Coming Soon - In the Ring With Jack Johnson Part II: The Reign

An English observer reporting on the race riots said, “I see that white hoodlums in various American cities have been manifesting their sportsmanship by shooting down the Negroes for no other offense than that they made merry over the victory of their black champion.”

Philadelphia Tribune:

The white Philistines throughout the country bet on their Goliath and when he was done up they got sore in the head as they were in the pocket and began to maltreat black people. He is a poor sport who howls like a dog when he is whipped and tried to take revenge of those of him who whipped him.

Afro-American Ledger:

The rough element of both Negroes and whites has brought disgrace upon themselves and the community by their thoughtless acts of violence. As to the legal suppression of the moving pictures…it is absurd and looks more like child’s play than the work of grownups in a civilized country like this, the boasted land of the free and home of the brave.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle said:

The effect of the Negro’s victory on the ruffians or animals of his race and on the animals and ruffians of the white race has been what was expected. … A strain has been put on law and on the police as the enforcers of law. Had the result been reversed there would still have been a strain, but it would have been less, and law and civilization would not have been so severely wrenched.

Afro American Ledger:

It was a race question from the start to the finish, for which the negro was not and is not responsible. The results, riots, deaths, and injuries lie at the door of the white man and his prejudices, and the negro is not and should not be held responsible.

Advocate Verdict, based out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania:

“To win back the championship for the white race” was the keynote of the entire affair. The race issue was raised by the white men alone. Besides, some of them were so sure that Jeffries would win back the championship that they bet large sums of money on him. Naturally, a man would feel a little sore after losing a big sum, or his last dollar, but he would be a better sport if he shouldn’t try to take his revenge on an innocent person.

Atlanta Independent: “Our white neighbors ought to be liberal enough to allow the blacks to exult a little enthusiasm over the victory of Johnson, and the negroes ought to have sense enough not to tantalize our white neighbors over the defeat of Jeffries.”

“The most intense race prejudice was the occasion of the Johnson-Jeffries prize fight. This city was a scene of the most bitter race feeling. The police could not handle the mob. Hundreds of fights were allowed to go on, and dozens of colored citizens were assaulted almost under the eyes of the police without being molested. Of course, the defeat of Jeffries was a bitter pill for a prejudiced class to swallow.” - Bee, Washington, D.C.

“Well, the white press and white sports, and as for that matter the whites generally, made the Johnson-Jeffries fight a race issue. Then why get mad? If the whites had been victorious they would have been yelling yet. Let us have a little fun out of the victory.” – Georgia Broad-Axe.

“We knew that the white man is drunk with power and pride, but we contended that since he had so many monuments to his achievements to point to that he could stand a ‘little thing’ like a Negro whipping a white man in an exhibition of brute force without any display of feeling.” - World, Indianapolis.

The attacks on boxing as a sport, and its meaning, were related to race. A year prior, generally boxing was recognized as the finest form of physical exercise and hailed as the “Noble Art.” Now, everything had changed. It was “brutal,” “degrading,” “a relic of the barbaric ages,” and “a blot on our civilization.”

And all this just because a white man – who was coaxed, badgered, and bullied out of a well-earned retirement – found it impossible to recover his old prowess…and consequently went down to defeat before a despised negro.

The Americans built the fight to a racial conflict of the highest order.
They lifted, of their own free will, this championship contest out of the realms of pugilism and converted it into a racial trial of strength. The negroes would probably have still regarded it as such, without any assistance from the white men; but it was because the white men insisted that Jeffries “would show the ****** what a contemptible thing he was when he came up against a real good white man” that the coloured people were so dead-set on the issue. …

It was the whites, and the whites mainly who converted the Reno contest into a test of racial superiority. They insisted on this fact from every standpoint. Brain, brawn, speed, agility, stamina, wit, and courage were the points to be tested. … Can it be wondered at that the black men were jubilant?

The fight was not just about boxing superiority alone, as it might have been, “but moral, mental, and physical superiority, as one race insisted and the other accepted, with the under dog’s champion coming out on top.”

So now the white men wanted to stop the fight pictures.

Why? He may say that they are indecent. Some of the influential whites are built that way, but they have only just discovered that boxing pictures are indecent; they never found it out before.

Then they say that their exhibition will conduce to race riots. Well, the rioting so far has been mainly on the white side, though we will readily admit that the blacks probably went about asking to be ill-treated. What do the mayors, town councilors, and other guardians of law and order say of the pictures?

That the blacks will ask for more ill-treatment and will be accommodated, or is it that they are anxious to avoid all reference to their champion’s downfall.

Really it looks as though the latter were the sole reason which appeals to them. We can rest assured that, had Johnson been beaten, there would have been a tremendous run on these pictures. Everybody knew this beforehand, and it was openly asserted that such would be the case.

A white minister in Cleveland said that the attitude and movement against the fight films was unworthy of the white race.

While I deprecate the prize fight, and the display of the brutal in these moving pictures, I believe there is in this matter an issue more serious than the fight itself. It is the race prejudice that it reveals.

The prize fight has always tended to arouse the brute in man, but why should the matter be treated differently when a Negro participates? Race prejudice is a contemptible passion, and is only aggravated by the present discussion.

Reports show that white men have been the great offenders in the post-fight disturbances – men who are not sportsmanlike enough to wish to see the better boxer win. If the white man had won, the white man would have exulted, the Negro would have borne defeat, and the pictures would have been shown. The disgrace is to the white man whose mean intolerance belies his boasted superiority….

It is a pity to degenerate into lovers of the prize fight; but it is a greater pity to become self-confessed slaves of an intolerance that is bigoted and fanatical. Let every white man prove his worth by bearing defeat as a ‘white’ man should.


The Indianapolis News said, “Fairness to the Negroes compels the statement that all the talk about the fight Monday as a struggle for race supremacy came from the white man. As far as we know no colored man made this silly assertion. Johnson himself said that it was simply a battle between two men, which, of course, is all it was.” The race issue was “nonsense,” but Jeff and many newspapers supported and fostered the idea. “What wonder is it that some of them [black people] came to accept the white view, and to celebrate the triumph of Johnson as victory for their race?” The whites were to blame for the black exuberance, for whites were the ones who advanced the “idiotic theory” that there was a race question at issue.

Some blamed white newspapers and Jeffries himself for causing the riots, for they made too much of the race issue. The Washington Times noted that Jeff was advertised as the “champion of the white race,” and announced that his only purpose in re-entering the ring was to re-establish Caucasian supremacy. He forced the race issue, which resulted in riots, largely precipitated by white men and boys who attacked blacks. He stirred up needless animosity, and was aided and abetted by the news writers who incessantly demanded that he leave his farm and “uphold the supremacy of the white race.”

New York Age

What is particularly pleasing is that both races are taking the result of the fight in a becoming and praise-worthy manner. True, a number of white toughs have seen fit to vent their spleen by attacking Negroes, but they are the dregs of society, and their actions must be attributed to ignorance. And the colored brother has exhibited unusual reserve during these moments of unbounded enthusiasm for him and has not been arrogant or insulting as many whites presumed he would be.

Broad Ax:

“Many members of the so-called superior race have vented their spite and bitterness against the Colored people because they were on the losing side.”

 

This is the world that Jack Johnson grew up in and lived in.

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