The first Black heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson loved white women and that lust led to his downfall more than 100 years ago in a racially-segregated U.S.
A strapping Johnson, who was known as the “Galveston Giant” in the ring, was born in 1878 to the son of slaves in Houston. He had strong ties to Canada and was a fugitive here while on the lam from U.S. police.
Canadian boxing champ Lennox Lewis, actor Sylvester Stallone and family members watched as President Donald Trump last month granted a posthumous pardon to Johnson some 105 years later at an event in the White House.
Johnson defeated Canadian World Heavyweight champ, Tommy Burns, for the title in 1908 at a time when Blacks and whites rarely entered the same ring. He then went on to beat a series of “great white hopes,” culminating in 1910 with a win over champion, James J. Jeffries.
The battle for racial supremacy between Johnson and Jeffries was billed a “Fight of the Century,” which at that time earned the Black fighter a hefty $65, 000. Johnson won the bout in the 15th round.
His victory angered many who wanted a “great white hope” to finish off the uppity Johnson. That night there were race riots in Texas, Colorado, New York City, Washington, D.C. and in more than 50 cities in 25 states.
At least 20 people were killed in the U.S. from the riots, and hundreds more were injured.
Blacks, on the other hand, were jubilant, and celebrated Johnson’s win as a victory for racial advancement. Many held spontaneous parades and gathered in prayer meetings.
Still, the U.S. federal authorities thought Johnson was becoming too big for his britches and placed him under investigation. They went after his weakest spot, which was for white women.
The boxer was envied by many whites and Blacks for earning considerable sums endorsing various products, including patent medicines. He had expensive hobbies as automobile racing and a penchant for tailored suits and purchasing jewelry and furs for his wives.
With his wealth, Johnson also purchased fine cars and opened a nightclub in Harlem in 1920; that would later become the Cotton Club. He also drank expensive champagne and owned exotic pets.
Johnson was convicted in 1913 of violating the Mann Act, a Jim Crow-era law that made it illegal to transport a white woman across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”
By then, his first wife, a white woman, had committed suicide. He took a second wife, Lucille Cameron, who was also white. Police managed to find a white prostitute who the boxer had an affair with who testified against him in 1913. An all-white jury took less than two hours to convict him.
District attorney Harry Parkin declared the conviction was a victory for the white race and the cause of anti-miscegenation.
“This Negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted,” Parkin bellowed. “Perhaps as an individual he was. But it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and Blacks.”
Johnson skipped bail after the trial and fled to Montreal, posing as a member of a basketball team. For the next seven years he then traveled through Europe and South America before surrendering to U.S. police at the Mexican border in 1920.
He was sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary to serve his sentence and was released in July 1921.
Johnson died in a car crash in June 1946 as he was speeding away from a restaurant that had refused to serve him. He was 68.
His story is the basis of a play and 1970 movie The Great White Hope, starring James Earl Jones as Johnson. He was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954 and a film of the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight is deemed “historically significant” and kept in the U.S. National Film Registry.
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