Boxing
Boxing
PERSONS OF AFRICAN DESCENT IN EARLY BOXING
Today the sport of boxing is associated with a variety of racial stereotypes. In the late twentieth century these included the belief that no white man would be able to contend for the world heavyweight championship. This idea results from the general racial stereotype circulating in the Western world that persons of African descent are simply better athletes compared to persons of European descent. In addition, stereotypes concerning the innate violence of the African American male support the notion that Africans or African Americans should dominate boxing, which is by nature a violent sport.
In the early 1990s both the in-ring and out-of-ring behavior of then heavyweight champion Mike Tyson contributed to bringing these disturbing images to the forefront of European American consciousness. Tyson was convicted of raping Desiree Washington, then Miss Black Rhode Island, as well as being in possession of twenty-nine pounds of marijuana and cocaine. Tyson served three years of a six-year sentence. In 1997, in his match with Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson’s ring behavior sank to a new low. In the third round, Tyson clinched Holyfield, biting off a piece of his ear. This display feeds into the modern idea that violence and blackness are associated. For example, in 1995 President Bill Clinton stated that “violence for white people too often comes with a black face” (Hutchinson 1995).
The history of boxing does not indicate that Africans or African Americans per se dominate it. Rather, this history shows that participation in professional boxing is multiethnic and mostly associated with poverty rather than socially defined race. This becomes more apparent as one examines boxing participation across weight classes as opposed to just the heavyweight category. Also, virtually every cultural group has some form of boxing, including the Eastern martial arts and Latin American forms such as Brazilian capoeira.
ORIGINS OF WESTERN BOXING
The sport we know today as boxing probably began in ancient Greece and was included in the first Olympic Games. In ancient Rome, the sport was part of gladiatorial contests, and the boxers often wore a metal-studded leather hand covering called the cestus. Serious injury or death often resulted from these contests. The sport came to England with the arrival of the Roman Empire (Fleisher and Andre 1993). Modern boxing began there in the eighteenth century. In 1719, James Figg was recognized as the first heavyweight champion, and he is now recognized as the father of boxing. Figg openly advertised exhibitions of his skill and taught the sport. He was also a master swordsman, and thus he attracted the patronage of the English “bloods,” the socially well-to-do sportsmen of the country. His boxing exhibitions were held on a stage with wooden rails; the referee called the bouts while standing outside the ring. In 1734, another English champion, John Broughton, formulated the first set of rules and invented the boxing glove, though boxing gloves were used only at sparring exhibitions. Boughton’s rules governed boxing until 1838 and eliminated the practice of hitting opponents when they were down or grabbing opponents by the hair.
In 1838, the Original London Prize Ring rules were devised. Soon after, these were modified to form the Revised London Prize Ring rules (1853), and finally, at the turn of the century, the Queensberry rules were adopted. John Graham Chambers authored these rules under the patronage of John Sholto Douglas, eighth marquis of Queensberry.
Boxing in eighteenth-century England was dominated by contests of brute strength. Champions tended to be men who both could inflict great bodily harm on their opponents and withstand such harm themselves. Daniel Mendoza, a man of Spanish-Jewish descent, is credited as being the first boxer to change this model. After sustaining significant injuries in his first victorious bout, he spent three years developing a system of guarding, sidestepping, and effective use of the straight left (today called the left jab). Mendoza utilized these tactics to be crowned English champion in 1794. However, this victory was not without a price. Many boxing critics of the day characterized his tactics as “cowardly,” as opposed to standing up in the true “British bulldog” style (Fleisher and Andre 1993). Yet it was fighting in this style, as well as the adoption of the Queensberry rules, that would establish boxing as a legitimate sport as opposed to its prior image as a barbaric spectacle.
