Americans loved boxing in the Twenties and Thirties. Every immigrant neighborhood had its champion, and boxing was a flag of racial or ethnic pride. According to writer Jack Newfield, "rivalries [were] built on ethnic tension, and you could get ten thousand people for a fight between two neighborhood heroes."

Harry E. Winkler, correspondent for The Ring magazine from 1939 to 1953, collected thousands of boxing images from this Golden Age. Browse a gallery of portraits from the Harry E. Winkler Photograph Collection at the University of Notre Dame, and meet some of America's storied ethnic pugilists.