Is it possible that the fighters and promoters who drew the color bar acted from honorable motives?

I certainly don't believe it was from honorable motives at all but I can see your point of view. If I was asked the question of what I would do in Tex Rickards place I'm not sure how I would respond. I would like to think that I'd arrange fights between the best of the best regardless of skin color but realistically it was bad press to promote fights that led to race riots. Clearly promoters and fighters of that time used the color line to dodge the best black fighters. Nobody wanted a black champion and when they got one after Johnson he was only accepted unfortunately because he was quiet and reserved.

So to answer the question, did they draw the color line to protect black people? No not at all. If they were concerned about anyone's ass it was their own but I could agree with the assertion that it wasn't always drawn because the promoter or fighter didn't like black people.

 

I don’t know that you could call the motives honorable even with a generous amount of cultural and societal hindsight applied. The fact is blacks were denied many opportunities in sports and society at large. I don’t know that that it is fair to call the motives dishonorable either in hindsight and totally disregard the cultural biases of the day and hold them to a microscope filtered by the cultural norms of today either. For a variety of reasons blacks were denied the opportunity to play and compete on the largest stages for decades upon decades. Fair or not (my momma always said who told you life was going to be fair...she is a wise woman!), it’s the reality of their era. I am not sure it is fair to be overly critical of individuals for modeling societal norms in light of the fact that our own norms view that segment of the past negatively.