Rather "florid" and verbose for our beloved Brown Bomber isn't it? Like in the "autobiography" of Joe Frazier when referring to Oscar Bonavena (can't remember the page) as being as "mobile as a stanchion"......obviously the work of a ghost writer....well, it's the same here with the "words" of Joe Louis.
Depends how you define it. Louis was a stand up character. A person who showed respect, dignity, cool calm and collectiveness. Johnson stood in the face of a brutally racist country, and laughed. Johnson taunted white opponents in the ring. He gained the respect of white America. They still hated him, but they respected him. Let's not forget the amount of courage, bravery, and greatness that takes.
Muhammad Ali stood in the face of a brutally racist country too... The difference between he and Johnson was that one of them was a truly great man while the other was an undignified jerk..
Johnson has much more important goal than being a nice person. His main objective was freedom. Ali also strived for freedom, but Johnson had a tremendously steeper hill to climb to achieve that. And thus, didn't have the capacity to also display the generosity that Ali showed.
Johnson f*cked white women and didn't care who knew it, Louis did it behind closed doors and was never seen in public with one whilst champion. Johnson was his own man ,you may not like the man he was, but at least you can say that about him. Louis may well have been a better person , he certainly comes across as such , but Johnson didn't toe any lines or stick to any script, for many years Joe did. Louis, by the time he went into the Army had begun to assert himself and was confident enough in himself to breakdown colour barriers, barriers that may have begun to fall of their own accord if Johnson had been a different kind of man. I think both were men of courage, but Johnson had to show his a lot more often and the consequences for him could have been a lot more serious than for Joe..