Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We have a two parter on Eugene Jack
Speaker 1: Bullard coming up on the podcast, and in it we
Speaker 1: mentioned Jack Johnson, so we're bringing out our episode on
Speaker 1: him as a Saturday classic. Just a heads up. Toward
Speaker 1: the end of this episode, there is a brief discussion
Speaker 1: of intimate partner violence and of someone dying by suicide.
Speaker 1: Also as an update to this episode, in Johnson was
Speaker 1: convicted of violating the Man Act that was passed during
Speaker 1: a moral panic around the idea of white slavery, and
Speaker 1: we talked about that law more in our episode on
Speaker 1: Grace Humiston's This law was grounded in racism and xenophobia
Speaker 1: and it round up criminalizing various types of consensual sexual activity,
Speaker 1: which is really what happened here and more on Johnson's conviction.
Speaker 1: As part of this episode, President Donald Trump posthumously pardoned
Speaker 1: Johnson on and just as a random note, since previous
Speaker 1: host Sarah and Bablina mentioned doing this episode for Black
Speaker 1: History Months, we try to cover Black history and other
Speaker 1: history that's usually put into a particular month year round,
Speaker 1: so folks do not need to save their Black History
Speaker 1: topic suggestions for February. Send those in whenever they occur
Speaker 1: to you at any point, Yes, so enjoy. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff you missed in History Class A production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah
Speaker 1: Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalk Reboarding, and we are of
Speaker 1: course covering Black History Month for February and today. It's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to imagine professional sports in the United States
Speaker 1: were once segregated, perhaps especially a sport like boxing, where
Speaker 1: some of the biggest names guys like Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis,
Speaker 1: George Foreman, the recently departed Joe Frasier are African American,
Speaker 1: But at the turn of the twentieth century, the idea
Speaker 1: that there could be a black heavyweight champion was impossible.
Speaker 1: And surprisingly, the issue wasn't just about a white man
Speaker 1: fighting a black man and the physical contact that that
Speaker 1: would necessitate, which, unfortunately, in the context of segregation that
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense, where sharing a water fountain or
Speaker 1: sharing a waiting room was considered not okay. It's gonna
Speaker 1: figure my extension that something is physical as boxing where
Speaker 1: you're gonna swap sweat and blood and embrace in the
Speaker 1: ring would also not be okay. But black and white
Speaker 1: boxers did fight each other. Exhibition matches weren't uncommon, and
Speaker 1: just as the white Major League Baseball players would barnstorm
Speaker 1: with their Negro League counterparts decades before integration, boxers of
Speaker 1: different races would fight at pretty much all levels, except
Speaker 1: at the highest level, the heavyweight championship. For several reasons,
Speaker 1: which will discuss some more. The heavyweight title was considered
Speaker 1: so prestigious, so honorable, it couldn't be sullied by a
Speaker 1: black contender in some people's opinion, let alone a black champion.
Speaker 1: So it took Texas born Jack Johnson. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about the singer, of course, we're talking about the boxer
Speaker 1: to break that color line. And to do it, he
Speaker 1: had to be not only a powerful fighter, but really
Speaker 1: dogged in his pursuit of the fight, trying to get
Speaker 1: somebody to actually fight him. He hounded his potential opponents,
Speaker 1: knowing that eventually the honor of defending that title, which
Speaker 1: was so such an important thing in the boxing world,
Speaker 1: plus of course the purse money that would come with
Speaker 1: defending it, would eventually make it worthwhile for a white
Speaker 1: champion to step into the ring and fight with a
Speaker 1: black man. So first We're gonna give you a little
Speaker 1: bit about Jack Johnson's background before we get to the fighting,
Speaker 1: the really exciting part. John Arthur Johnson or Jack, was
Speaker 1: born March thirty one, eight seventy eight, in Galaston, Texas.
Speaker 1: His parents were former slaves who educated all six of
Speaker 1: their kids, working as a school janitor and a laundress.
