Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.

Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, 475 pages, $25.95.

Jack Johnson, one of the greatest heavyweight boxers ever, won the heavyweight title from Tommy Burns in Australia in 1908. That the championship bout took place in Australia indicates that it was not a fight that most Americans welcomed. All previous heavyweight champions, including John L. Sullivan, Jim Jeffries, and even Tommy Burns, had for quite a long time, adopted the policy of not fighting Black men. But Burns eventually broke the rule because of newspaper taunts that he was afraid of Jack Johnson. Moreover, because Bums was always after money, the fight took place, and Johnson easily won.

According to many sources, after the fight, as African Americans euphorically rejoiced (because to them, Johnson's victory was proof that Black people were equal to white persons, if nowhere else, then at least in the ring), more than 26 of the rejoicers were killed by whites, and hundreds more were reported hurt in many places throughout the United States, but mostly in the South. This could not have been unexpected because, between 1900 and the time that Johnson won the heavyweight championship in 1908, more than 700 negroes had been lynched in the United States. Black men were lynched for being too uppity, being too familiar with white women, and on the trumped up charge of rape. Jack Johnson was never charged with rape, but unlike most Black men, he was certainly uppity and familiar with white women.

Unforgivable Blackness details all of Johnson's fights on his way to the heavyweight championship. It's a story of an odyssey, a testimony to Johnson's dedication and single-mindedness in his quest for a championship that he thought would rid him of bigotry and provide for him a good and stable life. It is also a story of the intractableness of racism, and its hideous effects throughout all of American society. Most of the participants and characters in Johnson's life are prime examples of the deformities and racist rage resulting from the prejudice against anyone who defies racist laws and conventions, and who seeks to live as a free person in a free country. And in this rich tale of lying, cheating, and perversion of the laws, not only were individuals involved, but also state governments, well-respected persons in high society and officials of the federal government.

It is interesting that throughout Johnson's life he always seemed to have been the victim of bad timing. He was born March 31, 1878 in Galveston, TX, as Arthur John Johnson, the son of former slaves. His father had fought in the Civil War on the Union side, and expected some consideration for his efforts. But such considerations were hard to come by after 1876. In fact, by 1876 the Republican Party and the North essentially abandoned efforts to improve the lot of Black people in the South, leaving them at the mercy of terrorist societies and a vengeful legal system. The Johnson family, like so many others, were left to fend for themselves. But Jack Johnson was determined from an early age that he would not be told what to do by white people, regardless of the consequences. In his teens he chose boxing as his vocation, and as he ascended boxing's ladder he never backed down in the face of prejudice, stating that in his life, he intended to act as if race prejudice did not exist. It was an attitude that flew in the face of the facts, because apart from lynching, which was automatic for those Black men who dared to consort with white women, it was a time when winning Black jockeys were barred from riding in the Kentucky Derby; and a time when even in bicycle racing the best rider, Marshall Taylor, an African American, was banned. But Johnson believed he could do as he wished by merely being excellent at what he did.

Even though the white heavyweight champions would not fight him, there were some white men who would, if the money was right. One of the top contenders for the heavyweight title in the early 1890's was James J. Corbett. He decided he'd fight Johnson in May 1891 in San Francisco. Apparently evenly matched, the fight stretched to 61 rounds. It lasted four hours and five minutes. Ward contends that before the end, "Most of the crowd was gone and many of those who remained had stretched out on the empty benches and gone to sleep by the time the referee called a halt and declared the fight 'No Contest.'"

By 1892 Johnson was well known, because of the epic battle with Corbett. Afraid that Corbett, now champion, would again fight Johnson and break the whites-only rule, John L. Sullivan, former champion, 33 years old and out of shape, decided to fight Corbett in 1892 to save the white race from disgrace. He lost. This meant to sportswriters that Johnson was the logical person to contest for the Heavyweight Championship. As Corbett sidestepped him, Johnson fought a number of white men while he waited for his chance.

Even though he was the best uncrowned heavyweight boxer in the world, his decision to freely date white women trumped his boxing status. Soon he was forced to have bodyguards, and to fight on despite the knowledge that at any time he could be the target for a bullet. As fights became too scarce in the United States, he decided to seek employment in England. The English were far more hospitable. In 1907 he decided that more money could be made in Australia where he would fight Black Peter Felix for the Colored Heavyweight Championship of the World. Arriving there, the newspapers gave him a mixed reception; some called him a "coon," while others were captivated by his charm and gentlemanly behavior. But there too, he dared to date an upper-class white woman, Lola Toy. When he left in May, as expected, there were fewer positive assessments. By this time the Heavyweight Championship had fallen to Tommy Burns, a Canadian, who passed himself off as an American. Despite entreaties from the newspapers and promoters, Tommy Burns stubbornly resisted the invitation to fight Johnson.

