Posted on 01/20/2005 11:28:41 AM PST by EveningStar
Jack Johnson was a black man who often spent his days beating up white men and his nights making love to white women. This, in the first years of the last century.
So you can understand why he was a polarizing figure, why newspapers inveighed against him and the government conspired to bring him down.
Of course, chances are good that you've never even heard of John Arthur Johnson. As filmmaker Ken Burns pointed out to me in a telephone interview, we are a nation of great historical illiteracy. Ask most people what they know about even so towering a figure as George Washington and you're likely to hear only myths.
"If George Washington can get lost," said Burns, "then Jack Johnson can get lost."
Monday night on PBS, Burns set out to find him. The result is a two-part biography, "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," that offers a compelling exploration of a singular life.
Johnson was a fighter. He became the first black heavyweight champion in 1908 with an easy knockout of Tommy Burns.
This was at a time when the physical superiority of white men over black ones was widely regarded as self-evident truth, so Johnson's victory was an electric shock to the American psyche. And he kept winning, each victory another poke in the eye for the lie of white supremacy. Former champion Jim Jeffries - five years retired and many pounds overweight - was called upon as the "great white hope" who would put Johnson back in his place. Johnson toyed with him for 15 rounds, then decked him.
No black man with any sense dared look too pleased. As it was, angry whites rioted across the country. Eight people died.
What made matters worse is that Johnson was, as Burns puts it, "the original gangsta," living a bling-bling lifestyle 90 years before that term was coined. In an era that required black men to be circumspect, he was a brash fellow who didn't mind flaunting his wealth. He lived high, drove fast. And if he was attracted to a white woman and she to him, he saw no reason they should not be together. Indeed, he had a bad habit of marrying them.
It all came to a head in 1913, when Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which made it a federal crime to transport a woman across state lines for illegal purposes. Johnson's "illegal purpose" was to have sex with a white woman.
Not that the government bothered to hide the racism of its motive. As the prosecutor said after the verdict, "This Negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted. Perhaps as an individual he was. But it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks."
Burns, aided by Sens. John McCain and Edward Kennedy, is petitioning the president for a posthumous pardon on Johnson's behalf. Consider this column my way of adding my name to the list.
Still, I have issues with that word, "pardon," which suggests Johnson requires forgiveness for doing something wrong. His only mistake, if you want to call it that, was in believing that he was a man free like other men, to define himself as he saw fit, live his life on his own terms.
You hear echoes of his story in the stories of O.J. Simpson, Terrell Owens and in a hundred stories that have nothing to do with white women and sex and everything to do with the simple freedom to be.
"Jack Johnson decided to live his life nothing short of a free man," says Burns. "And this is a story of how this country went after him for doing what the Constitution said he had the right to do."
That's why I think we need to be straight about this. It would be good to see Johnson's name cleared. But it's America that should be asking for a pardon.
Leonard Pitts is an affirmative-action columnist who only got his job by being black. he was even awarded the affirmative-action Pulitzer for being the best black columnist on the liberal plantation. naturally, my local leftie paper runs his column. It's apparent to me that he never heard of Jack Johnson until he saw the TV show. Then he uses this PBS agitprop to attack America and defend OJ. It's completely typical of his writing.
True, he went to Leavenworth. How many were really brutalised in prisons for their offences? Johnson boxed there, he was in charge of an athletics program. Obviously the memory of Johnson, is being used for politically correct purposes. Others were treated many times worse and never made it out to live fairly normal lives.
To digress and put in a little white pride, it was old bare knuckle fighter, Joe Choynski, (175 pounds) who ko'd Johnson in three rounds 1901. Both men jailed afterward Choynski said to have shown Johnson a few tricks in their brief stay in durance vile. afterward.
Enough of pardons.
Drove fast? What? a 1908 Ferrari Testarossa?
Back in the mid-sixties, computerized heavyweight boxing tournament was held. Data was fed into an NCR mainframe computer. From the calculated results, scripts were written and broadcast by radio as actual boxing matches, supplemented with interviews of then living former champions.