Speaker 1: And though Jack only had five years of schooling, he
Speaker 1: became a voracious student of history, with a particular fondness
Speaker 1: for Napoleon. And he also played bass fiddle, loved classical music,
Speaker 1: and invented stuff he invented. He had a patent on
Speaker 1: a wrench. I think we should have put him in
Speaker 1: our earlier podcast on Unlikely Invented. Unlikely Inventors would have
Speaker 1: been a good one. So as a kid, Johnson started
Speaker 1: fighting in battle royals, which were these really horrible sounding
Speaker 1: underground fights. But from that sort of inauspicious start, Johnson
Speaker 1: worked his way up, moved up to fights with actual purses,
Speaker 1: and started riding the rails to barnstorm around the country
Speaker 1: and also helping more experienced boxers train as a as
Speaker 1: a sparring partner. And as we already mentioned, blacks did
Speaker 1: fight whites it just wasn't for that top spot. In fact,
Speaker 1: much of Johnson's defensive expertise he could seemingly swat away
Speaker 1: punches very easily, and that came from practicing and training
Speaker 1: with Joe choin Ski after the two were jailed together
Speaker 1: for boxing in the first place. And just a note
Speaker 1: for you here, just a little side note at the
Speaker 1: turning contact boxing context for you guys. Exactly around the
Speaker 1: turn of the century, boxing was a popular sport with
Speaker 1: all classes of people, but it was still a sport
Speaker 1: that was considered kind of a lista even illegal in
Speaker 1: many places. Despite the gloves rules and timed rounds, and
Speaker 1: with new techniques picked up from Joe, plus his naturally
Speaker 1: powerful punch and his six foot one and a half
Speaker 1: inch frame, Johnson moved on to bigger cities and he
Speaker 1: eventually made up to one thousand dollars per fight. He
Speaker 1: was becoming a contender, but one who would never be
Speaker 1: allowed or so a lot of people thought to fight
Speaker 1: the heavyweight champion, But why why wasn't he allowed? And
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about that some, but at first I
Speaker 1: really want to recommend there's a fantastic Ken Burns documentary
Speaker 1: on Jack Johnson called unforgivable blackness, and for me, it
Speaker 1: really helped explain the racial politics behind boxing at the time.
Speaker 1: It's easy to find a lot of biographical information on Johnson,
Speaker 1: but it helped put some of that into context for me.
Speaker 1: So even though boxing was an illicit sport, I mean,
Speaker 1: people would campaign against its violence, the heavyweight championship was
Speaker 1: really kind of an upstanding position. It was well respected
Speaker 1: and John L. Sullivan, who was called the Boston strong Boy,
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with the respect for that position.
Speaker 1: He was the first gloved heavyweight champion and really became
Speaker 1: a huge celebrity, kind of a sports hero, long before
Speaker 1: sports heroes really existed, and he made the title something
Speaker 1: that was actually important to the general audience, almost a
Speaker 1: byeword for the strongest man in the world. And he
Speaker 1: even bragged that he could beat anyone in the world, except,
Speaker 1: of course, it was understood African Americans, who he just
Speaker 1: would not fight. He refused to fight black boxers, drawing
Speaker 1: a color line after he became the heavyweight champion. Since
Speaker 1: the heavyweight title represented more than just physical prowess or
Speaker 1: boxing expertise, it represented physical superiority to all other men
Speaker 1: and so it had this really weighty social significance to it,
Speaker 1: and Sullivan's precedent continued with later heavyweight champs all the
Speaker 1: way through Jim Jeffries, the boiler Maker, who had made
Speaker 1: his early name fighting some of the best black boxers
Speaker 1: of the day. And Jeffreys was kind of the ultimate
Speaker 1: boxing specimen of that era, who was hairy chested, he
Speaker 1: once drank a case of whiskey in two days, and
Speaker 1: he kept a bear as a pet. But even though
Speaker 1: up and coming jack Johnson was winning against all other
Speaker 1: major black boxers of the time, clinching the unofficial Negro
Speaker 1: heavyweight Championship, Jeffries wouldn't fight him. They instead engaged in
Speaker 1: a kind of battle of words and intimidation. After knocking
Speaker 1: out Jim Jeffrey's brother Jack in an l a fight,
Speaker 1: Johnson told the spectator champ that he could beat him too,
Speaker 1: egging him on really, and then in a San Francisco saloon, Jefferies,
Speaker 1: after Jackson had again said why don't you fight me,
