“They called it the “Fight of the Century” – and while that century was still pretty young, the hype wasn’t exaggerated.
Imagine it: Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, in a whole different age. The 19th century had ended a decade earlier, with the Old West teetering on the edge of oblivion, but neither had completely vanished yet: Men who had survived their service in the Civil War were just reaching the age that a lot of Vietnam veterans are today. Mark Twain was still alive; so was Wyatt Earp. Geronimo had died in Oklahoma the year before, at age 79. (He had been thrown from his horse – some say while drunk, but that may well be a myth – and in an alternative version of the story I once heard the old Apache warrior had driven his car into a ditch, which may have had its roots in the famous photo of him behind the wheel of a 1905 Locomobile with a few braves along for the ride. What IS true is that he lay on the ground all night in the February frost before succumbing to pneumonia at Fort Sill.) Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Bill Cody and frontier poet/former cavalry scout Captain Jack Crawford were planning to break into motion pictures (I actually own a 1910 letter by Crawford in which he says just that; the movies were still silent then, of course), and Pancho Villa was only starting out on the road to revolution south of the border …
Reno must have still been a pretty wild place in 1910, almost 40 years before Bugsy Siegel and the New York mob brought glitz and glamour to the Nevada desert. Because of the abundance of fresh water, Reno was already a way station for wagons and, increasingly, motorcars heading for the coast, and “The Biggest Little City in the World” would have been filled with miners, railroad men, drifters, grifters, working gals, entrepreneurs, students (the University of Nevada had been relocated there) and couples wanting quickie divorces. There were saloons and brothels and gambling dens until Oct. 1 of that year, when gaming was made illegal in the state. (It became legal again in 1931, after construction began on the Hoover Dam: The boys needed some way to blow their Depression-era paychecks, after all.)
In July 1910, however, the bets were still on, and at least 22,000 people packed a specially constructed stadium to see Jack Johnson, originally from Galveston, Texas – the son of freed slaves, and the first black world heavyweight champion boxer – square off against former champion James J. Jeffries.
For years white champions had refused to give Johnson the chance to contend for the title because of his color. But the “Galveston Giant” was a masterful self-promoter – the spiritual ancestor of Muhammad Ali – who knew exactly how to force the issue: by going to the press. After knocking out an earlier champion, the “Fighting Blacksmith” from New Zealand, Bob Fitzsimmons, in only two rounds, Johnson badgered the current champion Tommy Burns, of Hanover, Ontario, to defend his title by dissing him to sportswriters. After two years of ignoring Johnson’s public challenges, the Canadian relented, and in December 1908, in Sydney, Australia, Johnson pounded Burns for 14 rounds until police stopped the fight – as well as the movie camera that was filming the spectacle before the knockout blow was landed, so as not to show a white fighter falling at the hands of black man.
Now, in July 1910 – the summer of hate – the white boxing establishment was banking on the Reno fight ending in Johnson’s ignominious defeat, proving definitively that a Negro could not best a white man in the ring and make it stick. Indeed, boxing greats like John L. Sullivan, “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, Tom Sharkey and Joe Choynski threw their support to Johnson’s opponent, Jim Jeffries, the brawny outdoorsman who had taken the heavyweight crown from Bob Fitzsimmons in 1902 and was undefeated when he retired from the ring in 1905.
Jeffries had lived in Los Angeles since the age of 16, when his family moved there from Ohio in 1891. Now dubbed the “Great White Hope,” he was big, tough and fearless – and, given his size and build, had been amazingly fast and agile in his prime – but he had been out of training for the better part of five years. Nonetheless, Jeffries yielded to the urging of supporters to come out of retirement and put the uppity Johnson in his place in a contest tainted with bigotry that went far beyond sports: It cut to the heart of what American democracy and society were all about. This clash between two prizefighters, one white and one black, mirrored the one between white Americans’ sense of racial superiority, mental and physical, and black Americans’ aspirations to the social equality that had, in theory, been theirs since the Union victory over the Confederacy only 45 years earlier. It could even bring out the “dominant primordial beast” in an otherwise liberal socialist like Jack London, who made no bones about wanting to see Johnson get thrashed.
The “Fight of the Century” went 15 rounds before Jeffries – who had been knocked down twice for the first time in his pugilistic career – conceded defeat. Other Americans were not so inclined: Race riots across the country resulted in the deaths of 23 blacks, two whites and hundreds of injuries of people of both races. Moreover, to punish Johnson for his cockiness and his romantic liaisons with white women, he was pursued on trumped-up charges of violating the Mann Act, which made it a federal crime to transport a woman over state lines for “immoral” purposes. Johnson fled to Europe, relinquishing his title in 1915 to a Kansas cowboy named Jess Willard in the 22nd round of a 45-round bout in Havana, Cuba. (Johnson later maintained in a letter to Ring magazine publisher Nat Fleischer that he had “thrown” the fight.)
Jack Johnson returned to the United States in 1920, surrendered to federal authorities and served a year in Leavenworth. He died in 1946 after being denied service in a South Carolina diner, again because of his color: Infuriated, he peeled out of the restaurant parking lot, lost control of the car and hit a light pole. He died soon afterward, at age 68.
Johnson’s life was portrayed on the stage and then on-screen in the 1970 film “The Great White Hope,” starring James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars”), and was the subject of the 2004 Ken Burns documentary “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.”
Why am I telling you all this? For one thing, I think it’s important and timely as we come to the end of our first year as a nation with our first African-American president, and as we approach Black History Month in February.
For another: On July 4, 2010, the City of Reno will commemorate the centennial of the Johnson-Jeffries fight in a program of festivities that will include multimedia presentations, a dinner celebration, panel discussions, films, autograph sessions with past heavyweight champions, memorabilia auctions, book signings and a night of professional boxing. In addition, the organizers of the celebration are joining with civil rights groups and others to petition President Obama to pardon Johnson for his conviction under the Mann Act. (A resolution supporting the pardon was approved by Congress in July.)
I believe that this event, which I hope to attend, is of importance to all Americans – but also to collectors in various fields: African-American history, American social history, legal and constitutional issues, sports history and more. The organizers of the celebration are boxing historian Gary Schultz and USA Boxing executive director Mike Martino.
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How America has changed: Up through the ’40s and ’50s, boxing was second only to baseball as a spectator sport. Yet, while a lot of people today know Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, they don’t know Joe Louis or Jack Dempsey – much less Jack Johnson, who became the first African-American heavyweight champion of the world when he whupped Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Down Under, on Dec. 26, 1908. (Johnson successfully defended his title against former champ Jim Jeffries in “The Fight of the Century” in Reno on July 4, 1910, the centennial of which will be celebrated this summer. See “Unforgivably Jack” at AmeriCollector.com for more on the festivities.)
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