In 1908 Johnson was back in Australia for a number of bouts, and this time he took with him Hattie McClay, an American white woman. The Australians were still not amused. Even so there were a few people, particularly the promoter's friends, who made it possible for Johnson to exist in relative security. While there, Hugh Macintosh, an Australian promoter, made Tommy Bums an offer he could not refuse, and a fight with Johnson was arranged for December 26, 1908. This news so upset John L. Sullivan, the champion who had refused to fight Black people, that he exclaimed, "Shame on the money-mad champion. Shame on the man who upsets good American precedents because there are dollars, dollars, dollars in it."

But Burns wanted the money and so the match took place, but not before many sportswriters argued that it was likely that Johnson, for racial reasons, could win. Ward quotes the reporter Bohun Lynch as typical:

    The vast majority of negro boxers have been slaves or the
    descendants of slaves. In early days and in the popular imagination
    they were savages, or almost savages. Also it was recognized from
    the first that the African negro and his descendants in the West
    Indies and America were harder-headed than white men, less sensitive
    about the face and jaw; most black boxers can lake without pain or
    trouble a smashing which would cause the collapse of a white man.
    Occasionally, this is balanced by the nigger's weakness in the
    stomach--but, one thing with another, the white man is at a
    disadvantage.

The fight in Australia reportedly drew more than 36,000 spectators and required the services of at least 250 policemen. As a fight it was an epic, because nothing like that had happened before in the history of boxing. Before the fight Burns accused Johnson of having a yellow streak, but the fight proved him grievously wrong, as the bout progressed and Johnson's great defensive skills took a toll on the champion. Desirous of a brawl, he yelled at Johnson "Come on and fight nigger, fight like a white man." According to spectators, Johnson just continued to smile, and at some point in the fight it became clear that Tommy had not a clue of what he was up against. Johnson would expose his stomach to him and say "Hit me here, Tommy." Burns would try, to no effect. Then Johnson would say, "You punch like a woman, Tommy. Who taught you to fight?" This went on for quite some time, finally to an end in the 14th round when the police ended the fight to save Tommy Burns' life.

It was not a popular fight in Australia, and definitely not so in the United States. The Black press was euphoric, but in the white press and among white politicians, the sentiment was very much like that of James K. Vardiman, the ex-governor of Mississippi who said, "Personally, I took no interest in the Johnson-Burns fight other than to wish that any white man fighting a Negro for money might get a knockout of sufficient proportion as to cause him to continue to eternal rest."

The fury and the frustration of bigoted whites in America at this development in Australia caused great pressure on retired former white champion Jim Jeffries, who all along had refused to fight Black boxers. Most white Americans wanted Jeffries to return and put the uppity Negro in his place, because by 1908, it was already well known that Johnson had been living with a white woman, Clara Kerr. People recalled that when Johnson had been in Australia the year before it was believed that he had had relations with a local white woman of the upper class, Lola Toy. Now that he was champion, Johnson felt that he had the authority to do as he pleased. When racist pressure got too dangerous, he stated that his wife was not really white at all: she was indeed Black. The public was not buying. Nobody believed him.

As champion, Jack Johnson earned money from time to time as a vaudevillian. He put on boxing exhibitions, played the string bass in bands and enjoyed, by all accounts, a great life. But in 1909, Jim Jeffries, the former champion submitted to pressure, and announced that in ten months he would be ready to wrest the title back from Johnson for the white race. In the meantime Johnson kept in shape fighting a number of contenders. He always won. He also continued to live openly with his white wife, incurring the wrath of whites, and many in the Black community as well, most notably Booker T. Washington, who stated that Johnson was not a credit to his race.

Ward's book is replete with the ups and downs of Johnson's life in between winning the heavyweight championship and waiting for Jim Jeffries to regain it for the white race. In one bout he fought Stanley Ketchel who was something of an overgrown middleweight. When Ketchel was found weeping before the fight, he complained that he was overwhelmed by the responsibility of bearing the standard of the white race. Nevertheless, in the bout, when the end came, Johnson hit him with the right hand so hard that "Four of his teeth were strewn across the canvas."

There was a lot of wheeling and dealing in setting up the Jeffries rematch, and Ward is at his peak of storytelling in describing the tensions mounting in the negotiations between the two camps. By this time Jack Johnson had taken up with another white woman, Belle Schreiber, who later on caused him extreme grief when he had had the nerve to marry Etta Duryea, a proper white woman from an upper-class family of the sort of the Vanderbilts and the Roosevelts.