PERSONS OF AFRICAN DESCENT IN EARLY BOXING
Bill Richmond was the first person of African descent to make a mark in English boxing. During the occupation of New York by the British in 1777, Richmond was noticed by General Earl Percy after he routed three English soldiers who accosted him in a tavern. Percy took Richmond into his household as a servant, and later that year sent him to England to apprentice as a carpenter. There he developed a style of fighting similar to that of Mendoza. Richmond stood 5 feet 6 inches and weighed 170 pounds. He listed among his most important victories those over George Moore, Paddy Green, and Frank Mayers. His prowess in the ring earned him the nickname “The Black Terror.” In his later years, Richmond ran a boxing academy in London, dying in that city on December 28, 1829, at the age of sixty-six.
Tom Mollineaux was born in Virginia on March 23, 1784. He arrived in England in 1809 and was trained by Bill Richmond. A year later, Mollineaux fought in the first international title involving a person of African descent. His opponent was Tom Cribb. The bout, which took place in December, lasted thirty-nine rounds, after which Mollineaux collapsed from exhaustion. English boxing correspondent Pierce Egan described Mollineux as “the tremendous man of colour” and wrote that he had “proved himself as courageous a man as ever an adversary contended with” (Fleisher and Andre 1993). Egan was also impressed with both Mollineaux’s strength and knowledge of the science of boxing. Cribb and Mollineaux fought a rematch in September 1811 before a crowd that swelled to more than 25,000 spectators. Once again Cribb was the victor.
Molllineux would defeat William Fuller in 1814. These fights made Mollineaux a celebrity in England. He lived there for the rest of life, engaging in periodic sparring bouts. He died in Dublin, Ireland, in 1818.
At this point in history there seemed to be no specialized racial theory of boxing, apart from the general racial theories of the time. The ability of non-Europeans in any sector of social endeavor was always viewed through the prism of the existing racial ideologies, which uniformly viewed such persons as inferior. Successful non-European individuals were exceptions to the general racial norms of day.
BOXING COMES TO AMERICA
In 1816, Jacob Hyer and Tom Beasley fought the first publicly acknowledged boxing match in the United States, in New York City. In 1849, the first heavyweight championship fight was held, pitting Jacob Hyer’s son Tom against “Yankee” Sullivan at Still Pond Creek, Maryland. Yet, it is important to understand that prize fighting was still considered illegal throughout the United States. In 1849, most states had enacted “prize fight statutes.” In 1876, the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that “Prize fighting, boxing matches, and encounters of that kind serve no useful purpose, tend to breaches of the peace, and are unlawful even when entered into by agreement and without anger or ill will” (Sammons 1988). That same year, organizers of the reputed world heavyweight championship fight between Englishman Joe Goss and American Paddy Ryan chose Colliers, West Virginia, so that if the fight was raided by hostile police officers, the participants would be able to flee quickly across state lines to Ohio or Pennsylvania.
The illegality of the sport meant that it stayed popular with the urban masses, many of whom were immigrants who saw it as a way to work themselves out of poverty. This is also a characteristic of modern-day boxing and to some degree accounts for the racial stereotyping associated with it. The Social Darwinists of the period supported boxing as consistent with Darwinian laws. William Graham Sumner declared that a society with “no-holds” business competition was in consonance with Darwinian law and that boxing was the reduction of “survival of the fittest” to its simplest and most tangible terms (Altschuler and LaForse 1983). These views explain why many early boxing contests revolved around the theme of “native-born” Americans pitted against Irish immigrants. Animosity against the Irish, both in America and England, was great in this period. For example, Professor Edward Freeman of Oxford, a devotee of the Count de Gobineau, carried out a successful lecture tour in the United States between 1881 and 1882. His lectures decried the corruption of the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic bloodlines by the Irish, Jews, and Negroes. The solution Freeman offered the Americans was that every Irishman would kill a Negro and be hanged for it (Chase 1977).
