Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

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[Cheering] [Ragtime music playing] Narrator: On the morning of July 4, 1910, 15 special trains pulled into the little desert town of Reno, Nevada.

Aboard were thousands of white men who had paid their way across the country to see a prizefight unlike any that had ever taken place before.

They had come to see their hero, the white ex-heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries, take back the title from the first African American ever to hold it: Jack Johnson.

It was, said the "Chicago Tribune," going to be a contest between the white man's hope and the Black peril.

Somehow, in the minds of many white Americans, this boxing match would decide whose country America really was; who was meant to be in charge.

For more than 13 years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African American on Earth.

He battled his way from obscurity to the top of the heavyweight ranks, won the greatest prize in American sports-- a prize that had always been the private preserve of white combatants-- then suffered persecution at the hands of his own government and years of exile before the title was taken from him.

And he did all these things during the years which marked the low point of African American life after emancipation.

Abandoned by the federal government, denied the vote if they lived below the Mason-Dixon line, and living under the constant threat of mob violence, Black Americans at the turn of the 20th century were no longer enslaved but not yet truly free.

Jack Johnson insisted on being free.

When whites ran everything, Jack Johnson took orders from no one.

While most African Americans struggled merely to survive, Jack Johnson reveled in his riches and his fame.

When Black Americans were expected to defer to whites, Jack Johnson battered them to the ground.

And at a time when the mere suspicion that a Black man had flirted with a white woman could cost him his life, Jack Johnson slept with whomever he pleased.

To most whites, and to some African Americans, Johnson was a perpetual threat: profligate, arrogant, amoral, a dark menace, and a danger to the natural order of things.

The real Jack Johnson was both more and less than those who loved or those who hated him ever knew.

"Just remember," he told a young reporter not long before he died, "whatever you write about me, that I was a man."

Man: See, Johnson was a pure individual.

He did everything exactly the way he wanted to do it.

And so I don't think it ever crossed his mind that he, Jack Johnson, should be anybody else's version of Jack Johnson.

Second man: What I liked about Jack, he's a self-defined man.

Jack didn't toe any lines.

I won't say that's what got him into trouble.

I think the society was in trouble, and Jack was just being himself.

He didn't present himself as the man of the people doing good for his people.

He didn't play that game, and he didn't play the game of "yassuh, boss," and cutting off his balls just to present himself as a nonthreatening creature off-ring.

There is nobody like Jack Johnson because, first thing, when Jack Johnson was fighting, he could have been killed at any of his major fights.

There were people out in the audience who probably were willing to murder him.

He knew it, they knew it, and everybody in the world knew it.

Jones: The story of Jack Johnson really is a story of hubris more than race or anything else.

Forget about race.

That was the color of the system, but that didn't define the system.

It was about power.

Man: "It might seem that I, "who have devoted nearly all the years of my life to boxing, "am stepping out of my role "when I presume to turn my attention "to subjects far removed from the stern business of pugilism.

"But even a boxer must come in contact with life "and its many problems.

"He sees the high and the low "and feels the bumps of the rough places "and the delight of the smooth ones.

"When he has been thrown into all classes of society, "when he has felt the stings of life as I have "and gloried in the triumphs that were mine, "he comes to know many things that are not in the category of sports and boxing."

[rooster crowing] Narrator: The man who many believe to be the greatest heavyweight of all time was born in Galveston, Texas on March 31, 1878-- the year after Reconstruction, the federal government's first attempt at enforcing civil rights for all citizens, had collapsed, leaving freed Blacks in the former confederacy to fend for themselves.

Jack Johnson's parents had done just that.

Former slaves, henry and tiny Johnson managed to find jobs in Galveston-- he as a school janitor, she as a laundress-- to earn enough money to purchase their own home, to raise 6 children, and to make sure that all 6 learned to read and write.

Jack Johnson had only 5 years of schooling, but he was filled with what he called "the dreams and desires that are common to youth."

And from the first, he saw himself as someone special.

At the age of 12, he claimed he ran away from home and headed for New York City.

His hero was a con man named Steve Brodie: a self-promoting Irish immigrant who had become famous when he claimed to have survived a leap from the brand-new Brooklyn Bridge.

Somehow, without help or permission from anyone, the young Johnson determined to go and meet him.

Man as Johnson: "I ran away as a kid.