All kinds of people wanted this Johnson-Jeffries rematch not to happen. The Methodist Preachers' Association of Philadelphia, for example, declared that "this fight can be regarded as nothing less than a national disgrace, and a calamity to the moral life of all people." There were calls for President Taft to intervene. The governor of California decided the fight could not take place in his state. It ended up being held in Reno, Nevada, where the governor of that state was not opposed. All of this created great publicity for the fight, including the fact that Jim Jeffries was a well known racist. When Stanley Ketchel, who had fought Johnson came to visit the Jeffries camp before the fight, Jeffries ordered him out, shouting "I don't want you here. You've been fooling around with that nigger." When Ketchel was slow to leave the premises, Jeffries had him thrown out into the street.

On July 4, 1910 the fight took place. It was a spectacle. There was betting all over the place. Johnson's wife Etta Duryea created quite a stir; some people thought she was the prettiest white woman in the place. Most everybody expected Jeffries to win. He was big, strong, weighed 227 pounds to Johnson's 208, and he was taller. But by the eighth round, however, it was clear that Jeffries was outgunned. Johnson as usual, when he found that Jeffries didn't have the goods, began to talk. In the clinch, he was heard to say "Come on now Mr. Jeff, let me see what you got." At the end of the fight, Jeffries was talking to Johnson in a conversational style, asking, for example, "Ain't I got a hard old head," to which Johnson responded, "You certainly have, Mr. Jeffries," and punched him in the head again.

By the 15th round it was clear that Jeffries was done. Now he was on the ropes with his haunches on the ground. By the count of nine he got up, and when hit again he went down. Before the count was over, his seconds threw in their towels. When Jeffries was able to speak, he said, "I could never have whipped Jack Johnson at my best. I couldn't have reached him in a thousand years." So on July 4, 1910, Jack Johnson was now the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World, and immediately the search for a new Great White Hope began. As was customary, bigoted white people tried to kill him and conservative black people argued that he was not a credit to his race. Both were censorious for his living with Etta Duryea. And all of them thought that he would come to a bad end.

Ward divides his book into two parts. Book 2 deals with what he calls, "The Fall." It begins with Jack Johnson's life after he had beaten Jeffries. It was a life lived large, with hilarious moments, great ups and great downs, but the trajectory was always somewhat downward. He would not have another payday like the one he had on July 4, 1910. There was an unspoken law that white fighters avoid him, although he fought a few. Unable to find lucrative bouts, Johnson earned a living doing vaudeville routines. But there were now always trials for Jack Johnson. There were always white bigots threatening to shoot him. He was forever being stopped by the police for speeding. His many managers would sue him. Many persons that he had had any business with would also sue him. Like Hamlet, he seemed always to be taking arms against a sea of struggles. He soon contracted all kinds of strange illnesses; most of the time Etta stuck by him, and nursed him through these bouts. There were stories that some of his erratic behavior was resulted from attempted poisoning, and always there was the pressure of policemen in various cities attempting to arrest him for minor infractions. All this time Johnson pretended he and Etta Duryea were married. This couldn't be for she was merely separated, but in January 1911 she was free and they got married in February. Sadly, in September 1912, Etta Duryea Johnson, suffering from depression, and believing her husband had been unfaithful, shot herself to death.

It wasn't long, however, before a new woman entered Johnson's life. Three months later, Lucille Cameron, a young white woman, decided that he was the man for her. They were married in December 1912, sparking an odyssey of persecution, lying, slander, and a campaign of racial viciousness against the couple, by people who hated Johnson, aided and abetted by the Chicago police and the Federal government. Jack Johnson was just too unbearably fearless for a Black man. Something had to be done. The federal government persuaded Belle Schrieber, Johnson's former girlfriend, to testify that Johnson had taken her across state lines for immoral purposes. Though untrue, it was enough for biased courts. Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, sentenced to one year and one day, and a $1,000 dollar fine. After a number of appeals he decided he had had enough, decamped to Canada, and then on to Paris.

