Boxer Ezzard Charles became the heavyweight champion of the world on June 22, 1949. Growing up on the West Side, the “Cincinnati Cobra” made his hometown proud. The city never forgot him.
In 1977, the City Council renamed Lincoln Park Drive, the street where he grew up, Ezzard Charles Drive. It stretches through the West End to the Music Hall, where many of his early games were played.
Charles was born in 1921 in Lawrenceville, Georgia. His family was too poor to pay for Dr. Izzard’s delivery, so they named their son after him in his honor.
When Charles was 9, his mother sent him to Cincinnati to live with his grandmother rather than grow up in poverty in the Deep South.
In the 1930s, boxing was one of the few options for young black boys to achieve fame and fortune, and Charles idolized the Chocolate Kid and champion Joe Louis. After learning the ropes as an amateur boxer, Charles turned professional in 1940 and won his first 17 fights.
Quiet and tenacious, he was the best player in the world from 1949 to 1951, and in 1990 he was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In 1966, Charles was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and was confined to a wheelchair. He died in 1975 at the age of 53.