Speaker 1: Jefferies offered Jackson two dollars on the bar to fight
Speaker 1: him completely alone in the seller You know this really
Speaker 1: sketchy sounding scenario. Johnson refused, that he was only going
Speaker 1: to fight him if it was a real fight. Finally, though,
Speaker 1: in nineteen o five, the undefeated Jefferies decided that he
Speaker 1: was going to retire from boxing, retire and become an
Speaker 1: alfalfa farmer. And of course, though retiring like that, he
Speaker 1: needed to um crown a new champion, a new heavyweight champion,
Speaker 1: and so he refereed about between two white contenders and
Speaker 1: name the winner the new heavyweight champion. Johnson obviously was
Speaker 1: really mad that this had happened this way. He hadn't
Speaker 1: gotten his chance to fight the undisputed champion, and so
Speaker 1: he started still just going after the title anyway he could,
Speaker 1: going after the new title holders. Eventually, that title holder
Speaker 1: was Tommy Burns, who was a Canadian born Noah Brusso,
Speaker 1: and Burns, like his predecessors, wouldn't fight Johnson either though,
Speaker 1: so it seemed like it was going to be a
Speaker 1: losing battle. Yeah, but Johnson wouldn't relent. He followed Burns
Speaker 1: around the world, challenging him everywhere he went, and eventually
Speaker 1: it started to get embarrassing for Burns, even though in
Speaker 1: some twisted logic, Burns would call Johnson yellow even though
Speaker 1: he was the one where he don't get that I
Speaker 1: don't either, So he said what he thought would be
Speaker 1: an insurmountable barrier between him and Johnson, Burns said he
Speaker 1: wouldn't break the color line for less than thirty thous dollars.
Speaker 1: So he thought, Okay, surely nobody's going to go for that.
Speaker 1: But sure enough somebody did agree to pay that much.
Speaker 1: In the fall of nineteen o eight, Australian Hugh known
Speaker 1: as Huge Deal McIntosh agreed to put up the money
Speaker 1: and put on the fight. So Burns accepted the thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Johnson, by the way, only got five thousand,
Speaker 1: and their fight took place the day after Christmas nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight in Sydney, Australia. So we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: a brief play by play of how the fight went down.
Speaker 1: It started amid huge cheers for Burns and jeers for Johnson,
Speaker 1: even though and you can see this in the footage,
Speaker 1: he was still blowing the crowd kisses quite kindly. Johnson
Speaker 1: had Burns on the floor within seconds, and even though
Speaker 1: Burns started to call Johnson racial slurs, Johnson really had
Speaker 1: a more effective way to um anger or embarrass his opponent.
Speaker 1: He would point at spots on his own body, like
Speaker 1: on his side or on his stomach, just point at
Speaker 1: it with his glove, urging Burns to punch him there.
Speaker 1: And when Burns, after clearly a second of hesitation, like
Speaker 1: what on earth is going on here, would really punch him,
Speaker 1: Johnson wouldn't even flinch or react, I mean, really kind
Speaker 1: of stuff to psych him out. Johnson, meanwhile, would hug Burns,
Speaker 1: holding him up to keep him fighting when he was
Speaker 1: starting to get tired. By the fourteenth round, it was
Speaker 1: clear that Johnson was going to be the winner. Police
Speaker 1: stopped the fight and the cameras. You can see a
Speaker 1: freeze frame the last the last second of the cameras rolling,
Speaker 1: and then Johnson was declared winner. They stopped the cameras
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to see They didn't want everybody
Speaker 1: to see Johnson defeating this white guy. But it didn't
Speaker 1: matter if people saw it or not. At thirty years old,
Speaker 1: Johnson was the new heavyweight champion. So now it's time
Speaker 1: to start talking a little bit about Johnson's personal life,
Speaker 1: because it's what everyone else was doing at the time anyway,
Speaker 1: And if you've studied the Harlem Renaissance, Red w E,
Speaker 1: DWO Boys, or even listen to our Mark Scarvey podcast
Speaker 1: You've Heard of the New Negro. A Mike Walsh article
Speaker 1: in The Smithsonian does a lot to put that era
Speaker 1: of the New Negro into context. It came after a
Speaker 1: dark post reconstruction era where Jim Crow laws codified segregation
Speaker 1: and lynchings really increased. And by the turn of the century, though,
Speaker 1: with the Great Migration providing African Americans with new opportunities
Speaker 1: in industrial work up north, things seemed to be looking
Speaker 1: up a little bit. The idea of the New Negro developed.