From then on Jack Johnson and Lucille Johnson lived a vagabond life. Persuaded in 1915 to defend his title against the new white champion, Jess Willard, in Havana, Johnson was knocked down and counted out on April 5, 1915. To this day there is controversy surrounding whether Johnson took a fall and gave up the championship in the hope of getting back to the United States. Geoffrey Ward thinks Johnson, being the proud man that he was, would never have thrown a fight, even to get back to the United States, and was beaten fairly in Havana. One of the arguments against that claim is that during the fight Johnson asked for one of his seconds to have his wife removed from the bout, perhaps because he did not want his wife to see him throw a fight. Johnson claimed later that he'd been told to take a dive and did, believing that if he gave up the championship to a white man, he could return to the United States and be pardoned. In the end, he returned in July of 1920, hoping that he'd get a pardon. It did not work out that way. The Justice Department was willing to pardon him, but Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, of "Red Scare" fame, was against it. So were influential members of the FBI, racists all. He eventually ended up in prison at Leavenworth where he became a model prisoner. He was now 42 years old. All during this time Lucille stood by him while requests for early parole were all peremptorily denied. By any fair standard, Jack Johnson was undeserving of such malicious treatment. Ward states that:

      But functionaries at the Justice Department, still smarting at
    Johnson's charges of bribery and still outraged that he had slept
    with white women, determined to sabotage him. Asked for a
    straightforward outline of the case to accompany the parole petition
    when it went to the attorney general, they produced instead a shrill
    document filled with fresh and wholly unsubstantiated charges.
    Johnson had "abducted" Lucille Cameron, its authors said, knowing
    that he hadn't. They charged him with kidnapping another woman in
    June 1911, at a time when they should have known he was on his way
    to England with his wife. Without offering a scrap of evidence, they
    claimed that because of his "mania," there were "30 or 40 young
    white girls who fell victim to his vicious practices without the
    interstate feature." And as an afterthought, they alleged that while
    in Mexico he had sought to incite "riots among Negroes" in Texas and
    Louisiana, a false allegation carefully calculated to prejudice
    [Attorney General] Palmer, whose obsession with supposed radicals
    and revolutionaries had brought about the arrest of some four
    thousand men and women, most of them innocent of any crime other
    than political dissent.
      The Bureau of Investigations' report carried the day. On January
    21, 1921, Palmer overruled the board's recommendation. Parole was
    denied. Johnson would have to serve out his sentence.

The animus of the FBI and the Attorneys General in both the Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding administrations had prevented Johnson from obtaining early parole. But because of good behavior he did get out a little early, on July 9, 1921, instead of the scheduled September 20, and the faithful Lucille was there to greet him.

He was now 43 years old, but had kept in shape in prison, so being Jack Johnson he challenged, in the press, the reigning heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. But Dempsey would not risk fighting a prison rejuvenated Johnson. Soon New York, New Jersey and other places declined to sanction a Johnson fight, and Johnson again had to earn a living as a small time "celebrity" movie star, a sometime vaudevillian, sometime boxer and musician. He got by this way for years, despite occasional discriminatory actions against him. Perhaps this vagabond life became too much for Lucille; she left him in 1924. That fall he married white Marie Pineau. She never abandoned him nor he, her. They appeared to be truly worshipful of each other. Marie once said of Jack: "There could not be a man of any race more worthy of being loved and honored than is my husband."

By World War II, Johnson's popularity rose again as he vigorously and patriotically promoted War Bonds while conducting himself with a dignity perhaps due to advancing years. As late as 1943 he gave paid exhibitions with young heavyweights easily holding his own. He was billed as "The Champion of Champions, The Immortal Jack Johnson."

Three years later he proved mortal. Angry that he had been discriminated against at a diner outside Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnson after eating in the diner's back room, drove off at high speed, lost control of his new Lincoln Zephyr, hit a pole, and died in a hospital three hours later. He was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

Geoffrey Ward notes that Jack Johnson would have loved his funeral venue: "A big, richly ornamented former synagogue designed by Louis Sullivan and celebrated for its gospel choir. The turnout was impressive too: twenty five hundred people were seated inside, and thousands more stood outside to say goodbye." And the preacher, the Reverend Junius Caesar pronounced that if not for Jack Johnson, "There might not have been a fighter like Joe [Louis]."

In these times of multiple sanctioning bodies, all formed to promote pseudo-fights to extract as many dollars possible from television, Jack Johnson appears pure and unadulterated. To raise himself from nothing in Galveston, Texas, to pursue relentlessly his goal of heavyweight champion in an era when bigoted whites in Texas and elsewhere threatened to shoot down uppity Black people "like rabbits," when even the presidents of the United States were open bigots, and when liaison of a Black man with a white woman was a "shock to the system" of most white men, thereby inviting lynching, Johnson and wife fearlessly traveled the roads of the United States, as he trained and triumphed over white men. All of this makes Jack Johnson more than the greatest heavyweight fighter ever. He was the greatest example of pure courage and fearlessness for African Americans in a time when, to be Black, was a time of pure terror. Geoffrey Ward misses this one point in a beautifully written, and superbly researched book.

John C. Walter, University of Washington