"Stowed away on a cotton steamer and landed in New York.

"I didn't have a nickel.

"As the ship docked, I went on deck "and standing in the crowd of passengers "with my longest face and my saddest eyes, "I announced that I was a worthless colored boy "without friends, family, or money, "and was about to jump overboard.

"I walked to the rail and told everybody "to keep away from me!

"I'd allowed my old cap to fall on deck.

"As I turned to try my bluff at the fatal plunge, "a woman threw a dollar in my cap.

A shower of money followed."

Narrator: The boy gathered up his cash, made it to the bowery, shook his hero's hand, and went back to Galveston-- or so Johnson liked to remember.

Whether he really traveled all that way to meet his idol or only wished he had, the boy he described had many of the characteristics he would display as a grown man: independence, restlessness, an ability to improvise, to call attention to himself, and to get around rules meant to tie him down.

But Galveston offered him nothing.

He carried bags in a hotel, swept out a barbershop, loaded bales of cotton on the waterfront, and constantly searched for a way up and out.

Boxing would provide it.

Man: Boxing is a strange, strange sport.

Bottom line, it's legalized assault.

But it has given people throughout history a chance to better themselves.

And it's always been the sport-- if not of the dispossessed, of the lowest rung on any ladder.

Narrator: Jack Johnson would tell a thousand stories of how he got started: in a fight with a neighborhood bully, in a run-in with a brutal railroad detective, and by taking part in one of the most humiliating creations of the Jim Crow era, the battle royal-- a back-room spectacle in which 6 or 8 or 10 Black boys, often blindfolded, were set to punching one another while drunken white men jeered them on.

The last one standing got the prize: usually a fistful of tossed coins.

Jack Johnson was often the last one standing.

Strong, fast, and more than 6 feet tall at age 18, Johnson was devoting most of his time to boxing, earning more in one night than his father could all week.

He served as a sparring partner for veteran boxers and traveled to other towns in search of bouts, often riding the rails.

It was the beginning of a life on the road.

Man as Johnson: "Hard-boiled train crews "do not seem enthusiastic over having me as a passenger.

"If I ventured into the streets of some of the smaller towns, "where a stranger was quickly discovered, "police officers and constables manifested deep concern in me.

"In fact, they were generally so deeply interested that I remained as a guest of the town."

Narrator: It was a tough life negotiating Jim Crow America, but Johnson was making $5 or $10 or $15 a night taking on other Black fighters, and he had become a part of the underground, dangerous, exhilarating world of boxing.

Man: "This contest of men with padded gloves "is a sport that belongs unequivocally "to the English-speaking race.

"It is no superficial thing, "a fad of a moment or a generation.

"It is as deep as our consciousness "and is woven into the fibers of our being.

"This is the ape and the tiger in us, granted, but it is in us, isn't it?"

Jack London.

Narrator: Prizefighting was a largely illicit enterprise at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was followed obsessively by men of every class.

New rules now required boxers to wear gloves, and rounds were carefully timed.

[bell rings] But bouts were often fixed.

There were no boxing commissions, no ringside doctors.

Fights were sometimes held in farmers' fields or on offshore barges to keep lawmen away.

In order for a fight to go forward, everyone involved had to pretend they were putting on a scientific demonstration.

[punches landing, men grunting] [crowd cheering] Sugar: At the turn of the century, boxing was one of the 3 big sports.

There was horse racing, baseball, and boxing.

And it dominated the sports page, such as it was.

Boxing then was still a little bit in its infancy.

In many states, it was outlawed-- pure and simple, outlawed.

Narrator: But even those who deplored boxing knew the name of the heavyweight champion of the world-- the Boston strong boy, the monarch of the prize ring, John L. Sullivan.

His mustached portrait hung in almost every saloon in America.

Sugar: John L. Sullivan gave the heavyweight champion its sort of imprimatur.

He called it the strongest man in the world.

It was the singular most important title in the world, outside of being a general or a president.

Man: Sullivan really, in America, made this championship mean something.

He made being a boxing champion-- you suddenly became sort of like the emperor of masculinity.

That's what you were.

You became a hero figure.

Narrator: "I go in to win from the very first second," John L. Sullivan liked to say.

"Win I must, and win I shall."