Speaker 1: They were born free, ready for opportunity, and not content
Speaker 1: to just hang back and wait. So Johnson was the
Speaker 1: epitome of that New Negro. He dressed immaculately, he lived finely,
Speaker 1: and he spoke freely. But for many African Americans, and
Speaker 1: certainly for many white Americans, he took things a little
Speaker 1: bit too far. He drank heavily, he raced and crashed
Speaker 1: fast cars. He had gold crowns. He got into arguments
Speaker 1: with the owners of the vaudeville theaters that he'd moonlight in.
Speaker 1: Most seriously, though, he dated white women who he would
Speaker 1: often meet at Chicago's fancy is Bordello. When the news
Speaker 1: that the new champion, Johnson, was traveling around with a
Speaker 1: white companion, his hometown of Galveston canceled the big parade
Speaker 1: they had planned for him. So that was the big issue,
Speaker 1: and it's important to keep that one in mind as
Speaker 1: we go forward. But there was another issue going on
Speaker 1: for Johnson, to one that was actually pertinent to boxing.
Speaker 1: Since the old champion, Jim Jefferies, had retired undefeated to
Speaker 1: his elf Alfa farm, some people began questioning whether Johnson
Speaker 1: was really a legitimate champion at all. Had really bothered
Speaker 1: folks when they're there when there were the white champions
Speaker 1: in between, but was bothering them now? So Johnson answered
Speaker 1: that he would fight Jeffreys or anyone else who wanted
Speaker 1: to fight him, and almost immediately the search to find
Speaker 1: that anyone who was considered or called the great white
Speaker 1: hope started, so seriously, anyone who was white could be
Speaker 1: a challenger. They'd come from the fields, from circuses, and
Speaker 1: if they finally got to Johnson, he'd steamrolled them. And
Speaker 1: after running out of white hopes, Johnson took on his
Speaker 1: pal and drinking Buddy Stanley Ketchell the white and middleweight
Speaker 1: champion of the world, and according to the Burns documentary,
Speaker 1: fight promoters dressed Ketchell up for photos and high healed
Speaker 1: cowboy boots and a bulky coat to make him look
Speaker 1: more comparable to Johnson. They also had each fighter promised something,
Speaker 1: so Ketchell promised that he wouldn't try to actually win
Speaker 1: and in the process wind up getting really badly hurt.
Speaker 1: It was much smaller, and Johnson promised that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: knock out Ketchell. Broken promises all around. However, things did
Speaker 1: not go according to Plant what they did. For a
Speaker 1: little bit. For the first part of the fight, it
Speaker 1: seemed like everybody was happy. It was gonna turn out
Speaker 1: to be a great movie. The boxers could make a
Speaker 1: lot of money off of it. Everybody would be good.
Speaker 1: But in the twelfth round, Ketchell really started trying to win,
Speaker 1: and he knocked down Johnson as soon as he was up.
Speaker 1: There was obviously a huge mistake. As soon as he
Speaker 1: was up, Johnson knocked out Ketchell in the process, knocking
Speaker 1: out all of his front teeth. At the route, which
Speaker 1: is I'm looking at to Blina is cringing right now.
Speaker 1: It's maybe one of the more disturbing physical parts of
Speaker 1: this podcast, Getting your teeth Knocked Out. Eventually, though, after
Speaker 1: all of these defeats of the Great White Hopes the
Speaker 1: defeat of Ketchel, it was clear that there was only
Speaker 1: one legitimate contender out there for Johnson. That was, of course,
Speaker 1: Jim Jefferies. Even though now he was thirty four, he
Speaker 1: was nearly three hundred pounds and he was seriously enjoying
Speaker 1: his alfalfa farming, he was enjoying retirement. He however, had
Speaker 1: to be the Great White Hope, and eventually Jeffreys agreed
Speaker 1: to come out of retirement and fight us Marshall. Text
Speaker 1: Rickard won the rights to promote what promised to be
Speaker 1: the fight of the century, and it was sent for
Speaker 1: July four so each fighter would be paid fifty thou dollars,
Speaker 1: which is about one point six million dollars today for
Speaker 1: film rights, plus as signing bonus of ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and plus the winner would receive two thirds of a
Speaker 1: one and one thousand dollar purse. The governor of California
Speaker 1: ended up banning the match, though, and after that Record
Speaker 1: moved it to Reno, Nevada, where price fighting was legal. Basically,
Speaker 1: still kind of a wild Westish area. I guess seemed
Speaker 1: like prize fighting was a civilized pursuit with all of
Speaker 1: its rules and gloves and people not usually getting killed.
