John Arthur Johnson (March
31, 1878 – June 10, 1946), better known as Jack
Johnson and nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”, was an
American
boxer, the best heavyweight of his generation and the
first black world heavyweight boxing
champion (1908-1915). In a documentary about his life,
Ken Burns notes, "For more than thirteen
years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious
African-American on Earth."
Early life
Johnson
was born in Galveston,
Texas
, the third child and first son of Henry and Tina
"Tiny" Johnson, former slaves who worked at blue-collar jobs to
raise six children and taught them how to read and write.
Jack Johnson had just five years of formal education.
Professional boxing career
Johnson's boxing style was very distinctive. He developed a more
patient approach than was customary in that day: playing
defensively, waiting for a mistake, and then capitalizing on it.
Johnson always began a bout cautiously, slowly building up over the
rounds into a more aggressive fighter. He often fought to punish
his opponents rather than knock them out, endlessly avoiding their
blows and striking with swift counters. He always gave the
impression of having much more to offer and, if pushed, he could
punch powerfully.
Johnson's style was very effective, but it was criticized in the
press as being cowardly and devious. By contrast, World Heavyweight
Champion "Gentleman"
Jim Corbett,
who was white, had used many of the same techniques a decade
earlier, and was praised by the press as "the cleverest man in
boxing".
By 1902, Johnson had won at least 50 fights against both white and
black opponents. Johnson won his first title on February 3, 1903,
beating "Denver" Ed Martin over 20 rounds for the
World Colored Heavyweight
Championship. His efforts to win the full title were thwarted,
as world heavyweight champion
James
J. Jeffries refused to face
him then. Black and white boxers could meet in other competitions,
but the world heavyweight championship was off limits to them.
However, Johnson did fight former champion
Bob Fitzsimmons in July 1907, and knocked
him out in two rounds.
Johnson
finally won the world heavyweight title on December 26, 1908, when
he fought the Canadian world champion Tommy Burns in Sydney,
Australia
, after
stalking Burns around the world for two years and taunting him in
the press for a match. The fight lasted fourteen rounds
before being stopped by the police in front of over 20,000
spectators. The title was awarded to Johnson on a referee's
decision as a
T.K.O, but he had clearly
beaten the champion. Johnson constantly mocked both Burns and his
ringside crew, while receiving every kind of racial and other slur
from them and members of the crowd. Every time Burns was about to
go down, Johnson would hold him up, beating an already helpless
man.
After Johnson's victory over Burns, racial animosity among whites
ran so deep that even a socialist like
Jack
London called out for a "
Great
White Hope" to take the title away from Johnson. As title
holder, Johnson thus had to face a series of fighters billed by
boxing promoters as "great white hopes", often in
exhibition matches. In 1909, he beat
Frank Moran, Tony Ross, Al Kaufman, and
the middleweight champion
Stanley
Ketchel. The match with Ketchel was keenly fought by both men
until the 12th and last round, when Ketchel threw a right to
Johnson's head, knocking him down. Slowly regaining his feet,
Johnson threw a straight to Ketchel's jaw, knocking him out, along
with some of his teeth, several of which "supposedly" were embedded
in Johnson's glove. His fight with
Philadelphia Jack O'Brien was a
disappointing one for Johnson: though weighing to O'Brien's , he
could only achieve a six-round draw with the great
middleweight.
The "Fight of the Century"
In 1910, former undefeated heavyweight champion
James J. Jeffries came out of retirement and said,
"I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a
white man is better than a Negro". Jeffries had not fought in six
years and had to lose weight to get back to his championship
fighting weight.
The fight
took place on July 4, 1910 in front of 22,000 people, at a ring
built just for the occasion in downtown Reno, Nevada
. Johnson proved stronger and more nimble
than Jeffries. In the 15th round, after Jeffries had been knocked
down twice for the first time in his career, his people called it
quits to prevent Johnson from knocking him out.
The "Fight of the Century" earned Johnson $225,000 and silenced the
critics, who had belittled Johnson's previous victory over Tommy
Burns as "empty," claiming that Burns was a false champion since
Jeffries had retired undefeated.