The final sixty years of boxing in the nineteenth century was dominated by Irish Americans. The most notable was John L. Sullivan, who first began to garner national attention in 1879 with impressive victories over Joe Goss, John Donaldson, and John Flood. In February 1882, Sullivan fought for the U.S. heavyweight crown at Mississippi City against Paddy Ryan. The public’s interest in the fight attracted major media attention, with newspapers hiring famous journalists and authors to record their impressions of the fight. Henry Ward Beecher, Reverend Thomas De Witt Tallmage, Nat Goodwin, and Oscar Wilde were among those who covered the fight (Fleisher and Andre 1993). Sullivan dispatched Ryan in nine rounds.
Sullivan, now dubbed “the Boston Strong Boy,” took on all comers in the heavyweight ranks for the next ten years. Sullivan fought and won the last sanctioned bare-knuckle fight in 1889, against Jake Kilrain. The fight was held in Richburg, Mississippi, and lasted seventy-five rounds.
Sullivan’s willingness to fight all candidates did not extend to persons of African descent. Sullivan consistently refused to fight Peter Jackson, an Australian boxer of African descent, even though most considered Jackson a serious contender for the heavyweight title (Ward 2004). Jackson was born in the West Indies in 1861 and began his boxing career in Australia in 1882. In May 1891, Jackson fought a sixty-one-round draw with Jim Corbett in San Francisco. It was Corbett’s success against Jackson that led to calls for a championship match with Sullivan. That match was held on September 7, 1892, in New Orleans, which had become the capital of American boxing. This fight was conducted with gloves under the Queensberry rules and Sullivan lost. This event also featured, in the featherweight division, George “Little Chocolate” Dixon against Jack Skelly. Dixon’s victory against Skelly, and the violently negative European American reaction to that victory, led to “interracial” fights being banned in that city (Sammons 1988).
THE GREAT WHITE HOPE
Sullivan’s decision not to entertain bouts with persons of African descent can be linked to his manager, William Muldoon. Muldoon wished to spare his champion the humiliation of being defeated by a Negro. Given the symbolic role that the heavyweight boxing champion had taken on as the “emperor” of manhood, it was inconceivable for them that this mantle would be held by a Negro (Ward 2004). However, within sixteen years of Sullivan surrendering the belt, Jack Johnson, an African American born in Galveston, Texas, would be declared heavyweight champion of the world. Johnson began his boxing career in contests called “battle royals,” which pitted several African American men in the ring until the last man standing was declared the winner. European Americans would then throw coins into the ring as payment for the bout. Johnson turned professional in 1897 and amassed a string of impressive victories, until finally he forced then world champion Tommy Burns into a bout in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, Australia. The fight promoter, Snowy Baker, had to guarantee Burns $30,000 for him to agree to the match. Johnson greatly outclassed Burns, and the police stepped in to end the bout in the fourteenth round. The new heavyweight champion won a string of impressive victories within the year, and the search for “a great white hope” began, with fight promoters all over Europe and the Americas hunting for a “Caucasian” challenger to win the title back for the “white” race.
Johnson’s victories dispelled a variety of racist theories in boxing that had developed over the nineteenth century. It is argued that Johnson pursued the Burns fight in a way to expose the fallacies that black fighters
were weak in the stomach, that they betray a yellow streak under pressure, and that they were unable to think on their feet like white fighters (Ward 2004). All of these stereotypes were consistent with the general nineteenth-century racial views of the Negro. However, it was not Johnson’s behavior inside the ring that aggravated European Americans; it was his personal life. Johnson defied every racist convention of the early twentieth century. Most significantly, it was his romantic affairs with a series of European American women that turned both the African and European American public against him. For example, on March 12, 1909, Texas authorities threatened to arrest Johnson if he brought his white wife with him to that state. He was going to Galveston to attend a parade in his honor. D. A. Hart, the African American editor of the Nashville Globe, chastised Johnson for not marrying a member of his own race, thus insulting Negro women and placing others of his race in mortal danger (Ward 2004).