Speaker 1: The only condition of the sudden venue switch was that
Speaker 1: the governor of Nevada had records swear that the fight
Speaker 1: wasn't stacked, So Ricord did a lot to try to
Speaker 1: make sure that the fight was secure. He placed deputies
Speaker 1: at the arena's entrances who confiscated firearms from the crowd
Speaker 1: of twenty thousand. Celebrities and attendance included former champ John L.
Speaker 1: Sullivan and novelist slash sports commentator Jack London. There were
Speaker 1: even mock fights set up around the country with reenactors
Speaker 1: recreating the fight blow for blow. Really was the fight
Speaker 1: of the century at the point, but don't forget for
Speaker 1: a minute that the whole thing was largely about race.
Speaker 1: The Smithsonian article Dablina mentioned has a quote from The
Speaker 1: New York Times on the eve of the fight that read,
Speaker 1: if the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his
Speaker 1: ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to
Speaker 1: much more than physical equality with their white neighbors. Pretty
Speaker 1: serious stuff. So despite Jeffrey's rush training, though in a
Speaker 1: massive sudden weight loss he lost about a hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: he was still favored over Johnson ten to four. But
Speaker 1: Johnson wasn't worried. He was quoted as saying he felt
Speaker 1: like a kid on Christmas morning on the on the
Speaker 1: eve of the fight. This was, after all, what he
Speaker 1: had been waiting for, you know, not just achieving the championship,
Speaker 1: but defending it from any further claims. So now we're
Speaker 1: going to give you a little rundown of this particular fight.
Speaker 1: Jefferies refused to shake hands with Johnson right off the bat,
Speaker 1: and his corner man, former champ gentleman Jim Corbett, whose
Speaker 1: defensive style Johnson had actually emulated, started a stream of
Speaker 1: racial slurs that lasted the entire match. According to an
Speaker 1: Ebony article by Lauren Bennett Jr. Johnson later remembered quote,
Speaker 1: I sensed that most of the great audience was hostile
Speaker 1: to me. But despite the sun and the jeering mob,
Speaker 1: and the occasional thought that there might be a gunman
Speaker 1: somewhere in that vast array of humanity, I was cool
Speaker 1: and perfectly at ease. I never had any doubt of
Speaker 1: the outcome, and if you watch the footage, it really
Speaker 1: looks that way too. You can watch this uh this
Speaker 1: match online and see the two fighters basically locked in
Speaker 1: an embrace, with Johnson just lobbing one undercut after another
Speaker 1: at Jeffreys. This is the part that stood out to
Speaker 1: me the most. Jeffrey's head just bounces around every time
Speaker 1: he gets hit by Johnson. In the second round, Johnson
Speaker 1: told him, don't rush, Jim. I can do this all day.
Speaker 1: He asked Jeffries, how do you feel, Jim, how do
Speaker 1: you like it? Does it hurt? And by the end
Speaker 1: of the fourteenth round, Jefferies just looked horrifying. His nose
Speaker 1: was broken and gushing blood, his eyes were swollen, even
Speaker 1: his legs are all stained with more blood. He looks really,
Speaker 1: really bad. In the fifteenth round, he was knocked down
Speaker 1: and then knocked down again, falling over the lower ropes
Speaker 1: that time, and at that point the crowd started to
Speaker 1: cry for Jefferies not to be knocked out. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to see their formerly undefeated champion get knocked out
Speaker 1: by Johnson. So the fight was ended with Johnson declared
Speaker 1: the winner, and again If you see the footage, it
Speaker 1: shows Johnson's cornermen quickly forming this defensive circle around him,
Speaker 1: surrounding him to protect him from the furious crowd around
Speaker 1: the country to some people were celebrating, some or not
Speaker 1: African Americans came out to celebrate, but race riots began
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and up to twenty six people died as
Speaker 1: a result of these race riots over a boxing match.