Riots and aftermath
The
outcome of the fight triggered race riots that
evening — the Fourth of
July — all across the United States, from Texas
and Colorado
to New York
and Washington,
D.C.
Johnson's victory over Jeffries had dashed
white dreams of finding a
"great white hope" to defeat
him. Many whites felt humiliated by the defeat of Jeffries .
Blacks, on the other hand, were jubilant, and celebrated Johnson's
great victory as a victory for their entire race. Black poet
William Waring Cuney later highlighted the Black reaction to the
fight in his poem
"My Lord, What a Morning". Around the
country, Blacks held spontaneous parades, gathered in prayer
meetings, and purchased goods with winnings from backing Johnson at
the bookmakers. These celebrations often drew a violent response
from white men.
Some "riots" were simply Blacks celebrating in the streets.
In certain
cities, like Chicago
, the police
did nothing of the celebrations. But in other cities, the
police and angry white citizens tried to subdue the celebrations.
Police interrupted several attempted
lynchings. In all, "riots" occurred in more than
twenty-five states and fifty cities. About 23 blacks and two whites
died in the riots, and hundreds more were injured.
Film of the bout
A number of leading American film companies joined forces to shoot
footage of the Jeffries-Johnson fight and turn it into a
feature-length documentary film, at the cost of $100,000. The film
was distributed widely in the U.S. and was exhibited
internationally as well. As a result, Congress banned prizefight
films from 1912 until 1940. In 2005, the film of the
Jeffries-Johnson "Fight of the Century" was entered into the United
States
National Film Registry
as being worthy of preservation.
Loss of the title
On April 5, 1915, Johnson lost his title to
Jess Willard, a working cowboy from Kansas who
did not start boxing until he was almost thirty years old.
With a
crowd of 25,000 at the Vedado Racetrack in Havana, Cuba
, Johnson was K.O.'d in the 26th round of the
scheduled 45-round fight, which was co-promoted by Roderick James "Jess" McMahon and a
partner. Johnson found that he could not knock out the giant
Willard, who fought as a
counterpuncher, making Johnson do all
the leading. Johnson, aged 37, although having won almost every
round, began to tire after the 20th round, and was visibly hurt by
heavy body punches from Willard in rounds preceding the 26th round
knockout. Johnson is said by many to have spread rumors that he
took a
dive, but Willard is
widely regarded as having won the fight outright. Willard said, "If
he was going to throw the fight, I wish he'd done it sooner. It was
hotter than hell out there".
Personal life
Johnson was an early example of the celebrity athlete in the modern
era, appearing regularly in the press and later on radio and in
motion pictures. He earned considerable sums
endorsing various products, including
patent medicines, and indulged several
expensive hobbies such as automobile racing and tailored clothing,
as well as purchasing jewelry and furs for his wives. He even
challenged champion racer
Barney
Oldfield to a match auto race at the
Sheepshead Bay, New York one mile
(1.6 km) dirt track. Oldfield, far more experienced, easily
out-distanced Johnson, ending any thoughts the boxer might have had
about becoming a professional driver if not his passion for just
going fast. Once, when he was pulled over for a $50 speeding ticket
(a large sum at the time), he gave the officer a $100 bill; the
officer protested that he couldn't make change for that much,
Johnson told him to keep the change, as he was going to make his
return trip at the same speed. Johnson was also interested in
opera (his favorite being
Il Trovatore) and in history — he was an
admirer of
Napoleon Bonaparte,
believing him to have risen from a similar origin to his own.
In 1920,
Johnson opened a night club in Harlem
; he sold it three years later to a gangster,
Owney Madden, who renamed it the
Cotton
Club
.
