Was Jack Dempsey racist?

I'll probably take cannibals and clitoris mutilators over culture-raping, smug, sarcastic brits.

 

Not so sure at the time they were going for a live gate and Richard built local crowds....From meeting Dempsey and reading about him he was not a racist. Dempsey had a lot of American Indian in him and I need not say more about their social position at the time....Blacks were not really a big draw, nor did black fans have the money for tickets at the time...from a fight fans perspective, the fight should have happened but I don't really think Jack was a racist and think Rickard called the shots

IMO Dempsey had the style to beat the slow, stand up Wills but we will never know and that is only my opinion

 

HE is absolutely correct. Outside of Carpentier, and maybe even including Carpentier, Wills was a much bigger fight than Gibbons, Miske, Brennan, and even Firpo (who had basically been created as a foil for Dempsey for which purpose Rickard brought him to the USA in the first place, well after Wills had already established his right to the title shot).

 

Would you let them mutilate your clitoris?

 

Oh please! Native Americans had a far higher standing in American society than blacks. That is indisputable. Nobody was going out and lynching Indians en masse as they did in the red summer of 1919, nobody was writing about preventing Indians from challenging for a title as they were blacks. In fact Indians at the time promoted themselves by stressing their heritage (even if it was miniscule, as was Dempsey's) not hiding it.

 

I don't have one, so...

 

If Jack Dempsey was supposedly racist for not facing black fighters then so were guys like Sugar Ray Robinson and Jack Johnson...

 

Wills would have been the biggest fight out there, because not only was he the best challenger, but because of the racial spin on it, white fans would have bought all the tickets. Johnson and Langford would have been huge fights to, past prime that they were

 

It is real tough to make a case against Jack based on a limited amount of evidence. Historically, the only racism in boxing generally came from the fans and not the fighters themselves.

 

Robinson fought plenty as champ, Johnson wouldn't have made real money fighting blacks as black on black fights didnt sell back then

I do agree with the premise that his manager with his consent drawing the color line, doesn't necessarily make him a racist. It makes him a ducker though

 

More revisionist history by calling Wills slow, as if to draw a comparison between him and a 37 year old Willard, a limited Carl Morris or a novice Firpo and to discount the fact that he very well might have knocked Dempsey's head off ... you can be sure he was not avoided because he was a soft touch.

 

I don't think Dempsey was against fighting Wills at all.
For whatever reason, promoters never put up the money, or the authorities put a ban or it.