Boxer Jack Johnson Quotes

reality, the Mann Act was used to prevent interracial relationships. World champion heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson was prosecuted under the Mann Act for dating white women.

Historically, this group would come to dominate the realm carved out for them, often celebrated unless they went head to head against an upper-caste person, as did the black boxer Jack Johnson when he unexpectedly knocked out James Jeffries in 1910. The writer Jack London had coaxed Jeffries out of retirement to fight Johnson in an era of virulent race hatred, and the press stoked passions by calling Jeffries “the Great White Hope.” Jeffries’s loss on that Fourth of July was an affront to white supremacy, and triggered riots across the country, north and south, including eleven separate ones in New York City, where whites set fire to black neighborhoods and tried to lynch two black men over the defeat. The message was that, even in an arena into which the lowest caste had been permitted, they were to know and remain in their place.

During the depression, people fought each other for boxes of groceries and if you were lucky you might get a few shillings for fighting six rounds. When Jack Johnson was World Heavyweight Champ, back in the early 1900s, Hartlepool had a brilliant boxer called Jasper Carter. People today will never have heard of him, but almost 100 years ago he put Hartlepool on the fistic map.

Even though the grand jury refused to indict, authorities held the two boxers in jail for twenty-four days. They were treated well, however, and sparred daily for the amusement of their jailers. In his book Papa Jack, Randy Roberts claims that Li’l Artha’ really learned to box during these jailhouse sparring sessions with the old pro, Joe Choynski. A short time later Johnson left Galveston for a career in the prize ring. In 1903 he won the world’s black heavyweight title. And five years after that, in Sydney, Australia, he defeated Britain’s Tommy Burns in fourteen rounds to become the first black ever to win the heavyweight championship of the world. Arthur John Johnson—or Jack Johnson, as he was better known—never returned to Galveston, not that he would have been welcome. When Islanders read about Johnson’s famous affinity for white women,