Johnson constantly flouted conventions regarding the social and
economic "place" of Blacks in American society. As a Black man, he
broke a powerful
taboo in consorting with
White women, and would constantly and arrogantly verbally taunt men
(both white and black) inside and outside the ring. Johnson was
pompous about his affection for white women, and imperious about
his physical prowess, both in and out of the ring. Asked the secret
of his staying power by a reporter who had watched a succession of
women parade into, and out of, the champion's hotel room, Johnson
supposedly said "Eat
jellied eels and
think distant thoughts".
Johnson was married three times. All of his wives were white, a
fact that caused considerable controversy at the time. In January
1911, Johnson married Etta Terry Duryea. A Brooklyn socialite and
former wife of businessman
Charles
Duryea, she met Johnson at a car race in 1909. Their romantic
involvement was very turbulent. Beaten many times by Johnson and
suffering from severe depression, she committed
suicide in September 1912, shooting herself with a
revolver.
Less than three months later, on 4 December 1912, Johnson married
Lucille Cameron. After Johnson married Cameron, two ministers in
the South recommended that Johnson be lynched. Cameron divorced him
in 1924 because of infidelity.
The next year, Johnson married Irene Pineau. When asked by a
reporter at Johnson's funeral what she had loved about him, she
replied, "I loved him because of his courage. He faced the world
unafraid. There wasn't anybody or anything he feared." Johnson had
no children.
Prison sentence
On October 18, 1912, Johnson was arrested on the grounds that his
relationship with Lucille Cameron violated the
Mann Act against "transporting women across state
lines for immoral purposes" due to her being a prostitute. Cameron,
soon to become his second wife, refused to cooperate and the case
fell apart. Less than a month later, Johnson was arrested again on
similar charges. This time the woman, another prostitute named
Belle Schreiber with whom he had been involved in 1909 and 1910,
testified against him, and he was convicted by a jury in June 1913.
He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
Johnson
skipped bail, and left the country, joining Lucille in Montreal
on June 25, before fleeing to France
.
For the
next seven years, they lived in exile in Europe, South America
and Mexico
.
Johnson returned to the U.S. on 20 July 1920.
He surrendered to
Federal agents at the Mexican border and was sent to the United
States Penitentiary, Leavenworth
to serve his sentence. He was released on
July 9, 1921.
There have been recurring proposals to grant Johnson a posthumous
Presidential pardon. A bill
requesting President
George W.
Bush to pardon Johnson in 2008,
passed the House, but a companion bill, sponsored by
John McCain, failed to pass in the Senate. In
April 2009, McCain, along with Representative
Peter King, filmmaker
Ken
Burns and Johnson's great niece, Linda Haywood, requested a
presidential pardon for Johnson from President
Barack Obama. On July 30, 2009 the Jack Johnson
Resolution passed urging Barack Obama to give Johnson a Full
Pardon.
While incarcerated, Johnson found need for a tool that would help
tighten loosened fastening devices, and modified a wrench for the
task. He patented his improvements on April 18, 1922, as US Patent
1,413,121.
Later life
Johnson continued fighting, but age was catching up with him. He
fought professionally until 1938, losing 7 of his last 9 bouts,
losing his final fight to Walter Price, by a 7th-round TKO.
Johnson
died in a car crash in Franklinton,
North Carolina
, a small town near Raleigh,
North Carolina
, in 1946, after racing angrily from a diner that refused to serve him. He was 68.
He was
buried next to Etta Duryea Johnson at Graceland Cemetery
in Chicago. His
grave was initially unmarked, but a stone that bears only the name
"Johnson" now stands above the plots of Jack, Etta, and Irene
Pineau.
Legacy
Johnson
was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954, and is on the
roster of both the International Boxing Hall of
Fame
and the World
Boxing Hall of Fame. In 2005, the United States National Film Preservation
Board deemed the film of the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight
"historically significant" and put it in the National Film Registry.
Johnson's skill as a fighter and the money that it brought made it
impossible for him to be ignored by the establishment. In the short
term, the boxing world reacted against Johnson's legacy. But
Johnson foreshadowed, in many ways, perhaps one of the most famous
boxers of all time,
Muhammad Ali. In
fact, Ali often spoke of how he was influenced by Jack Johnson. Ali
identified with Johnson because he felt America ostracized him in
the same manner because of his opposition to the
Vietnam War. In his autobiography, Ali relates
how he and
Joe Frazier agreed that
Johnson and
Joe Louis were the greatest
boxers of all.
