Jack Johnson is easily the figure in boxing history I admire and respect most. I think his life is a symbol of bravery against unjust oppression, he had to sacrifice the love of whites and even blacks to live the life he wanted and enjoy the freedom he was ultimately entitled to by his own birth. He was also a tremendous athlete, and a boxer well ahead of his time, he was truly incredible as an infighter - I believe he takes apart any fighter <200lbs, throughout history. There's a reason Nat Fleischer rated him as the greatest ever heavyweight.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...son&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a Open link, and read from beginning to end.
A good read, but again, most of the criticism of Johnson is on any individual level. The mere fact that Johnson's lifestyle and ring style was DEFIANCE by the norms of the times, and defiance that ran against a most oppressive a brutal racist society, and he survived to flash his golden smile instead of ending up hanging from a tree, THAT WAS A SYMBOLIC VICTORY for black people, it ran contrary to the racist myth of the superiority of the white man, it PROVED that the wrath of the racist whites was to some extent a "paper tiger". It opened up new possibilities PSYCHOLOGICALLY for black men. As I said before, Johnson may have been complete lowlife with no "progressive black consciousness" at all, contempt for his fellow blacks, a violent disposition towards women, and even a partially collaborationist relationship with the authorities, but these details are relatively irrelevant.