Speaker 1: But Jeffries at least concedes defeat really graciously. He later says, quote,
Speaker 1: Jack Johnson was better than I ever was, and tells
Speaker 1: his friends that he couldn't have even beaten him in
Speaker 1: his prime, so kind of putting an end to any
Speaker 1: purizing that, well, maybe if Jeffreys had been younger and
Speaker 1: in better shape, things would have been different. So Johnson,
Speaker 1: now the undisputed champ, was unbeatable, except when it came
Speaker 1: to his private life, that is, which began to fall
Speaker 1: apart pretty quickly. He started drinking heavily, and he threatened
Speaker 1: to commit suicide. He was also treated for nervous exhaustion
Speaker 1: and was arrested for speeding. He established the color line
Speaker 1: of his own too, no longer fighting black contenders since
Speaker 1: he considered them harder fights for not as much money.
Speaker 1: He also beat his wealthy girlfriend at a durya badly
Speaker 1: enough for her to be sent to the hospital, and
Speaker 1: after that they married. But her sad life living upstairs
Speaker 1: from his black and tan Chicago club Cafe d Champion,
Speaker 1: isolated from both black and white communities, drove her to
Speaker 1: commit suicide in September nineteen twelve, and Johnson was really
Speaker 1: inconsolable after that. But within only a month or so
Speaker 1: he had paired up with a nineteen year old white
Speaker 1: prostitute named Lucille Cameron Um and drove with her across
Speaker 1: state lines. And so for all those people out there
Speaker 1: who were ready for Jack Johnson to just go away
Speaker 1: and stop causing so much trouble, finally this was a
Speaker 1: way to eliminate him. So backing up a little bit,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten, Congress had passed the Man Act, which
Speaker 1: was originally established to ban the transport of women across
Speaker 1: state lines for immoral purposes. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: something to stop human trafficking, but the Justice to Partment
Speaker 1: used it to attack Johnson. It was never meant to
Speaker 1: be something for two consenting adults traveling together to be
Speaker 1: you know punished with this was just their opportunity, it was,
Speaker 1: so Johnson was arrested October eighteenth, nineteen twelve. He was
Speaker 1: released on bail, and in the intervening months he married Lucile,
Speaker 1: the woman who he had been traveling with, and she
Speaker 1: had already refused to testify against him, So with that
Speaker 1: turn of events, without her testimony, the case against Johnson
Speaker 1: was really worthless. So the Bureau of Investigation got involved
Speaker 1: in the whole thing, trying to find any evidence that
Speaker 1: Johnson had broken the Man Act at some earlier point. Eventually,
Speaker 1: they connected with a former white bordello girlfriend of Johnson's
Speaker 1: who agreed to testify she had cross state lines with him,
Speaker 1: even though they had done so before the Man Act
Speaker 1: even existed, and Johnson has found guilty. He sentenced to
Speaker 1: one year and one day in federal prison. But while
Speaker 1: he was out on bond pending appeal, Johnson just skipped down,
Speaker 1: very likely disguised as a member of a Negro League
Speaker 1: baseball team. He then fled to Montreal, rendezvous with Lucille,
Speaker 1: and they took off together for Europe, where the reception
Speaker 1: was kind of icy, yeah, especially considering he had been
Speaker 1: quite well received in Europe earlier, but after this bad press,
Speaker 1: after this conviction, people weren't fit friendly to him anymore.
Speaker 1: Johnson defended threats to his title abroad, but he soon
Speaker 1: found it impossible to earn a living as a boxer
Speaker 1: in the middle of a war, so he began looking
Speaker 1: for a bigger payday, and back home, folks were still
Speaker 1: looking for a great white hope, a new one, because
Speaker 1: Johnson was, after all, still the heavyweight champion. Finally, on
Speaker 1: April fifth, nineteen fifteen, Johnson met with Kansas native Jess Willard,
Speaker 1: a six ft six twenty seven year old who had
Speaker 1: killed an opponent once with a punch. Since they couldn't
Speaker 1: fight in the US due to Johnson's conviction, they fought
Speaker 1: in nearby Havana, Cuba. So Johnson he by this point
Speaker 1: thirty seven years old, maybe not in the best shape anymore,
Speaker 1: and kind of taking things a little bit too lightly.