In
2002, scholar
Molefi Kete Asante listed Jack Johnson on
his list of
100 Greatest
African Americans.
In September, 2008, sixty-two years after Johnson's death, the
United States Congress passed
a resolution to recommend that the President grant a pardon for his
1913 conviction, in acknowledgment of its racist overtones, and in
order to exonerate Johnson and recognize his contribution to
boxing.
In April 2009, Senator John McCain of Arizona
joined Representative Peter T. King of New York in a call for a posthumous pardon for the boxing
legend by President Barack
Obama.
In connection with his conviction on charges of violating the Mann
Act, it has been pointed out that "[i]f Johnson did not violate the
actual letter of the law, he certainly violated its spirit
repeatedly as he openly consorted with prostitutes and, in one
insistence, bankrolled a former madam, who had been one of his
personal favorites, when she was seeking start up capital to open
her own fully furnished brothel."
Popular culture
Johnson's story is the basis of the play and subsequent 1970 movie
The Great White Hope,
starring
James Earl Jones as
Johnson (known as Jack Jefferson in the movie), and
Jane Alexander as his love interest. In 2005,
filmmaker
Ken Burns produced a 2-part
documentary about Johnson's life,
Unforgivable
Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, based on the
2004 nonfiction book of the same name by Geoffrey C. Ward.
Folksinger and blues musician Leadbelly references Johnson in a song about the Titanic
: “Jack Johnson wanna get on board, Captain said
I ain't hauling no coal. Fare thee, Titanic, fare
thee well. When Jack Johnson heard that mighty shock,
mighta seen the man do the Eagle rock. Fare thee, Titanic,
fare thee well” (The Eagle Rock was a popular dance at the
time). In 1969, American folk singer
Jamie Brockett reworked the Leadbelly song
into a satirical talking blues called "The Legend of the U.S.S.
Titanic". It should be noted there is no convincing evidence that
Johnson was in fact refused passage on the
Titanic because
of his race, as these songs allege.
Miles Davis's 1970 (see
1970 in music) album
A Tribute to Jack Johnson was
inspired by Johnson. The end of the record features the actor
Brock Peters (as Johnson) saying:
Miles Davis and
Wynton Marsalis both
have done soundtracks for documentaries about Johnson. Several
hip-hop activists have also reflected on Johnson's legacy, most
notably in the album
The New
Danger, by
Mos Def, in which songs
like "Zimzallabim" and "Blue Black Jack" are devoted to the
artist's pugilistic hero. Additionally, both Southern
punk rock band
This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb and
alternative country performer
Tom Russell have songs dedicated to
Johnson. Russell's piece is both a tribute and a biting indictment
of the racism Johnson faced:
“here comes Jack Johnson, like he
owns the town, there's a lot of white Americans like to see a man
go down… like to see a black man drown.”
Johnson was referenced in the film
Anchorman: The Legend of
Ron Burgundy and he is mentioned in the 1940 book
Native Son by author
Richard Wright. Furthermore, 41st
street in Galveston is named Jack Johnson Blvd.
Wal-Mart
created a controversy in 2006 when DVD shoppers
were directed from Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes to
the "similar item" Unforgivable
Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.
Ray Emery of the
Ottawa Senators of the
NHL sported a mask with a picture of Johnson on it as a
tribute to his love for boxing.
In the trenches of World War One Johnson's name was used by British
troops to describe German heavy artillery shells that produced a
lot of black smoke: a "Jack Johnson" was big and black and knocked
you to the ground.
In
Joe R. Lansdale's short story The Big Blow, Johnson
is featured fighting a white boxer brought in by Galveston, Texas's
boxing fans to defeat the African American fighter during the
1900
Galveston Hurricane
. The story won a
Bram Stoker Award and was expanded into a
novel.
References
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