- Born
- 3 February 1938Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands
- Died
- 23 July 2013Hempstead, New York, USA · aged 75
Emile Griffith
A boxing champion whose life exposed the violence of homophobia inside and outside the ring.
Emile Griffith was born in the US Virgin Islands in 1938. After moving to New York as a teenager, he worked in a hat factory, where his employer recognised his athletic potential and introduced him to boxing.
He won his first world welterweight title in 1961. Before his third fight against Benny Paret in 1962, Paret taunted him with a homophobic slur at the weigh-in. Griffith stopped Paret in the twelfth round; Paret fell into a coma and died ten days later. The death troubled Griffith for the rest of his life.
Griffith went on to win world titles at welterweight and middleweight and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Outside the ring, his work designing women’s hats and his relationships challenged the narrow expectations placed on a male fighter. In 1992 he was severely beaten after leaving a gay bar in New York.
Late in life he spoke of loving both men and women and questioned why violence could be accepted more easily than same-sex love. He lived with dementia in his final years and died in 2013, aged 75.