Do you consider James J Jeffries an ATG?

When the progressive movement began is not the point and it does not matter.

Question is why the color line? A simpleton approach is just to say all those specific fighters who claimed the color line were racist. Very simple...the racists did not want to fight a black. However that's a simpleton argument taking a very simplistic approach to a complex issue void of historical understanding.

American culture in Jeffries time frame was highly racist. Many of those who ran boxing, ran our government did not want blacks at their level. No one wanted a black to have the chance to be the white mans physical master. That's what being the worlds hwt champion meant at that time.

The idea that Jeffries or Dempsey should have taken it upon themselves to somehow make a fight happen is a huge stretch. Jeffries was a fighter not a manager not a promoter. He would also be going against a significant % of the American population risking certainly his career and possibly his life. Dempsey TRIED to make a fight with Wills. The powers that be would not allow the bout to occur AND this was some 20 years after Jeffries initially retired in 1905.

 

1900
Childs no7
Armstrong no8
1901
Childs no8
Martin no9
1902
Childs no3
Martin no6.
Griffin no8
1903
Martin no3
Johnson no4
1904
Johnson no2
Armstrong no8
McVey no9

 

Don't you think Jeffries would have confirmed it in his autobiography?

 

The boxing writers knew it 3 years earlier , Jackson was described as walking along London's Strand every afternoon about three o clock his hands shaking from drink. Tom Sharkey said it was a disgrace the fight was made with Jackson in the condition he was and that Jackson was ,"a has been."
After the fight Jeffries said he was ,"just a shell"

 

I couldn't disagree more.
BTW Jeffries was boxing 3 nights a week , they weren't pro fights but they were contests, they were labelled exhibitions because he had promised his mother he would not turn pro until he was 21 years old.If you've read Pollack's biography you know this.
So he wasn't quite the novice he is made out today.
I've no problem with those who see Jeffries as an ATG ,for me he is a great of his era'
The link below says he was perceived as past his best when he had fought Corbett 7 years earlier!
http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1985/JSH1202/jsh1202d.pdf

Jackson was a tubercular alcoholic ,described as having hands that shake and a stutter in his voice.He had not fought for nearly 6 years. Jeffries to his credit ,did not blow his own trumpet after this fight, he knew Jackson was just a relic.

 

If this is based on Matt's ratings, it is off.

1899
Sharkey-----#1
Fitz-----#2
Childs-----#8
Martin-----#9

1900
Fitz-----#1
Corbett-----#2
Childs-----#6
Martin-----#9

1901
Ruhlin-----#1
McCoy-----#2
Childs-----#3
Martin-----#6
Griffin-----#8

1902
Fitz-----#1
Ruhlin-----#2
Martin-----#3
Johnson-----#4

1903
Fitz-----#1
Johnson-----#2
Armstrong-----#8
McVey-----#9

1904
Johnson-----#1
Hart-----#2
Martin-----#8
McVey-----#9

I thnk what this shows is that Jeff was defending against higher rated contenders than Childs and Martin each year through 1902. Finnegan is for me beside the point, as that fight was a tune-up and not a serious defense. Munroe in 1904 was a puffed up contender, but Childs had fallen out of contention in 1902 and Martin in 1903. The real issue by this point would have been Johnson, or possibly Hart.

 

Jeffries might not have thought of the Childs' fight, if it happened, as that important,

and it he had promised his parents not to fight as a pro until he was 21, he possibly did not want to view any fights he had as actual "pro" fights. With no sanctioning bodies in those days, what would be the definition of a pro fight versus an exhibition?

You yourself maintain in another post that Jeffries had been fighting often before his official record begins.

 

But here is what Pollack says, (all quotes from page 22)

"It is possible that Jeff did fight Childs."

"It is unclear as to how often or whom Jeffries boxed from 1893 to late 1895."

"Jeff . . . could have fought these men in exhibition bouts."

There just might not have newspaper coverage and so a lot of bouts in those days might have fallen through the historical cracks. Us not being aware of some past event doesn't mean it didn't happen.

