NEGRO MINISTER’S ALLEGATION AGAINST LOUIS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 April 1948, Page 8

NEGRO MINISTER’S ALLEGATION AGAINST LOUIS

CHICAGO, April 3. A 500,000 dollars damages suit filed yesterday in the Superior Court accused the world heavy-weight boxing champion, Joe Louis, of stealing the affections of a minister’s wife. The suit was filed by the Rev. Matthew Faulkner, a 32-year-old negro minister of Atlanta, Georgia. Louis and Mrs Louis are now in Europe. Louis recently appeared in several exhibition bouts in England. The suit alleged that Louis, last November, December, and January, “wilfully destroyed and alienated from the plaintiff affections of his wife, Mattie Carrie Faulkner.” According to the plaintiff’s attorney, Mrs Faulkner, who is 26, is “a beautiful model.” The documents in the suit said that “an illicit affair was carried on while Mr Falkner was in the army service as a captain in the Chaplain Corps. Louis, through his agent and representative, furnished Mrs Faulkner with 15,000 dollars and other gifts totalling approximately 35,000 dollars.” The Falkners were married in 1941. They have two children. In New York, Mrs Faulkner denied that she had ever received money or gifts from Louis. She added that there was absolutely nothing between her and Louis. She had met him at public functions and in night clubs, but had never been out with him socially.