Essay on Jack Johnson.

Not trying to be inflammatory here, but if either Langford or Jeannette had been champ, do you think we would have had things like this said about them decades after the fact? :

"If you really ain't gonna be another Jack Johnson, you got some hope. White man hasn't forgotten that fool n****r with his white women, acting like he owned the world. "--Jack Blackburn

“The man was a disaster to anyone who came near him. American blacks are still paying for him."--Archie Moore

Just something to consider.

 

BTW Charles White, I hope this is all helpful to you and your essay. We have some good, knowledgeable posters on this site. Between what all of us are saying here I'm sure you can come up with a balanced piece on Jack Johnson. McVey pretty much said it best. He was admired and reviled. A walking contradiction. VERY human. A hero to some and a villain to others. Deservedly so and undeservedly so in both instances.

Keep us posted on how your essay comes out. I wouldn't mind reading it.

 

I'm saying that he acted that way because of the climate of the time. He was an autonomous being unlike Joe Louis (who's team established rules so that he literally would be the anti-Johnson). And at that time it wasn't publically acceptable for a black man to show superiority over a white individual.

As soon as Johnson won, there was a "public" outcry. White people started lynching any black people they could find, especially ones celebrating Jack Johnson's victory (not everybody, but you know what I mean...the lynching was prevalent). This went so far that the US government decided to ban the footage so that the public wouldn't get riled up over a black man (which during that time was considered "inferior") getting beaten by a white man.

Joe Louis' exists in the form that he does because of the public reaction to Johnson. Johnson didn't help by being flashy. Louis did by avoiding that, but eliminating any chance of a personality.

It took 30 years for any black contender to get a title shot because of Johnson. Theoretically he could have stayed in Australia and kept on fighting without any serious consequence, but the first thing he did was come to America with a white woman. Another taboo of the time.

What happened to Johnson is a result of society being too deeply invested in the wrong ideas. It didn't help that during a certain social climate that Johnson said "phooey" to all of that. I look at it this way, he was damned in either position because of the racial climate. Hell, there were credited scientists that were saying, "White people are scientifically superior..." total horse****. It was a bad time then. Now things suck, but not half as bad as then.

 

Yea that kinda goes along with what I was saying.



Another thing people tend to forget is how gentleman like Johnson was. He could recite or reference poetry when relevant, he was eloquent, and articulate. When reporters would visit him, he treated them very good, and usually had them leaving very impressed by him.


Johnson definitely did more to benefit the countries psychology of a black man in those times, than any other fighter could have. He gave them strength, courage, and the 100% proof that their skin color, although making for an extremely tough obstacle, did not deny them the possibility of living a truly free life.


If Langford had became champ, we would be reading the poor story of a heroic fighter who got kicked around and abused by his country, and couldn't do anything to help himself. Yet Johnson' story is much different, because nobody feels sorry for him. There was never a sign he felt sorry for himself, and through all his troubles he always kept his pride. And during a time, where a race was so abusively oppressed, what better person can you have to symbolize strength, resilience, and the ability to be who the **** you want to be.


I always thought that Ali's most underrated trait as a human being was his ability to deal with the media the way he did. Nobody has or ever will have the ability to deal with the media the way Ali did.


Well I also have a trait of Johnson that I find the most underrated. And that would be his ability to live his life, during the time that he did, and having race and racism seem so insignificant and minuscule of a thing. Truly unbelievable.

And let me tell you, Langford, and McVey would have never started riots. Because they never would have won the belt. Because they never would have taken it upon themselves to follow Burns around the world, physically, taunting him and demanding a title shot. And thats not a discredit to them. But it should say something about Johnson.

 

Johnson was just a man. And a boxer. That's it. I don't buy into the symbolism. Yet 100 years later he is still polarizing to people who emotionalize the issue & want to make a symbol out of him. Either as an important source of pride assigned to blacks or as a villain to mainstream America. He was a symbol in 1910 and still in 2010. People who love or hate him, then and now, never really knew him, just the media creation. And back then it was vicious. The myth of Johnson is what carries on.

And that's all I'm saying because this kid has snookered you folks into doing his homeowrk. And I'm not doing his homework without being compensated as a tutor! lol

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxJOy_taioQ[/ame]

www.youtube.com/eslubin

 

I like how you said that Eslubin, because it's true. To an extent, Nobody really knows what Johnson was like. Just his public image

 

I don't know its been mentioned in the five pages of this topic but would be worth mentioning the Mann Act that he was prosecuted under - the reason it was brought in and how they had to re-interpret the wording to use it against him. It was originally brought in to stop people transorting protitutes (white slaves as they called it) across the country. Basically a law to stop pimps taking their women across the US amongst other things.

 

There is a poster on here ,who will tell you Johnson lived off the earnings of prostitutes it is not true ,but read books and make your own mind up.

 

I think there is enough information out there to piece the man together.

I would even go as far as to say that a competent psychologist could put together a detailed psychological profile of Jack Johnson based on the contemporary sources.

There can be no doubt that Johnson had an extremely high IQ, perhaps the highest of all the heavyweight champions. He was a verry resourcefull man and an improviser.

He was capable of both extreme generosity and extreme cruelty depending upon the circumstances. He was fan friendly and ocasionaly showed extreme generosity to people in bad situatiuons, but he took any slight verry personaly and could be extremely vengeful.

He was vain, selfish, and self destructive. It is no coincidence that he did not die in his sleep.

To best understand Johnson you have to understand that he was a product of two circumstances. He was an extremely inteligent man, and he was also born into a society where he was regarded as being sub human due to the colour of his skin and could not find any outlet for his inteligence. His personality, and the way he interacted with society, was the inevitable trainwreck that came from the interplay between these two factors.

Children born on council estates in the UK with verry high IQs, often become prolific ofenders because they cannot find outlets for their inteligence, and Johnson mirrors this trend in many ways.