Does History do John L Sullivan a disservice?

Hey Bujia(you're up LATE man!). I hear what you're saying. But then again, you have to remember that even as late as the early 1960s Blacks were considered unworthy by some to even walk on the same sidewalk as a White person and had to step off when one passed by. Now go back some seventy or more years from then and imagine what it was like. If you couldn't- in some people's minds- even walk on the same sidewalk as a white person in the 1960s could you have been considered worthy in the 1880s-90s to stand in the same arena of competition as one? Let alone try and beat up one in the ring?

In some people's minds the answer was yes(or Tom Molineaux, Peter Jackson and the original George Godfrey would never have had careers). But it's safe to assume that there was a large portion of the population that believed the opposite.

Thankfully you and I (and I would guess the majority of people on this forum) were never raised to believe that Blacks were "property", "inferior" or genetically lecherous goons who are out to **** your daughters and breed their inferior genes into your bloodlines- all of which were popular notions in many sectors during those times.

 

Got a job working the night shift, man. Trying to get my body acclimated to the all nighters.:good

I know what you mean. I guess I just have a great deal more respect for those willing to take on all comers. It shows great strength of character to do what they did in a time where the circumstances were as harsh as you alluded to. I can't conceivably rate anyone as highly, moral standings be damned, if they're unwilling to take on the best while others are. All who drew the color line, great fighters though many may've been, have to have a black mark against them in my book.

 

And what do you want to tell me with this story? Sorry, I don´t see the point here.

There is no such thing as right and wrong. This is just a perception. Depends on your time and culture. What is right for us now maybe wrong tomorrow. Same here. Back then owning slaves and beeing a racist was the right thing. Today it is not. Perception changed. Thanks to people who were ahead of their time. We can´t damn people for not beeing ahead of their time.

Come on, that has nothing to do with what I said. There is judging and then there is judging. You are right with the above part - at least partly. But not with your whole argument.
In historic sciences there is the rule that you have to look at a person, situation and so on through the eyes of their/its time and culture. This is what it is here.
Of course we have a responsibility to judge. Our time, our culture by its rules. But not other times and cultures by our rules - by their´s would be something different.

I don´t excuse Sullivan. Neither do I fault him. I accept the fact that he didn´t fight Jackson due to racism. That´s it. When I judge a fighter I´m not interested in why they did what they did but in what they did. What Sullivan did was exceptional and great for boxing.

 

Fair enough. Actually, it's one of the things I came to admire about Ike Weir when I was doing my research on him for my article. He drew no color lines. If you recall, he beat the hell out of a few white college students who were verbally abusing a black woman. When the judge fined him he claimed that he should be given a medal rather than a penalty.:hat

Gotta love Ike. He was an oddball, but what a character

 

This is an indication that him not fighting Jackson has more to do with "high risk-low reward" than with racism.

 

One thing that is interesting is that the British bareknuckle champions of the late 1800s such as Jem Mace were verry critical of the colour line.

There were predudices against black fighters but it was never questioned that they should be alowed to challenge for the title.

 

Of course. Those people get some extra points from me. On the other hand fighters who didn´t get no point deduction just because they played by the rules of their time. Know what I mean?

 

Well, Europe has a different history than the US. While we were as racist or even more in some ways, we were also less in other ways. See the admiration Jack Johnson got when he came to Europe and how he was treated in the US.

 

You have to suspect it but then he did at least fight Corbett who had held Jackson to a draw.

The atitude of Jeffries on the issue seems to have been:

"I think I can beat the top black challengers, but the verry fact that they are a title challenger means that they could theoreticaly win in some scenarios and then America would have to bow down to a black champion. If I am to risk loosing ist must be to a white challenger".

The risk of loosing to a black challenger frightened him more than the risk of loosing his title.

 

It wasn't for you specifically, I just have a habit of jumping in threads that seem to celebrate great fighters without tempering their enthusiasm. Anyone who claims that Duran is the greatest fighter who ever lived invites the same.

Sullivan invited Godfrey into the ring one night, sure. Godfrey was caught by surprise and ill-prepared and it is not unlikely that John L. knew he wouldn't take him up on the challenge. Godfrey said later and also stated that he would like to be paid like anyone else and pursued Sullivan... but nothing came of it.

Brown was no nutcase. His actions were far to deliberate and planned. And his letters and speeches to the court in Virginia at the end were anything but the ravings of a lunatic. His last speech is widely considered one of the most eloquent speeches in American history. You last statement speaks of the difficulty judging people's actions over a century later. I think it is far more difficult psycho-analyzing them, don't you?

 

Right on. The reasoning behind this mindset during the whole antebellum period and right into the 1950s was rife with internal contradictions and hypocrisy. In a word, southern rationale for oppression was full of it -and most people knew it but lacked the courage to stand up.

The ring was one of the first and only venues where a black man could compete with a white man on even terms.

Fighters who refused to do should be slapped around by history.

 

Drawing the color line offends the warrior's code, Janitor. And for a man with Sullivan's repututation as being able to "whip any man in the house" it is especially regrettable. Smashing up saloons and being an all-around rowdy guy is completely consistent with his reputation as a tough guy.

He also fought a man who was half Maori. And he sparred with black men too, if my memory is right.

 

Brown is a great lightning rod -then and now. He was an extremist who acted with moral certainty and shakes his fist down through history at anyone who would skulk away from standing up because of flimsy reasoning....

...like this!

"Back then owning slaves was the right thing"?! Said who? You may want to read up on history because there were 8 million in the southern states alone who would stridently disagree with you. Throw in Quakers, many factions of northern Christians, converted slaveholders who joined the ranks of the abolitionists, and legions of others.

This is classic moral relativism. You have many allies in this philosophy, but I ain't among them.

I will use moral relativism itself to demolish it's own platform. You claim that we should judge people only by the standards of their specific time and culture and therefore we should understand or essentially excuse slaveholders. The problem is that there was not a clear dictat of "culture" in America at that time, or at any other time. There were competing views. There was Christianity that was very influential in that era.

Southern slaveholders went into contortions to edit scripture and find justification for what they were doing and the best they could do was come up with a ridiculous notion that Blacks were happy as slaves.

-The Sambo caricature was born.

Meanwhile white southerners slept with guns under their pillows.

What makes John L. a product of his culture and John Brown -a product of a far more racist culture- not a product of his...?

Good point in the final sentences. We should try to judge fighters on what they accomplished. I think that we agree that he should have fought Jackson as much as Dempsey should have fought Wills. Hell, Johnson should have defended against Langford!

PS/
Just in case my arguments suggest othersiwe -I hope that you know that I am an avid reader of your posts and have great respect for what you offer.

 

Hard to argue with this.

 

I am an expert on Brown, I saw Raymond Massey play him in an old film ,so I am eminently qualified to give an analysis on his mental state.:good