Woebeit I’d finished my Black History Month Eyeview, when I was zapped by one of those signs that always gives me cause to pause and ponder why God’s calling me on his divine cell phone. It seems he wants be to defuse the misconceptions in the TV documentary (“Unforgivable Blackness: The rise and fall of Jack Johnson”), that has completely captured the imagination of Black and proud folks. I’m not trying to be a know-it-all, but I do have a pretty good grasp of sports history. Moreover, I’m a born researcher who loves to connect the historical dots to create a whole picture. Ergo, I must set the record straight, even if I have to diss KCOH’s sports guru, Ralph Cooper.
“Super Cooper” and talk show host Michael Harris debated the outcome a match between George Foreman and Jack Johnson, but I think a 6’2” and 230 Foreman would have killed a 5’11 _” Jack, who fought mostly at 185. In fact, any heavy hitter with a good jab, i.e., Sonny Liston, Ernie Shavers, or even “Smoking” Joe, would have devastated any boxer of Jack’s era, when boxing was more, or less, a very primitive slugfest. Jack didn’t even come close to having boxing techniques such as double-jabs and combinations. Hey, the first prizefight under Marquess of Queensberry rules took place in Cincinnati Ohio August 29, 1885, when John L. Sullivan knocked out Dominick McCaffery in the sixth round. But, boxing ain’t what my folks are excited about. They’re pondering how Jack got away with doing what got brothers lynched in his day?
So (FYI), peruse these excerpts from Jeffery T. Sammans 1988 book (“Beyond The Ring”), and connect a few dots: “If anybody could help Johnson penetrate the color barrier it was (Jack’s manager) Sam Fitpatrick. No admirer of Johnson’s personal life, this perceptive judge of talent saw in his fighter a man of enormous money-making potential.” Pray with me on this brothers and sisters, because before Jack upset Tommy Burns (to win the championship in Australia), boxing was dying. “As a champion Burns had little drawing power, and poor gates combined with relentless fan pressure to remove the color barrier, is what really opened the door for Jack. And should Tommy Burns, a lackluster, unpopular foreigner lose, boxing would gain. “A black champion would bring back interest and money to the game. His reign would surely be temporary, and his ultimate defeat would symbolically reaffirm white racial supremacy,” Sammons explained.
Translation: Hugh D. McIntosh, a greedy promoter offered Burns $30, 000 to fight Jack. He only saw Jack as a clown with clout (“American whites remained convinced that blacks lacked strategy, intelligence, courage and skill, critical to boxing success.”) and the more he strutted, the bigger the crowds, that wanted to see him whipped, grew. For sure, he was a gold mine for mobsters and nobody messed with the mob’s stuff during that era. Are you still praying with me brothers and sisters. Do you see Muhammad Ali here? Fact is, Jack was too good, for his own good: “Johnson’s inactivity in 1911 and his subsequent defeat of all challengers frustrated boxing promoters and angered the American public. Johnson was not just a fighter but a symbol. His defeats of whites were victories for the black race.
“The search for the great ‘white hope’ had extended even to South Africa and yielded nothing but ‘white jokes.’ Some observers counseled patience: soon the ‘right man’ would surface to redeem the white race,” was the lament recorded by Sammons. “They were convinced that the only way Johnson and his legacy could be erased was for him to be beaten fairly and squarely.” And that’s why Johnson wasn’t killed outright. Even so, the dots are connected when you learn that Jack opened the Cotton Club and sold it, “to Manhattan's most powerful underworld figure, Owen ‘Owney’ Madden, who was then in prison, having been convicted of manslaughter. His henchmen, George ‘Big Frenchy’ DeMange managed the club while Walter Brooks, who had brought Shuffle Along to Broadway in 1921, served as front.
Hey, the mob arranged Jack’s “dive” in Havana, Cuba. For sure, old Jack was richly rewarded for accepting “a deal he couldn’t refuse.” In fact, the mob gave him several nightclubs, including one in North Carolina, where he died in a one-car accident… on a lonely back road. Surely, if an investigation had proven foul play, he would’ve become a martyr. Thus, history records that he killed himself, speeding like the reckless fool he always was. You don’t have to believe me. You can believe the White folks who have no idea that Jack was born in Walker County, instead of Galveston. I wonder if anybody knows where I’m coming from?