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About two weeks ago we began a search
through Harlem for Sam Langford, the old Bos-
ton Tar Baby. Inquiries up and down Lenox and
Seventh Avenues in bars and grills, cigar stores,
newsstands and drugstores failed to turn up a
lead. Zoot-suited youths accousted on street cor-
ners invariable looked blank and asked, "Who
he?" A dozen times we were told positively that
Sam was dead.
This is the man competent critics said was the
greatest fighter in ring history, the man the champ-
ions feared and would not fight, the man who
was so good he was never given a chance to show
how good he really was. You'd think he'd be a
hero to every youth in Harlem.
Sam is not dead. We found him at last in a
dingy hall bedroom on 139th Street. He was just
sitting there on the edge of his bed listening to
the radio. That is all there is for Sam to do now,
for he is old and blind and penniless. The
women who admitted us said Mr. Langford's
room was the third door down a corridor so dark
you had to feel your way. Sam stood up when
we entered and fumbled for a string attached to
a pale bulb in the ceiling. There was a look of
surprise on his flat, broad face.
"You come to see me?" he asked with wonder
in his low melodious voice. Sam has been sitting
there in the dark for a long time and there have
been no visitors. It took him some time to under-
stand that this was an interview and there would
be a story in the paper.
"What you want to write about old Sam for?"
he said. "He ain't no good any more. You ever
see me fight?"
We lied to Sam, said we had and that he was
the greatest we ever saw. That seemed to please
him mightily and he laughed loud. Anyone who
never saw Sam in the ring is bound to be sur-
prised at his height. He is only 5 feet 6 1/2 inches
and yet at 165 pounds he brought down such
giants as Jack Johnson, Harry Wills and the
towering Fred Fulton. His short legs, long arms,
great shoulders and wide girth give him a curi-
ously gnomelike appearance. All of his 210
pounds now seems to be above the hips. But he
is a gnome with a prodigiously broad flat nose,
a cauliflower ear and an immense amiability.
Sam receives a few dollars a month from a
foundation for the blind. It is not enough but he
makes it do. His days are all alike. He raises early
and two small boys lead him to a restaurant for
breakfast. He is back in his room by one o'clock
and then he just sits in the dark until late in the
afternoon when he goes out to eat again.
This would seem to be a dreary existence, but
Sam never was addicted to thinking or to brood-
ing over his fate in the days when they told him
he was lucky to get fights at all, and he does not
brood now. We have been led to believe by what
we had read that this stepchild of fistiana was a
stupid man who had been plucked clean by the
thieves and then thrown out to starve. A child
of the jungle, they used to call him.
It was therefore a surprise to find that Sam is
not stupid. He is even intelligent, though ignorant
by the world's standards. He never went to school
a day in his life and certainly he is a simple crea-
ture, almost childlike. His memory is good, he is
an excellent mimic, and you would go far to find
a more interesting storyteller.
And all the stories Sam tells are amusing ones.
He will not be drawn into telling the other kind.
He remembers them, but if you ask him about
the old days when he was given the business by
all and sundry he chuckles and tells another
funny story. He laughs all the time he is talking
and his laugh is so infectious, his face so expres-
sive, you forget he is blind. When he tells his
stories and laughs he seems almost a happy man.
There is no drop of hate in his soul for anyone.
Sam said he was born March 4, 1886, in Wey-
mouth, Nova Scotia, but that is just a date he
thought up. He admits he doesn't know, and
since he was fighting before 1900 he probably
is in the middle sixties. He asked about his old
friends among the boxing writers and said be
sure to get in that he remembered them and sent
his greetings. He said he didn't want anybody to
feel sorry for him.
In a way Sam is right. His joviality and cheer-
fulness in adversity envelop you in sadness but
he does not inspire pity. He has somehow
achieved the feat of rising above it with simple
dignity.
"Don't nobody need to feel sorry for old Sam,"
he said. "I had plenty good times. I been all over
the world. I fought maybe three, four hundred
fights and every one was a pleasure. If I just had
me a little change in my pocket I'd get along
fine."
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