Speaker 1: He didn't train like his trainers wanted him to. By
Speaker 1: the twentie round of this fight with Jess Willard, which
Speaker 1: is happening in a hundred and five degree heat too,
Speaker 1: Johnson was clearly getting tired, and by the twenty five
Speaker 1: round he asked his cornerman to see that his wife
Speaker 1: got out safely, and I told him I'm probably not
Speaker 1: going to make it much longer. And then finally in
Speaker 1: the round he lost to a knockout punch, another really
Speaker 1: famous freeze frame image of Johnson lying there on the
Speaker 1: ground with his arms thrown up over his head. So
Speaker 1: after losing the title, finally his earning power was just
Speaker 1: completely slashed, and Johnson went back to Europe toured a
Speaker 1: little bit more. When the US entered the war, he
Speaker 1: offered to volunteer for U S service in exchange for
Speaker 1: a pardon that didn't happen. He traveled on to Mexico,
Speaker 1: and then finally in nineteen twenty, he was ready to
Speaker 1: go home. After seven years on the run, He surrendered
Speaker 1: at the US border and spent a year in leaven
Speaker 1: Worth Prison. It wasn't a horrible prison situation, considering he
Speaker 1: acted as a trustee, he trained other prisoners. He even
Speaker 1: staged a few exhibition matches while he was there, and
Speaker 1: probably my favorite detail of his prison experience, he listed
Speaker 1: his profession as pugilist chauffeur, which, in case it wasn't
Speaker 1: clear earlier, Johnson really liked fast cars. And driving, so
Speaker 1: that was clearly important to him just right after boxing,
Speaker 1: and Johnson did keep boxing, but the Havana fight really
Speaker 1: was the end of the major part of his career.
Speaker 1: The new batch of heavyweights again wouldn't agree to cross
Speaker 1: that color line, so there wasn't a black heavyweight champ
Speaker 1: until Joe Lewis in thirty seven, and he was deliberately
Speaker 1: set up by his managers as a clean, living, decent man,
Speaker 1: in other words, not a Jack Johnson, And that reminded
Speaker 1: me a little bit of an episode from a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago Katie and I did on Satchel Page,
Speaker 1: where Jackie Robinson was very much set up as an
Speaker 1: alternate to Satchel Page, who had this flamboyant public personality,
Speaker 1: you know, a real jokester. He would entertain the crowds.
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson was, you know, somebody who could keep his
Speaker 1: head down and go play Major League baseball. So that
Speaker 1: reminded me a bit of that. But Johnson just did
Speaker 1: this huge range of activities. In addition to his occasional boxing.
Speaker 1: He ran a Harlem club called Cafe Deluxe, which eventually
Speaker 1: became the Cotton Club. He appeared in Aida. He married
Speaker 1: his third wife. He even preached all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: going on with him. In the spring of six while
Speaker 1: returning from a tour of Texas, Johnson lost control of
Speaker 1: a speeding sports car near Raleigh and he crashed into
Speaker 1: a telephone pole. So he died at age sixty eight,
Speaker 1: and his record, according to encycloped the Britannica was one
Speaker 1: fourteen bouts, winning eighty forty five of those by knockouts.
Speaker 1: And there was also a type of French artillery shell
Speaker 1: called the Jack John Jack Johnson that was named after him.
Speaker 1: To memoirs he wrote, and of course a Broadway play
Speaker 1: that was based on his life called The Great White Hope.
Speaker 1: It starred James Earl Jones, and apparently Muhammad Ali was
Speaker 1: a repeat viewer of this play. He'd go back and
Speaker 1: really found a lot of comparisons to his own life
Speaker 1: in the way he was sometimes treated. Um. Jack Johnson
Speaker 1: was also an original inductee into the International Boxing Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame in nineteen nine, along with a few other
Speaker 1: names we've mentioned in this podcast. Um, but I think
Speaker 1: it's probably only appropriate for a man who, in addition
Speaker 1: to um, you know, being a great fighter, was known
Speaker 1: for some of his fantastic quotes and having the perfect
Speaker 1: response to sometimes difficult situations. Ending the podcast with a
Speaker 1: quote of his own, he apparently told a newspaper reporter,
Speaker 1: you know, these newspaper reporters loved covering every aspect of
Speaker 1: Johnson's life. Whatever you write about me, just please remember
Speaker 1: that I'm a man and a good one. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that says at all he was. He definitely had
Speaker 1: some unsavory sides to his personality into his life, but
Speaker 1: he was unapologetic for who he was, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to live as professional boxers did at the time and
Speaker 1: everything that came with that, which was kind of being
Speaker 1: a bad boy. It seemed um and that didn't really
Speaker 1: fit with the time he was living in. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
Speaker 1: is out of the archive, if you heard an email
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Speaker 1: over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at I Heart
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