The tournament was a 16 man elimination tournament. I don't remember all the participants, but I do believe that they included Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Johnson, Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, Sharkey, Baer, Louis, and Marciano. Some of the results: Baer beat Johnson, Dempsey beat Louis. Marciano beat Dempsey in the finale. Needless to say, the results were highly disputed by boxing fans.
This led to a computer fight with tournament winner Marciano and Ali. However, this was not a radio script but a TV script, with the real Marciano and Ali participating. They both got into shape. The sequences were filmed as an actual fight with Marciano winning via a 13th round KO. Marciano died in an airplane crash a few weeks after the "fight" in 1969.
The film was shown months later, nationally, via paid closed circuit TV. Here is an account of that fight.
Seems to me that Johnson lived pretty high on the hog, layed a bunch of porkettas and pretty much had his own way in all areas of his life.
Johnson got what he wanted, the porketteas got what they wanted, and they have moved on.
Why the h*ll don't we do the same?
Why the h*ll don't we do the same?
Are you suggesting that white liberals like Burns should pass up an opportunity to indulge in vainglorious posturing?
Unfortunately we should take the meticulous athletic records kept in track and field. It is regretful for comparisions , that some sort of evolution has taken place. Even if we leave out steroids, the oldsters just do not compare with the moderns. Sad I am to admit this.
I will make one exception at least. That is not in boxing. No admirer of the French though. One man stands above all others . Professional name- BLONDIN. Nobody could do what he did. Tight rope walker of over 110 years ago. Oh, just loved the immortal James J Corbett and his Edison studio film beating poor Peter Courtenay in the 1890's. Lovely stuff.
Shame on you. Some people have to earn a living such as this poor writer.
They shot at least 4 endings because neither Marciano nor Ali knew the actual outcome at the time they were "fighting":
Marciano by KO
Ali by KO
Marciano by decision
Ali by decision
As long as we're pardoning dead people, I'd like to see Attila the Hun pardoned for his myriad human rights abuses. After all, Attila was abused as a child. /sarcasm
Frankly, I wish someone other than a "Liberal" with the need to make a social commentary, had used much of the same material about Johnson's own life and boxing. The boxing material was fascinating. The social commentary bordering on the outrageous.
Pretending that one can flaunt the social mores of a community and not expect others to take offense, is the sort of material Leftist politics are made of. But what a sad distraction, the producer offered, from one who truly had extraordinary boxing skills. I had always heard that Johnson had better honed defensive skills that any other Heavyweight, and I frankly marveled at the fluidity of his defensive moves.
What an exciting moment, in Reno, when he met Jeffries. What a shame that they didn't meet a few years earlier, when Jeffries had not been out of the ring for so long. I wish, still, that they had shown the whole fight, not just excerpts, and also some of the fights to which they only alluded. But PBS had to offer a message. Very sad. Their obvious bias, as I say, was a distraction. And in recalling the offensive side of Johnson's life, in order to make that statement, they diminished the stature of their subject.
William Flax
Pretending that one can flaunt the social mores of a community and not expect others to take offense, is the sort of material Leftist politics are made of.
** What's wrong with pointing out the obvious issues of the time? The only reason why he was hated so much is because he slept with white women. This would not have been an issue if the women were black. White men could sleep with black women and not face getting arrested or lynched back then. There's nothing leftist about that because it's TRUE. Not everything is a leftist conspiracy.
You know the answer to that question!
My grandfather was a boxing fan par excellance. He respected Marciano, but thought that in terms of style and technique, Joe Louis was the greatest.
No, he was prosecuted for violations of the Mann Act. Lots of people were. Burns fails to mention that. The Mann Act was a wonderful catchall tool for the feds to use; seemed like half the gangsters on the run brought their molls. :)
PARDON CHUCK BERRY!
This needs to be said again.
PARDON CHUCK BERRY!
If you're going to pardon Johnson, why not Ali and Tyson? How about Jim Brown? O.J.? (Oh, that's right, he's an innocent man still searching for the "real killers" on the golf course. No pardon necessary.)
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