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16 Jack Johnson It may seem a bit odd to find a profile of the first black heavyweight boxing champion in these pages. Jack Johnson was one of the most inflammatory black men in America in the early 1900s, lionized by most blacks and despised by many whites. It is not generally known—and biographies omit to mention—that he visited the recording studios several times during his heyday, recording descriptions of his fights (including the famous “Great White Hope” fight in 1910), talking about his exploits outside the ring, and giving advice on health and fitness. Not only do we have silent films of this extraordinary athlete and lightning rod for racial tensions, we have his own voice describing his life and philosophy. Prizefighters in the early 1900s frequently exploited their fame by going into vaudeville. A glib, loquacious man and a major celebrity, Johnson spent many years on stage, both during and after his reign as heavyweight champ, giving exhibition bouts and spinning stories about the sports world. His recordings were a natural, if unusual, extension of this aspect of his career. John Arthur Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas, on March 31, 1878, the son of a caretaker and part-time preacher, and was said to be of pure African Coromante stock. An adventurous youth, he later claimed to have run away from home around 1890 with the intention of hoboing his way to New York City.1 His goal was to meet Steve Brodie, the man alleged to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. It is not known whether Johnson actually did meet Brodie; he spent the next several years bumming around the country, picking up odd jobs as a dishwasher or stable cleaner and trying to avoid the white thugs who frequented the railyards looking for black hobos to brutalize (a favorite tactic being to throw a victim under the rolling wheels of a train). Johnson also spent a good deal of time in libraries, museums, and art galleries, in part to educate himself, in part to keep warm.2 One journey took Johnson to the Northeast as a stowaway on a freighter, where a brutal white cook discovered him and beat him severely. According to his friend and biographer Robert deCoy, “Jack admitted that his humiliation and suffering aboard ship was the thing that had changed him from a happy-go-lucky, adventuresome boy into a hardened man, knowing his first hatred, preferring to die rather than be subjected to such cruelty at the hands of any white man again.”3 He also learned that not all whites were cruel. The passengers, learning of his mistreatment, took up a collection to pay his expenses for the remainder of the trip to Boston. From time to time Johnson made his way back to Galveston, but he had grown too large and strong to receive much discipline from his worried parents. They could do little more than look on as their strapping son supported himself though a series of odd jobs, including stable boy and bakery apprentice (he loved and became quite good at cooking). Johnson’s first amateur boxing matches are said to have occurred around 1893– 94. A job as sparring partner for black welterweight boxer Joe Walcott, “The Barba04 .235-334_Broo 12/17/03, 1:46 PM 237 238 lost sounds dos Demon” (not to be confused with “Jersey Joe” Walcott of the mid-twentieth century), introduced him to the world of big-time professional boxing. Boxing was one of the few arenas in which blacks were allowed to compete directly with whites, violently at that, and it offered the proud, strong young teenager (now six feet tall and 150 pounds) an opportunity to vent his rage in an acceptable forum. In Galveston he worked at a gym and fought many “pick-up” fights on the streets and docks of the city, slowly learning what would become his trade. By most accounts his first major bouts were in 1899, by which time the lanky fighter was known around town as “Li’l Arthur.” Around 1898 Johnson made a brief stab at settling down, moving in with a lightskinned black woman named Mary Austin (wife number 1).4 Cultured and refined, she disapproved of his fighting and eventually deserted him. He hit the road once again, to the West Coast and then Chicago, fighting small-time bouts and working as a sparring partner. He seldom lost a bout, and his...

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