JOHNSON, JACK 1878-1946

Boxing champion

Son of a Former Slave

Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion, was born in Galveston, Texas, the son of Henry and Tina Johnson. His father, a former slave, worked as a porter and a janitor. Despite their lack of formal education, Johnson's parents encouraged their six children to pursue learning and provided a stable, religious home life for them. Johnson completed the fifth grade in elementary school before going to work in the cotton fields and assisting his father as a janitor. He later worked as a stevedore at the Galveston shipyards and as a stable boy in a carnage shop. Walter Lewis, his boss at the carriage shop, was a former prizefighter who taught Johnson how to box. He honed his skills in the "battle royals," degrading staged fights between black youths, and in private clubs before entering the professional ring in 1897.

Early Professional Career

Johnson's first major bout came against Joe Choynsky, a noted Polish Jewish heavyweight on 25 February 1901. Choynsky knocked out Johnson in the third round, and the fight resulted in a three-week jail sentence for both fighters because boxing was illegal in Texas. Despite this defeat, Johnson developed into one of the leading contenders for the world heavyweight title, but the leading white fighters, including the champion, James J. Jeffries, refused to fight him because of his race. Although Johnson participated in several interracial contests, most of his bouts were against less skilled black fighters. He supplemented his income from boxing with stints as an impromptu speaker and vaudeville performer, developing his own show, in which he sang, danced, and played the fiddle and harmonica. After defeating Denver Ed Martin for the unofficial black world heavyweight championship in 1903, he fought throughout England and Australia, developing an international reputation.

World Heavyweight Champion

In 1905 Jeffries retired from boxing and left the world heavyweight championship vacant without any serious contenders for the title. Marvin Hart gained the title but lost it to Canadian Tommy Burns in 1906. Johnson became the leading contender for the heavyweight title and met Burns on 26 December 1908 for the championship in Sydney, Australia. Burns, who believed black boxers were inherently cowards, was no match for the powerful Johnson. The 6-foot, 200-pound Johnson taunted and toyed with the 5′ 7″, 175-pound Burns. Referees ended the bout in the fourteenth round, declaring Johnson the heavyweight champion. The fight carried a lucrative purse of $40,000, with $35,000 going to Burns and $5,000 to Johnson.

Racial Resentment

For most white Americans recognizing a black as the world heavyweight champion was intolerable since the title personified physical and athletic superiority. White resentment toward Johnson intensified as several "Great White Hopes" failed to win back the title. On 4 July 1910 Jeffries returned to the ring against Johnson, who brutally thrashed the former champion. The outcome of the fight resulted in a nationwide white backlash against blacks and a crusade to banish boxing. White indignation toward Johnson intensified following the champion's marriage to Etta Terry Duryea, a white, in 1911. After her suicide in 1912 he married Lucille Cameron, another white. His interracial marriages received condemnation from both the black and white press and led to the passage of laws banning interracial marriages in several states. Determined to punish Johnson for his social and sexual transgressions, federal authorities prosecuted him for violating the Mann Act, a federal law forbidding the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes. Despite his innocence, an all-white jury convicted the champion, who fled to France to avoid incarceration.

Johnson's Downfall

After Johnson successfully defended his title in exile in 1913, his career deteriorated to giving boxing and wrestling demonstrations throughout England and France. On 5 April 1915 Johnson met Jess Willard for the world heavyweight title in Havana, Cuba. After twenty-six rounds of brutal slugging in the blazing sun, Willard knocked out the champion. Although Johnson claimed that the fight was frxed, it seems likely that the aged and poorly conditioned Johnson lost a fair fight. The former champion remained in exile in Spain and Mexico before surrendering to federal authorities at the United States-Mexico border in 1920. After serving a yearlong sentence in Leavenworth, Johnson returned to the ring and fought a few professional fights before retiring from the sport in 1921 at age forty-three. In later life he gave boxing exhibitions, dabbled in several business ventures, and authored a fanciful autobiography. Speeding through Raleigh, North Carolina, on 10 June 1946 to attend the Joe Louis-Billy Conn heavyweight rematch, Johnson died in a crash when he lost control of his automobile.

Sources:

Al-Tony Gimore, Bad Nigger! The National Impact of Jack Johnson (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1975);

Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (New York Free Press, 1983);

Jeffrey T. Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

Johnson, Jack (1878–1946), prizefighter, world heavyweight boxing champion from 1908 to 1915.John Arthur Johnson was born to former slaves in Galveston, Texas, just as Reconstruction ended and he came of age in the Jim Crow Era of rigid racial segregation. In boxing, the color line was firmly drawn. Although Johnson had established himself as an accomplished boxer by 1902, white heavyweight champions Jim Jeffries, Robert Fitzsimmons, and Tommy Burns refused to fight him. But Johnson persisted, allegedly following Burns all over the world until Burns in 1908 agreed to fight in Sydney, Australia. In the fourteenth round, with Burns defenseless, police stopped the fight.

Johnson's championship sparked a wave of antiblack hostility. For the next several years, he flaunted his wealth and fame. Not only was Johnson the heavyweight champion—and defiantly so—but he violated the ultimate racial taboo by conducting relationships with white women, eventually marrying two. The search for the “great white hope” was on. After Johnson disposed of a handful of opponents, former champion Jim Jeffries came out of retirement in 1910, proposing to uphold the honor of “that portion of the white race that has been looking to me to defend its athletic superiority.” Johnson easily defeated him, touching off race riots.

Meanwhile, federal authorities began to compile a dossier on Johnson. Under the Mann Act of 1910, he was convicted of transporting a woman across state lines for sexual purposes. In 1913, Johnson fled the country to escape imprisonment. He lost his title to Jess Willard in Cuba in 1915, remained abroad until 1920, then returned to serve eight months in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. He continued to fight until age fifty, worked as an entertainer, and died in a car crash in 1946. Considered by many the greatest boxer of all time, Johnson also came to symbolize racial relations in a singularly racist era.
See also African Americans; Prostitution and Antiprostitution; Racism; Sports: Professional Sports.

Bibliography

Randy Roberts , Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes, 1983.

Elliott J. Gorn

Jesse Duncan Elliott 1782–1845, American naval officer, b. Hagerstown, Md. In the War of 1812, he helped capture two British vessels on Lake Erie and was made commander of the lake. He began building the fleet that O. H. Perry was to use after he succeeded (1813) Elliott. In the battle of Lake Erie (1813), Elliott was second in command. His conduct in the battle brought about a brisk argument with Perry—giving rise to a controversy that was continued long after the death of both and is still not completely settled.