Spotted this in the Guardian, didn't know about it: -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Galveston Giant, 9pm, BBC Radio Five Live Lennox Lewis charts the life and career of the world's first black world heavyweight boxing champion 100 years after Jack Johnson gained the crown on 26 December 1908. The Galveston Giant tells Johnson's story of racial prejudice, exile and imprisonment, and Lewis traces his own path to heavyweight world champion as part of the Jack Johnson legacy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- And a bit from the Guardian article about it: -------------------------------------------------------------------- On Christmas Day, you can hear what he has to say about that journey, about Johnson's historic contribution and how it has resonated down the decades to this day, when Lewis presents The Galveston Giant on Radio 5 Live. I spoke to him last week and he sounded as if the experience of retelling the tale was a personally uplifting one. "To be honest, I knew more about Muhammad Ali," he said. "He was in our time. But I learned about Jack Johnson. Ali's contribution was profound, but Jack Johnson's was the first. It was quite a story. I am a lover of history and it was good to look again at the sort of attitudes that were about back in those days, to see how far we have come. "Even though black people were, in some ways, more accepted in American culture, the promoters' dream became to look for controversy. And Jack Johnson was the first great showman. He gave them what they wanted. Look at the time he lived. It was remarkable that he was travelling the world, as a black man, getting arrested, leaving America, going to Europe. "In the end he got old, like we all do, and he got knocked out by Jess Willard. But it's like Evander Holyfield getting back in the ring now. There's always a time when you are going to lose to a hungry, younger guy trying to get you out of there. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Definitely going to give this one a listen, Johnson's got such a fantastic story.
Good work mate, listen to 5 live a fair deal but never heard about this being on. Well worth the listen.
Is there anyway of listening to it after the broadcast, through Iplayer or something like that? I'm bound to be slaughtered on Boxing Day
i am a Johnson fanatic, i love to sit through the Unforgivable Blackness DVD.. and lose myself for a few hours.. Its an Odessey....
Sure that Five Live will keep this one available on the online player for a while afterward, shouldn't be a problem gettting it again.