"Childs later won the world colored heavyweight championship. However, given its significance, it would be curious for Jeffries never to mention such a bout."

I disagree a bit with Adam on this last point. It is difficult to know how significant Jeffries would have considered Childs and his championship claim.

 

One problem with this viewpoint is that the colored championship seems to have been more like the British Empire championship. Someone like C-ockell could lose badly to Valdes, but Valdes didn't become the British Empire champion. You had to be from the empire.

Did Hart become the colored champion when he beat Johnson in 1905? What about Smith when he beat Langford? On this basis it is not on par with the world championship. Johnson could and did win that in the ring.

That said, one can make the case that the holders of the colored championship were at least arguably the real best fighters from the Johnson era through 1926.

 

This has been a very interesting thread for me, with a lot of issues raised, including this one.

"That's not the progressive movement though, the racists status quo faction, that is the opposite of the progressive movement."

This is just not historically accurate. Woodrow Wilson was not only a status quo racist, he was a reactionary racist, firing black Federal employees and segregating the Federal government. Andrew Jackson was responsible for the trail of tears. FDR refused to support an anti-lynching law in 1937. Racism and progressive politics were often joined at the hip. All these presidents were considered progressive icons when I was young.

One of the little noted facts of American politics is that all the Democratic presidents of the 20th century prior to Clinton in 1992 carried the South, and Wilson, Truman, Kennedy, and Carter made it to the White House on Southern electoral votes. FDR and LBJ carried the South (defined as the old Confederacy) but swept the rest of the country also.

Of the Republicans, only Nixon in 1968 needed the Southern electoral votes to win. Nixon didn't carry the South in '68, the majority of electoral votes going to Wallace and Humphrey, but he needed the electoral votes he got to get over the top in the electoral college. Eisenhower in '56, Nixon in '72, and later Reagan and Bush, carried the South, but swept the rest of the country and didn't need Southern electoral votes to win.

Bottom line--well, the South was segregationist, so the progressive Democrats either were racist themselves (Wilson) or willing to get into bed with the racists for electoral advantage.

 

This point was addressed earlier, I'm using the term progressive as it is used today i.e. progressivism. Progressive movement back in the early 20th century, to the middle part of the century, had very little to do with race relations and equality. It was more about modernization, and how to deal with it, along with stuff like workers compensation/regulations, political corruption etc etc. However, in later years it become about social injustice, inequality and income equality. I'm using the term as it is used today and what it became, not what it meant then. That said, even woman's suffrage fell under the veil of the Progressive Movement back then, just as similar issues would later fall under the term.

 

Okay, but don't try to lump very different historical movements under one label. I don't think it useful to call the abolitionists progressives. The Republican party which was the party of the abolitionists was also the party of the tariff. So is the tariff progressive?

"modernization"

Other than perhaps some Southern agrarians, who exactly wasn't in favor of modernization?

But I think the use of progressive in contrast to non-progressive simply clouds issues. Let's just take one big one. Globalism. Does it alleviate or in fact exacerbate income equality? Are "progressives" really dealing with the decline of the working and middle classes under the strains of globalism. Or are they merely mouthpieces for "modernism" which in the case of globalism means increasing concentrations of wealth and power in multi-national corporations and banks. The modern progressives have at best stood on the sidelines while the big corporations broke the unions by shipping factories overseas and importing cheap labor. They don't even seem to have been aware of the problem.

I hope my comment is food for thought.

 

He fought after the first Griffin fight but they were called exhibitions. If Jeffries had fought Childs he would have remembered and said so. His parents were long dead when he wrote his autobiography

 

A title defence is just that a title defence and if its against someone who palpably doesn't deserve ,[Finnegan& Munroe ] then someone more deserving is getting shafted and so is the public.

 

"His parents were long dead"

A valid point, but I don't think overwhelming. Most lies a man tells are to himself. Jeff just might not have wanted to face up to his deceiving his parents.

"If Jeffries had fought Childs he would have remembered and said so."

I would question this. To Jeffries, Childs might just have been a little guy who was knocked out by Choynski. We don't know if he knew or cared about colored championship claimants.