Jack Johnson

Boxer

• Born: March 31, 1878
• Birthplace: Galveston, Texas
• Died: June 10, 1946
• Place of death: Raleigh, North Carolina

Boxer

Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion of the world when he defeated Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, in 1908. With the victory, Johnson challenged the idea of the racial superiority of whites. He held the championship until 1915, beating numerous white challengers along the way.

Area of achievement: Sports: boxing

Early Life

John Arthur Johnson grew up in the racially mixed Twelfth Ward of Galveston, Texas, the third child and first son of nine children of former slaves Henry Johnson and Tina “Tiny” Johnson. He was born into the post-Civil War South just after the end of Reconstruction. The last Union Army troops had left Texas the year before Johnson’s birth, leaving African Americans to fend for themselves. Henry, who was disabled while serving in the U.S. Army’s Thirty-eighth (Colored) Infantry as a civilian teamster, worked as a janitor while Tiny took in washing. Neither parent could read or write, but they made sure that all of their children attended at least five years of school. Johnson helped the family survive by sweeping schoolrooms alongside his father and assisting a milkman in his early-morning run.

Upon leaving school after five or six years of education, Johnson joined many other black men as a stevedore on the Galveston docks. He hated the job and briefly became a hobo in Dallas. He also tried working as a porter in a gambling parlor and serving as a baker’s assistant. (Johnson prided himself all his life on his skill at making cakes and biscuits.) He finally settled as an apprentice to a man who painted carriages. The man loved boxing and introduced Johnson to the sport. Johnson saved enough money to buy boxing gloves and began challenging other boys to spar with him.

In the summer of 1895, Johnson fought his first organized bout against dockworker John Lee. He won, collected $1.50 in prize money, and basked in the applause of the crowd. To continue the excitement, he decided to embark upon a career as a prizefighter. Johnson knew little about boxing but possessed height, a powerful build, and a tremendous punch. Between 1895 and 1898, Johnson divided his time between Galveston, where he beat many big dockworkers, and brief forays to other cities, where he hoped to advance. In 1899, he moved to Chicago and began winning battle royals, in which a half dozen or more young black men were gloved, blindfolded, and pushed into a ring where they were forced to flail at each other until only one remained standing. Johnson continued to pick up odd jobs, unable to earn a steady income in the ring.

In 1900, Johnson returned to Galveston, though he was impatient to move on with his life. He continued to box and gained some renown as a fearsome puncher. On February 25, 1901, Johnson fought his first major fight and lost to famed white boxer Joe Choynski by a knockout in the third round. As Johnson lay dazed on the canvas, police raided the fight and arrested both boxers for illegal prizefighting. Johnson spent twenty-four days in jail, resolving to fight all future bouts outside his home state.

Life’s Work

Johnson headed to the West. From 1901 to 1903, he fought more experienced opponents and reached his adult dimensions of 6 feet 1 and about 200 pounds. Having developed defensive boxing skills to match his great punching ability, Johnson met few boxers who could challenge him. Agile on his feet, he usually preferred not to attack but to wait for the other man’s first move and then counter with left jabs and right uppercuts. Johnson knocked out Jack Jeffries, the brother of the reigning heavyweight, James J. Jeffries. Johnson then defeated Frank Childs, George Gardner, and Mexican Pete Everett before winning the so-called black heavyweight title in a decision against Denver Ed Martin. The Martin bout went twenty rounds, reflecting the especially brutal style of professional boxing in the early twentieth century.

Johnson spent the next few years mowing down opponents before losing on points to Marvin Hart in San Francisco in 1905. No man would beat him in the ring for the next ten years. From 1905 to 1908, Johnson fought mostly in the East but scored two knockouts in trips to Australia. He was seen as a contender for the heavyweight championship of the world but his race complicated matters.

In the minds of many people, the heavyweight boxing champion represented the ideal model of a man. For an African American man to hold the title would upset the idea of white superiority. Boxing ranked alongside baseball and horse racing as one of the most popular sports of the era, meaning enormous attention for the champion. Whites did not want this attention to go to a black man who had demonstrated his mastery over a white man. Accordingly, Johnson had great difficulty in arranging a meeting with the heavyweight champion.

Johnson chased Canadian Tommy Burns, the champion, from England to Australia in an effort to force a title fight. Burns finally met Johnson in Sydney, Australia, on December 26, 1908, and Johnson knocked him out in the fourteenth round. Boxing had its first black heavyweight champion of the world. Whites began desperately searching for a “white hope” who could reclaim the crown. Victor McLaghten, Al Kaufman, and Stanley Ketchel stepped up to face Johnson and all met defeat.

