meters, 200 meters, the long jump and the 4x100-meter relay) in track and field events, King — a protege of fabled Detroit boxing coach Atler Ellis at Detroit’s Brewster Center — was not allowed to throw a blow of any kind. 

“He was a teen on a boat with 400 athletes that traveled from America to ‘Nazi Germany,’" Deborah Riley Draper, who wrote, directed and produced the 2016 film “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice,” explained as she described King’s journey to Berlin as a 17-year-old. He had 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 he arrived in Berlin was summarized by the boxer himself — to the best of his youthful ability — in an Aug. 15, 1936, article written by W. T. Patrick Jr. for the Detroit Tribune.

“I really don’t know why I was sent home, but I think that they just didn’t want me to fight because they didn’t want too many Negro athletes over there,” King was quoted as saying in the story. He also denied that he had been seasick or had broken any team rules or laws, which were some of the excuses — along with homesickness — that had been floated to explain his dismissal from the team by U.S. Olympic officials.

And such was life for King, who was one of 18 Black athletes that had overcome challenges — in, and especially out of the athletic arena, during the Jim Crow era — to earn highly coveted spots on the 1936 U.S. Olympic Team. As highlighted in Draper's film, several Black athletes in that group of 18 — not just Jesse Owens — won medals at the Berlin Olympics, including: boxing silver medalist, Jackie Wilson, (bantamweight); 800-meter gold medal runner, John Woodruff; 400-meter gold medal runner, Archie Williams; high jump gold medalist, Cornelius Johnson; high jump silver medalist, David Albritton; 400-meter bronze medalist, Jimmy LuValle; 100-meter hurdles bronze medalist, Fritz Pollard Jr.; 200-meter silver medalist, Mack Robinson — big brother of MLB barrier-breaker, Jackie Robinson, and Ralph Metcalfe, who, after placing second to Detroit’s Eddie Tolan (Cass Technical High School, University of Michigan) in a photo finish in the 100-meter final at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, returned to the Olympics in 1936 to capture a silver (100-meter dash) and gold medal (4x100-meter relay). 

The group, affectionately called "The Black Eagles" by the Pittsburgh Courier, also boasted Black men and women that soared in life after the Berlin Olympics. A sampling includes, Albritton, an Ohio state representative; LuValle, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA who helped the Eastman Kodak Company advance color film processing techniques; Metcalfe, a World War II Army veteran, college instructor, 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 trainer of Tuskegee Airmen, and Tidye Pickett, a hurdler at the Berlin Olympics, who became a principal at a school in East Chicago Heights, Illinois, that later was renamed in her honor.  

Then there was Howell King’s story, which played out much differently. 

Without an Olympic medal or even an actual Olympic fight record on his resume, King, who had been joined on the 1936 U.S. Olympic boxing team by two alternates from Detroit — featherweight Jimmy Urso and light heavyweight Willis Johnson — forged ahead as a professional fighter. From Oct. 12, 1936, through April 2, 1946, King fought professionally and ground out a record of 45 wins, 23 losses and 1 draw. Ironically, King, who, according to one of the boxing officials connected to his 1936 Olympic dismissal, was supposedly "too homesick to be of any further value to the team in any capacity," made a choice to leave Detroit and head east to launch his professional boxing career. And it was on the East Coast where King’s life came to an end, when he was stabbed to death on May 21, 1949, in Buffalo — four months shy of his 31st birthday. 

“My heart was broken for this young man when I learned about his story,” said Draper, who spoke on July 30 about King's treatment in Berlin, which ended when he was ordered by officials with the U.S. Olympic boxing team to return to America on a ship before fighting an Olympic bout, along with Joe Church, of Batavia, New York, a featherweight alternate on the U.S. team, despite the fact that there was no evidence that King had committed any wrongdoing with Church or anyone else. “Mr. King was a very, very young man at the time he made the Olympic team, and it was such an injustice. It showed the uglier side of global politics. At 17 years old, he was a pawn in a scheme carried out by Avery Brundage (the Detroit-born, former head of the American Olympic Association, who opposed the proposed boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics pushed by human rights activists, and later served as International Olympic Committee president from 1952 through 1972), where the athletes were marginalized.” 

Draper, an award-winning filmmaker who's also known for “James Brown: Say It Loud (2024),” “The Legacy of Black Wall Street (2021), “Versailles ‘73 American Runway Revolution (2012), and more, brought to light the contributions to sports, diplomacy and civil rights made by the 18 Black Olympians through “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice,” which also inspired a book published in 2020. One of Draper's most dramatic findings involves the respect and kindness that Black members of the U.S. Olympic Team received in the Olympic Village and the surrounding community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Still, as boxing victories and medals continue to be awarded through Aug. 10 during the Paris Olympics, the question that forever remains is: How would Detroit’s own Howell King have fared if he had been given a chance to represent the United States in the Olympic boxing ring at 147 pounds? Instead, Chester Ruteski was given King’s place on the team, even after King defeated Ruteski at the tryout and again during a match that King was made to fight on the spot aboard the SS Manhattan, as U.S. Olympic team members and alternates were being transported by sea to Germany. And while there is no way to determine how far King would have advanced at the 1936 Berlin Olympics if he had been allowed to fight, a description of King in the July 30, 1996, Detroit Free Press as a “fast, clever boxer with a telling punch,” seems to indicate that the world missed out on a great show.

“I was crushed by his story,” Draper said of King, who lived on Cardoni Street near Holbrook in Detroit around the same time he was winning the 1936 Detroit Free Press Golden Gloves welterweight championship. “But I hope that all of the 18 Black athletes that made the 1936 U.S. Olympic Team can receive as much ink as possible. It was more than a story about one magical ‘Negro;' there were other gold medal winners, and they also were scholars, politicians and other amazing people. It’s something that the world should know about."

Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at stalley@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @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.