Shortly after the Burns defeat, Anglo-Saxonist author Jack London implored Jim Jeffries to come out of retirement to take the crown back from Johnson. The Jeffries–Johnson match, fought in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, had all of America’s attention. Twelve hundred African Americans prayed for a Johnson victory in Hutchinson, Kansas, and a special telegraph line was installed at Tuskegee Institute to receive round-by-round reports of the fight. Booker T. Washington disapproved of Johnson and prize fighting, but he allowed the fight to be broadcast to Tuskegee. In the ring, the band began with “Just Before the Battle Mother,” “America,” and “Dixie.” Johnson demolished Jeffries in fifteen rounds, so much so that Jack London could not bear watching the finish. African Americans in Chicago swept Johnson’s mother on their shoulders and carried her around the south side. At every stop on the return train ride to Chicago, Johnson was greeted by cheering crowds, including 1,000 members of the all-African American 9th Calvary (Buffalo Soldiers) in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Not everyone was happy; race riots broke out over the Johnson victory in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Clarksburg, West Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; Los Angeles; Manhattan; New Orleans; Norfolk, Virginia; Pueblo, New Mexico; Philadelphia; Roanoke, Virginia; Uvalda, Georgia; and Washington, D.C. It is estimated that from eleven to twenty-six people died, and hundreds were wounded, the vast majority African Americans.
Johnson maintained the heavyweight championship until April 5, 1915. The pressure of being the champion as well as the disorders of his personal life combined to defeat him at the age of thirty-seven. He lost the championship to the last of the great white hopes, Jess Willard, in Havana, Cuba. In 1920 he would surrender to federal authorities for violation of the Mann Act (which prevented the transportation of white women across state lines for “immoral” purposes) and spent eight months in prison. After he was killed in a car accident in 1946, he was buried in Graceland Cemetery next to Etta Duryea Johnson, the European American woman who had been the love of his life. For his courage against insurmountable odds, many rank Johnson as the most significant African American athlete of the twentieth century (Ward 2004).
FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY
The next notable heavyweight champion was Jack Dempsey (“the Manassa Mauler”), who took the title from Jess Willard on July 4, 1919, in Toledo, Ohio. Dempsey was a European American born in Colorado, one of eleven children, and started fighting as a matter of survival. He rode the rails looking for work in assorted mining towns. Dempsey amassed sixty wins, fifty by knockout, over his career. Dempsey lost the title to Gene Tunney on September 23, 1926. Tunney, also European American, grew up the son of a longshoreman. He also learned how to fight to survive on the brutal streets of New York City. He won the armed forces title while a member of the expeditionary force in France during World War I. Tunney’s lifetime record was sixty wins, forty-five by knockout. Dempsey’s and Tunney’s championships occurred at a time when America had locked the African-American athlete out from competition for the world heavyweight title. This reaction was a direct response to the success of Jack Johnson.
With Tunney’s retirement, the heavyweight championship passed over to Europe. A series of contenders vied for the belt, but on June 30, 1931, German Max Schmeling was declared world champion after a bout with Jack Sharkey. Schmeling’s victory came at a time when boxing had completely moved out of its former criminal/sideshow atmosphere into the mainstream of respectable public entertainment (Bathrick 1990). Indeed, boxing in general and Schmeling in particular took on tremendous importance in the cultural transformation of German society during the Weimar period (1918–1933). This transformation involved the glorification of the human body. In the 1920s, Germany, which had labored in the corset and stiff collar, moved to embody a new cult of nakedness in cultural venues from vaudeville to sport (Bathrick 1990). This was also the period in which racial hygiene ideas were gathering strength throughout German society. The eugenics (racial hygiene) of the Weimar Republic was mainly concerned with preventing the decline of the German “volk,” or “rasse” (Weiss 1990).
In this way, achievement in sport represented the antithesis of racial degeneration. The one-time European heavyweight champion Georges Carpentier (a Frenchman) stated that boxing had done more to improve the moral and physical character of the younger generation than had previous centuries of physical and moral teaching. He also stated that there was reason to hope that France’s military prowess would increase because of boxing (Carpentier 1926). Carpentier’s claims about the value of boxing seem to be at odds with modern science. A 2005 study of 477 boys in Norway found that participation in boxing was associated with a significantly greater probability of being involved in violent or antisocial behavior outside the ring (Endresen and Olweus 2005).
