![]() But he was 37 and too slow, after five years away from the ring. The New York Times declared: "If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbours." So Rickard did the job himself, as redundant a task as he ever undertook. The president, like Obama a century later, was busy. Rickard even asked President Taft to do the job. HG Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle were touted as referee, but declined. The promoter Tex Rickard was anxious to give the bout at least a hint of respectability. It was poor Jim's destiny to be that man. That was when the search began, largely at the instigation of the writer Jack London, for a Great White Hope to erase what he called the "golden smile" from Jack's face. On that Boxing Day in 1908, police invaded the ring to stop the slaughter, but they could not prevent Johnson being declared the champion, the first representative of his people to hold the biggest prize in sport. Jeffries was a former champion dragged out of retirement by worried white America to challenge black Jack, who had ripped the title away from the Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney two years earlier. Lewis was saddened to learn how the Jeffries fight transpired, and why. ![]() In the end he got old, like we all do, and he got knocked out by Jess Willard." It was remarkable that he was travelling the world, as a black man, getting arrested, leaving America, going to Europe. ![]() And Jack Johnson was the first great showman. "Even though black people were, in some ways, more accepted in American culture, the promoters' dream became to look for controversy. I am a lover of history and it was good to look again at the sort of attitudes that were about back in those days, to see how far we have come. Ali's contribution was profound, but Jack Johnson's was the first. "To be honest, I knew more about Muhammad Ali," he said. Lennox Lewis was a beneficiary of Johnson's refusal to bow to his masters, and in conversation a little while ago, spoke of Jack's legacy and what it meant to other black heavyweight champions, including himself. He did not so much beat Jeffries that furnace-hot afternoon as pummel him into a bleached heap in the desert sun. The contest itself made Johnson a near-universal figure of hate. There was not a public figure of the age who could compare with Johnson for audacity and style – or white-baiting blackness. He whored and partied, seduced white women, drove fancy cars with reckless abandon, ran nightclubs, spoke a mangled version of French and mixed with gangsters, poets and princes. Not only did he redefine the art of boxing with a style that modernists such as Muhammad Ali would recognise, but he countered prejudice in a manner that infuriated bigots from Galveston, Texas, where he was born, to the halls of power in Washington, and on to London and Moscow, where he befriended the tsar and that intriguing Iago of Russian aristocracy, Rasputin. ![]() Yet it was that very symbolism, the public face that Johnson, the son of former slaves, turned with such taunting glee against white supremacists of his day, that not only resulted in the lynching of at least 20 black people in riots that swept the country in the wake of his win over the very white and bloodied James J Jeffries in 1910, but eventually opened the way for black fighters to be afforded their equal standing, and for African Americans to proclaim their champions with pride.īy any standards, Jack Johnson was a remarkable man. For Obama, the country's first black president, righting a wrong inflicted on Johnson, boxing's first black heavyweight champion, would seem to be no more than symbolic. Government representatives say there are those living who are in the queue in front of Johnson. President Obama, of all presidents, has been unmoved. It was a malicious and racist persecution. When a white hooker called Belle Schreiber testified against him, he was convicted, but jumped bail and embarked on a fascinating journey across Europe, before returning to give himself up seven years later. Johnson was convicted under the Mann Act, legislation purportedly designed to protect vulnerable young women, but pointedly directed at Johnson. "It's time that the wrong that was committed against my uncle be righted." "It's wonderful that everyone is rallying around his cause," said Linda Haywood, Johnson's great-great niece. ![]()
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