Former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries was persuaded to leave his alfalfa farm and return to the ring. On July 4, 1910, Johnson defeated Jeffries in a one-sided fight in Reno, Nevada, that featured a jeering, smiling Johnson toying with the white boxer until knocking him out in the fifteenth round. When news of the result swept across the United States, long-feared race riots broke out. An estimated fourteen black people were lynched, shot, or knifed as a result of the big fight. Many others, from New York City to Omaha, Nebraska, were assaulted. In Norfolk, Virginia, the Marines had to be called out to restore order as sailors from the Naval base battled with African Americans in the streets. Future jazz great Louis Armstrong, then ten years old, recalled fleeing through the streets of New Orleans to escape a white mob. The victory made Johnson rich but essentially finished him in the United States.

African Americans saw Johnson as a hero. However, the boxer made no attempt to become a spokesperson for his race, despite the urging of black journalists and civic leaders such as Booker T. Washington. Johnson, who was notoriously egocentric, continued to do as he pleased and many of his actions upset whites even more. Johnson had a series of relationships with white women, some of whom he married. He also loved to drive fast and recklessly. In one tale, perhaps apocryphal, Johnson was stopped by a patrolman for speeding. Asked to pay a fifty-dollar fine on the spot, Johnson threw a one-hundred-dollar bill at the officer and said that he would be coming back through in a few hours. Johnson was famously generous to friends, hangers-on, and even total strangers but remained unforgiving toward those who had slighted him during his early days.

Johnson did not defend his title until 1911 and made only one defense in 1912. In response to his victories, Congress passed a law forbidding the interstate transportation of fight films so that comparatively few Americans could see Johnson defeat white men. The federal Mann Act of 1910 finally brought Johnson down. Aimed at preventing sex trafficking, it forbade the transportation of women across state or national borders for immoral purposes. On October 18, 1912, Johnson was charged with abducting Lucille Cameron, his white girlfriend and secretary. Cameron, who refused to testify against Johnson, married him. Prosecutors, hoping to find other grounds on which to convict him, found a white ex-girlfriend of Johnson's, Belle Schreiber, who was willing to testify against him under the Mann Act. Johnson was found guilty in May 1913, and sentenced to a year in jail. He fled the United States with Cameron rather than go to prison.

After a sojourn of several years in Europe, Johnson lost his title to Jess Willard in the twenty-sixth round of a fight held in Cuba. He lived in Spain from 1915 to 1919, gradually losing all of his money. Johnson moved to Mexico, where he enjoyed the protection of President Venustiano Carranza and refilled his bank account with more boxing victories. He opened a saloon in Tijuana but, upon the assassination of Carranza, became the victim of political persecution. With few other options, Johnson returned to the United States in May 1920, and went to prison. He died in a car accident in 1946.

Significance

Johnson is rated by some boxing authorities as the best heavyweight champion in history. He is indisputably the one who faced the most racial oppression. Johnson demonstrated that a black man could match and surpass white men. By doing so, he struck a considerable blow for African Americans. Johnson caused such consternation among whites that not until the 1930s would another black boxer be allowed to face a white man for the heavyweight title. However, despite his national prominence, Johnson focused on his personal right to equality with whites rather than advocating for the advancement of the status of all African Americans. Howard Sackler wrote a play based on Johnson's experiences, The Great White Hope, that was adapted into an Academy Award–nominated movie starring James Earl Jones in 1970; there have since been several other plays inspired by Johnson. In 1971, Miles Davis released a jazz album, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, which served as the sound track to Bill Cayton’s documentary of the same name. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns made a documentary on Johnson, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, in 2005.

In the twenty-first century, Johnson's great-great-niece has been seeking a posthumous pardon for him, pressing George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump to do so during each president's time in office. In 2015, language suggesting that Johnson be pardoned was included in an education bill that was then passed. The Justice Department has maintained that it prefers not to issue posthumous pardons, as it feels that the time and resources required are better devoted to processing pardon applications for still-living individuals.

Bibliography

Copland, Kareem. "Descendant of Boxing Legend Jack Johnson Hopes for Pardon, Maybe from Trump." Los Angeles Times, 10 Feb. 2018, www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-jack-johnson-pardon-20180210-story.html. Accessed 3 May. 2018.

Farr, Finis. Black Champion: The Life and Times of Jack Johnson. New York: Scribner, 1964.

Gilmore, Al-Tony. Bad Nigger! The National Impact of Jack Johnson. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1975.

Hietala, Thomas R. The Fight of the Century: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002.

Kaplan, Sarah. "Jack Johnson, World's First Black Boxing Champion, Was Jailed under Jim Crow. Will He Get a Posthumous Pardon?" The Washington Post, 5 Feb. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/05/jack-johnson-worlds-first-black-boxing-champion-was-jailed-under-jim-crow-will-he-get-a-posthumous-pardon/. Accessed 3 May. 2018.

Kent, Graeme. The Great White Hopes: The Quest to Defeat Jack Johnson. Stroud, England: Sutton, 2005.

Roberts, Randy. Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes. New York: Free Press, 1983.

Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.