Panama Al Brown (Photo courtesy of the Panama CyberSpace News).
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (a smidgen late) we will discuss the first Hispanic boxer, Panama Al Brown, to win a world championship. Brown has a fascinating life story that is as interesting as his boxing career. The fighter often is overlooked when it comes to early boxing greats, but it’s unfortunate because he is truly an incredible man. Let’s talk all aspects Panama Al Brown!
The Early Life Of The Boxer
Mr. Alfonso Teofilo Brown, better known as Panama Al Brown, was born in Panama in 1902. His father, Horace, was an emancipated, formerly enslaved man from Tennessee. In an attempt to leave the Jim Crow south behind, he moved to Panama. The boxer’s mother, Esther, was Afro-Caribbean and local to Panama.
Horace passed away when his son was only 13 years old, and Al’s mother had to work incredibly hard as a cleaner for her six children. Life was never simple or easy for Panama Al Brown from the start. The future boxing champion was a young teen when he witnessed American soldiers boxing while working as a clerk for the US Shipping Board in Panama. It was fate.
Brown’s Boxing Career
Brown was a bit of an anomaly in the boxing world. Obviously his race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation made him stand out, but we will table that for later. There were even more characteristics that made him perfectly different. Apparently, most boxers in the 1920s when Brown started out were short kings. At 5’11’ and 118 pounds, he was bone thin and towered over his opponents.
Success came quick for Al Brown. He was motivated by being impoverished and sad—an inspiration many of us can identify with. At just 20, the young man went pro in Panama. In that first year, 1922, Brown won six matches and drew one. He decided quickly that NYC was the place to be. 1923 found him in the Big Apple. The “champion of Panama” didn’t lose a match until into his 1924 season. Brown’s career continued to skyrocket, landing him in Madison Square Garden in 1926, where he KO’ed Teddy Silva.
Rapid Ups and Downs
It’s hard to give Brown’s career the respect he deserves, but he is the first of many. He had the quickest knockout in boxing at his time. In just 15 seconds, he broke his opponent’s jaw in 1929 in Paris and won the match. In June 1929, Panama Al Brown became the first Hispanic world champion. He became the WBA bantamweight champion in 1930 and the International Boxing Union also in 1930. He would keep his World Boxing Association title until 1933 and his IBU title until 1935. The boxer retained his title nine times.
Brown took a hiatus from 1935 to 1937. He had one of the more remarkable boxer comebacks when he came after roughly two years and knocked a bantamweight champion out in the first round. In 1938, he took the IBU bantamweight title. In 1939, Brown decided enough was enough and retired after, of course, another win. His overall official record was 129-19-12. Unofficially? Tack on two more wins and a loss.
Getting Personal With Panama Al Brown
Besides being very tall and skinny, Brown was also gay, black, and undocumented. A trifecta that would earn him discrimination and hatred around the world for his entire career. How difficult it must have been to continue boxing under such circumstances. And that’s the thing—you will read the paragraphs above and see that the boxer was a champion, but it needs to be painted through the lens of what was going on in his personal and public life.
The weight of making money to send back to his impoverished mother and five siblings was a constant nagging worry for Brown. Racism and homophobia were getting to him in America in the 1920s. Cartoons were drawn of him that were racist in nature, to say the least, with all the white tiny men begging him to leave America. His sexuality was under wraps, and he talked about wives and girlfriends, but the rumor mill was alive and well and his escapades were discussed. He was kicked out of his training gym and home for being gay.
Panama Al Brown was homeless for a time. Even when he found a new gym and home, he still had to bear the cross of prejudice. His opponent options were limited due to his race and orientation in America. The boxer also had to ‘play down’ his talent level so that white boxers wouldn’t get their fragile ego hurt and not play him anymore. After being pelted with homophobic slurs during the entire Madison Square Garden match in 1926, he decided Paris was for him.
The Paris Era
In Paris, Brown experienced less overt racism and was able to be gay in mostly peace. He would box really well during the day and drink and party in his evenings. Cabaret performances were Brown’s vibe. Rumor has it that he would change his outfit six times a day and spent copious amounts of money on a Bugatti.
Everything was not perfect in Paris though. The WBA stole his bantamweight title without explanation in 1928 and he was accused of “dirty” fighting in 1929 and was not given back his title until 1930. Things started to pile up, and by 1932 he had contracted syphilis and felt tremendous guilt that his mother had died in Panama that year without him. Painkillers were his drug of choice – probably to numb the emotional pain but also the physical pain he experienced in the ring.
As if he needed more, he found out that his own trainer had “poisoned” him with narcotics in a spiked drink prior to his match in 1935 when he lost his IBU title. Brown said to hell with boxing and gave up his career. Instead he went back to one of his favorite jobs performing at cabarets as a dancer and musician.
Love
It was one night at the cabaret that Panama Al Brown met the alleged love of his life, Jean Cocteau, a French poet. He was in bad shape when he met Cocteau (see you don’t have to love yourself, to find love). He had syphilis, a drug and alcohol addiction, and god knows what else. Cocteau was a former pain killer addict and could see Al Brown in a younger version of himself. The men had a complex relationship, but Cocteau did sexy things like bathing in the same bath water as Brown, something white people didn’t do in the 1920s, and won the boxer over.
It was Cocteau that inspired Brown’s comeback. He heard how the boxer had been thwarted with poison and wanted to help his companion get vengeance. After a rough trip to rehab and training in the gym in the middle of nowhere, Brown was ready and did well as previously noted. With success in the ring, Brown turned back to alcohol and drugs and began deteriorating health wise again. Cocteau begged him to retire, and he did in 1939, agreeing that it was time to leave the ring for good.
Life After Boxing For Panama Al Brown
Post-retirement, Cocteau continued to be a positive presence in his life and supported his cabaret performance ambitions. However, the poet moved on to someone else, and Al Brown headed back to New York after losing love and being told because of WWII America would be a safer bet for him. The cabaret scene had no room for the boxer and he came out of retirement again. However, getting licensed as a boxer in America wasn’t working out.
He started doing drugs and selling them to make a living. Brown was arrested more than once and was deported back to Panama in 1941. He could box in Panama, but living life openly as a gay man there was pretty much impossible. Eventually he traveled back to America without permission, had odd jobs, and was homeless. He tried to box again but was turned down and became the equivalent of a human bait dog at local gyms getting his can kicked by up-and-coming boxers as a sparring partner.
He remained a ‘sparring partner’ punching bag for two years and experienced homelessness, addiction, and hospitalization the whole way through. Cocteau stopped chasing other tails long enough to visit Brown in New York in 1948, where he tried to help him unsuccessfully. Just two years later, the police would find an unconscious Brown on the streets of New York City. He was taken to jail and then a hospital, where he died six months later of tuberculosis. He was just 48 years old when he passed away in 1951.
Laid To Rest
Initially, Panama Al Brown was buried in Long Island, New York. He had a basic grave, with a tombstone that said his name, birth year, and death year. However, a Panamanian journalist fundraised and got the money needed to exhume and rebury Brown in his birth country of Panama. There his gravestone read his entire government name, as well as a nod to his boxing career.
Conclusion
If there was ever a man that needed more than one article to summarize, it would be Mr. Panama Al Brown. His childhood was defined by trauma and poverty, and his adult life was filled with racism, homophobia, and a world that was just generally not ready for him. Brown was remarkable in every way and must be remembered for his tremendous contributions to the world and in boxing. Imagine what else he could have done if he wasn’t constantly being punished for being true to himself. It’s hard to be the best version of yourself under those conditions.