Bertolt Brecht, considered by many the most important German playwright of the twentieth century, also became enamored with boxing in the Weimar period (Bathrick 1990). In the same years, Adolf Hitler wrote of the importance of boxing in Mein Kampf: “There is no sport that cultivates a spirit of aggressiveness, that demands lighting-quick decisiveness, that develops the body to such steely smoothness.” Further, Hitler argued that had Germans studied boxing instead of etiquette, then the deserters, pimps, and rabble responsible for the Weimar Republic could have never taken power (Margolick 2005).
Schmeling became the world heavyweight champion on June 11, 1930, defeating Jack Sharkey before 79,222 fans in Yankee Stadium. Schmeling met Sharkey again for a second defense of his title in June 1932, losing by decision in fifteen rounds. Four years later Schmeling would be matched against Joe Louis (nicknamed “the Brown Bomber”) in Yankee Stadium before 39,878 fans. The term “Brown Bomber” had been developed by the American press to stir up racial animosity in preparation for the Louis-Carnera fight of 1935. Louis was portrayed as symbolic of Ethiopia, fighting off the Italian fascist invasion, symbolized by Primo Carnera (Sammons 1988). The cultural significance of the Louis–Schmeling bouts will always be intertwined in the context of American and German racism and the international political situation culminating in World War II. This is ironic, since neither fighter was particularly racist or anti-Semitic; for example, Schmeling’s manager, Max Jacobs, was of Jewish descent. Schmeling, however, would become the darling of Nazi sports culture, especially after he defeated Louis in the first fight. He would support the Nazi Party throughout his career, although there is no conclusive evidence that he agreed with its anti-Semitic and genocidal policies. Schmeling was a man of the period, and before Louis–Schmeling I, American newspapers were still portraying Louis using racist Sambo stereotypes. One newspaper showed Louis trembling with fear of Schmeling, after the Mantan Moreland character “feets don’t fail me now,” while another represented him as a chicken-stealing thief in farmer Max’s henhouse (Wig-gins 1988). German caricatures of Louis were just as bad. A cartoon that appeared in Der Kicker on June 23, 1936, portrays Schmeling spanking a Sambo caricature of Louis (Margolick 2005). Response to the Schmeling victory followed racial and ethnic lines: Jews, African Americans, Africans, and other colonized populations were plunged into immediate depression, while southern whites, Germans, South Africans, and other European populations in racially stratified societies jumped for joy. Films of the first Schmeling–Louis fight were rapidly made available throughout the United States. This was in contrast to the ongoing ban of films from the fights that Joe Louis had won against white opponents (Margolick 2005).
LOUIS KOs THE FASCISTS
Louis–Schmeling II was undoubtedly the greatest professional fight of the twentieth century. This was not because of the technical mastery that either fighter showed in the ring but rather the social significance of the fight. No one was neutral. Aryanists, German Bundists in the United States, South African colonialists, and American white supremacists were all pulling for Max Schmeling to win again. American Jews, as well as the Communist Party, had originally opposed the fight to protest treatment of Jews in Germany. However, both groups realized that a Joe Louis victory would be a crushing blow to the theory of Aryan supremacy. African Americans were divided. Many were worried that Louis would lose again, but all of them were praying for the Brown Bomber. W. E. B. Du Bois sat listening to the fight with a group of academicians in Atlanta, Eleanor Roosevelt sat by the radio, and the owner of the Hope diamond, Evalyn Walsh McLean, had a ringside seat. The fight was carried live over German radio from New York. No one had to wait long; Louis defeated Schmeling by technical knockout (TKO) at 2:04 in the first round. Schmeling was knocked down three times, the last ending the fight. After the fight, to save face, Schmeling claimed he was fouled, but no one believed him.
