African American History in New Mexico: Portraits from Five Hundred Years

9: Another White Hope Bites the Dust: The Jack Johnson–Jim Flynn Heavyweight Fight in 1912

124 9 Another White Hope Bites the Dust The Jack Johnson–Jim Flynn Heavyweight Fight in 1912 raymond wilson • • • On December 26, 1908, at Rushcutter’s Bay, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, a heavyweight championship bout pitted a black challenger against a white champion for the first time in boxing history. The black challenger, Jack Johnson, easily defeated the white champion, Tommy Burns, before a crowd of between eighteen and twenty thousand spectators . There was now a black heavyweight champion of the world, and the boxing world was aghast. The color line, which had so long barred blacks from fighting for titles, had been broken. Former champions John L. Sullivan and James J. Jeffries were disgusted. In an interview with a New York Times reporter, Jeffries commented that “Burns had no right to fight Johnson for the heavyweight championship.” Novelist Jack London, covering the fight for the New York Herald, wrote an account filled with racial insults and pleaded for Jim Jeffries, the retired undefeated champion, to avenge the white race and “to remove the golden smile from Jack Johnson’s face.” When Johnson returned to this country after his Australian triumph , he faced what John Lardner, in the New Yorker, described as a boxing public and press that were “in the first stage of the racial blues.” The search for a “White Hope” in the world of pugilism had begun, and Johnson did battle with all of them, including the great, undefeated , retired champion Jim Jeffries, who went down to the battering Another White Hope Bites the Dust 125 fists of Johnson at Reno, Nevada, before a crowd exceeding twenty thousand on July 4, 1910. This article concerns another “White Hope” match two years later, when Jack Johnson met Jim Flynn at Las Vegas, New Mexico. The confrontation is one of Johnson’s lesser known bouts, and accounts of it havebeenfraughtwitherror.ThesitewasinNewMexico,notLasVegas, Nevada, as several sources tend to indicate or imply. It was billed as “the battle of the century,” but it was a rout, both in terms of the quality of the fight itself and in terms of financial returns for the promoters. The new champion, John Arthur Johnson, fought his first recorded professional fight in 1897—a fourth-round knockout victory. By the time he fought Burns in 1908, Johnson had fought sixty-five fights, half of which were won by knockouts. He fought several of his hardest battles against some of the toughest black fighters of the era: Sam McVey, Joe Jeannette, and Sam Langford. After becoming champion, however, Johnson, following the tradition of past champions, drew the color line and refused to give these top black contenders a chance at the title. He did, as previously mentioned , fight the best “White Hopes” that boxing had to offer.1 For example, on October 16, 1909, in Colma, California, Johnson fought Stanley Ketchell. Johnson made an “arrangement” with Ketchell allowing him to stay the limit. Ketchell saw his chance in the twelfth round, however, and knocked Johnson down. Johnson was immediately back on his feet and hit Ketchell so hard that he was unconscious for over an hour. Two of Ketchell’s front teeth were broken off at the gums, and they were later discovered embedded in Johnson’s right glove. With the failure of Jim Jeffries to wrest the title from Johnson in 1910, the search for a “White Hope” continued. The next major bout scheduled for the champion pitted him against Jim Flynn, another acclaimed “White Hope.” The signing took place in Chicago in January 1912, but the actual site and date for the bout were not yet decided and would be speculated about in the press for several weeks. Such places as New York City; South Porcupine, Ontario; Wendover and Jawbridge , Nevada; Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Vegas, New Mexico; and Juarez, Mexico, were considered as possible sites by Jack Curley, promoter of the fight. Curley, who was also Flynn’s manager, remained silent on the location and date of the fight. Finally, on April 17, Curley 126 raymond wilson announced that the match would be held in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on July 4 and that it would be a forty-five-round contest. The man most responsible for getting the fight for Las Vegas, New Mexico, was Charles O’Malley, a colorful and prominent citizen who had headed the local fire department for several years, had formerly played professional...