Despite the abuses that occurred during some of the celebrations following, some argued that the Louis victory did more to improve race relations in America than any event since the Civil War. One writer wrote that the decline of Nazi prestige began with a left hook delivered by a former unskilled autoworker who had never read Neville Chamberlain’s policies (Margolick 2005, p. 322). Nazi propaganda minister Paul Joseph Goebbels distanced himself from the Schmeling loss immediately, as did Nazi Germany as a whole. The United States entered the war against the Nazis with a segregated army. Louis served the war effort more as an icon than as a soldier, although he later served in the U.S. Army.
BOXING AND SOCIAL MOBILITY
The Johnson–Jeffries and Louis–Schmeling fights illustrate all of the racial themes associated with boxing. When fighters from socially subordinated groups win, their victories are attributed to natural athleticism or innate animal-like savagery. Conversely, if the victory goes to fighters from socially dominant groups, it supposedly resulted from their greater courage and intellect. Try as it may, professional boxing has always had an unsavory reputation. Its appeal has always been to the poor and disenfranchised, who often barter their physical health and sometimes their lives as a way out of their social situation. In addition, this peddling of human flesh was consistently connected with various kinds of greed and crime (organized and individual). Yet boxing has seen its fair share of great athletes, and these individuals have originated from all portions of the formal racial spectrum.
Boxing and sports in general have given the public the idea that it is possible for individuals to better their condition by exemplary achievement in the professional ranks. This idea has been particularly popular among African Americans in the latter twentieth century. Sport has been one of the few industries where African Americans seemed highly mobile, visible, and their accomplishments consistent with the general racial theories of the twentieth century (all brawn, but no brain). Role models such as Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson through to Michael Jordan in the modern era are taken as a sign of physical superiority and increased social acceptance of all African Americans.
However, it is difficult to make a case that athletic excellence has had an overall positive effect on race relations in the United States or that it has played a significant role in the social mobility of African Americans. First off, achievement at the highest ranks in professional sports is statistically very rare. For example, in 1972 a high school athlete of any color had the following chances of making it into each of the following professional sports: 1 in 4,000 for baseball, 1 in 3,750 for the National Football League, and 1 in 10,000 for the National Basketball Association. The situation in boxing was not any better. Between the 1930s and 1950s, of 127 active professional boxers, only 7.1% received national recognition, 8.7% achieved local headlines, and the vast majority (84.2%) never achieved anything beyond warm-up bouts (Reiss 1990). Today it is still true that only boxers who are major contenders have a chance to make the “big money.” Also, even those who make a high salary may not keep their money for long. Most of these athletes, black or white, don’t have the background in money management or the support system required to handle their fortunes. In boxing, as in other sports, this combined with the lavish lifestyle that is expected of professional athletes, as well as the unscrupulous character of many of the fight promoters and managers associated with sport has led many top champions to squander their fortunes or retire bankrupt (Joe Louis, Ike Williams, Mike Tyson).
If professional sports has historically had any positive impact on the social mobility of oppressed groups, it must have occurred indirectly. There is some evidence that the Irish and Jewish communities may have been positively impacted by their period of dominance in professional boxing—in part, because several individuals used the sport to launch business ventures associated with their prominence in prize fighting. Athletes might also contribute to the social mobility of others by donating their wealth to help charitable ventures, such as the Muhammad Ali Institute at the University of Louisville or The Tiger Woods Foundation. The NBA Cares Foundation was launched in 2005, and since that time has raised over 50 million dollars for various charity initiatives. But all these laudable efforts must also be viewed in the light of the false ideology of guaranteed riches for poor youth who excel at sport. Statistics show that the
vast majority of such youth would stand a better chance of achieving social mobility (what little is actually possible in the United States) by focusing their time on their education, as opposed to athletic activity.
SEE ALSO Baseball; Basketball; Football (U.S.); Rassenhygiene.
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Joseph L. Graves Jr.