And win he did, defending his title against every blacksmith, tugboat captain, iron puddler, and gandy dancer who dared accept his challenge that "I can beat any son of a bitch in the world."

Any son of a bitch, that is, provided he was white.

"I will not fight a Negro," Sullivan announced after he won the title.

"I never have and never shall."

For Sullivan and millions of his followers, the twisted logic of white supremacy dictated that the heavyweight champion of the world had to be a white man.

Black fighters were allowed to fight whites in every other instance, but giving a Black man a chance at the heavyweight title was too big a risk to take.

Early: Sullivan drew the color line in part because it was the racism of the time.

It's a very difficult time in America to be a Black person.

Almost the construction of an American apartheid has taken place.

By the 1890s, lynchings in the United States are averaging 150 a year.

Sullivan very much thought of himself as the white champion, and that was extremely important not only to him, but to his fans, that he not fight a Black man.

It meant in essence that Blacks were nonbeings, nonentities.

They did not count in this.

Narrator: In February of 1901, a veteran boxer named Joe Choynski came to Galveston ostensibly to give boxing lessons to members of the Galveston Athletic Club, but actually to take on a promising young hopeful.

It was Jack Johnson.

Once the bell rang, it was clear that Choynski had lost some of his speed but none of his skill.

"In the third round," the older man remembered, "I knocked Johnson out with a left hook to the right eye."

At that moment, 5 Texas rangers rushed into the ring and arrested both boxers for engaging in an illegal contest.

They spent 23 days in jail together-- two days longer than a man who killed his wife, Johnson remembered-- during which time, the old master took it upon himself to teach the younger man some of his tricks: jabbing, feinting, slipping punches.

"A man who can move like you," Choynski told Johnson, "should never have to take a punch."

Johnson took his advice to heart, and after he was released, he moved on to Memphis, Chicago, Boston, California, in search of bigger purses and better opponents.

[punches landing] Crouch: What a boxer ideally wants to do in the ring is turn the opponent into an assistant in his own ass-whipping.

That's really what you want the other guy to do-- to assist you in whipping his ass.

Now, Jack Johnson, it seems to me, figured out ways of getting people into positions where they could be hit and do different kinds of things to throw them off-balance and to do the same kind of things that magicians do.

The magician is always trying to get you to look in a different direction from where the trick is actually being brought off.

Narrator: Johnson was beginning to develop his own distinctive style in the ring: smooth, laid-back, defensive.

He took few chances, picking off his opponents' punches with his gloves, waiting for the other man to make mistakes, then counterpunching or tying him up.

It was not a style calculated to appeal to those fans who had paid to see a brawl, but it baffled his opponents and won him fights.

Man: See, Jack Johnson knew when to punch and where to punch.

You know, Muhammad Ali never threw a punch below the jaw.

He punched from here up.

He used to make... Jack Johnson, too-- he used to make guys miss by pulling back.

And that's a no-no in boxing, because pulling back is like being in the train track and then a train's coming.

You don't want to be hit by a train.

What do you do?

You don't move back because the train, eventually, is gonna hit you.

You move to one side, or you move to the other.

But Johnson and Ali did not move to this side or this side.

They went back, but the train never caught up with them.

Narrator: When Jim Corbett, the man who took the heavyweight title from John L. Sullivan, had displayed some of the same defensive skills as Jack Johnson did, sports writers praised him as the cleverest man in boxing: Gentleman Jim.

But when Johnson fought that way, he was said to be lazy, shiftless, showing the yellow streak which all African Americans were supposed to share.

Man: With Black boxers, every trait that was a positive trait, they tried to turn it into a negative trait.

If a Black boxer was tough and could withstand punishment, well, he could withstand punishment because his skull was thicker, because he was insensitive to pain; that it really was a sign of some larger inferiority.

If he was a smart boxer, a wily boxer, then he was slightly deceptive.

Then there was something untrustworthy about his activity in the ring.

For a group of people to be enslaved for hundreds of years, doing manual labor every day, and end up being called lazy, and not the people who were sitting on the porch drinking the mint juleps, that's a real phenomenon in itself.

Narrator: White theories about Blacks meant nothing to Jack Johnson.

He just kept fighting and winning.

By 1902 he had won at least 27 times, fighting other up-and-coming heavyweights-- white as well as Black.

He was making good money now-- sometimes as much as $1,000 a fight-- but he was growing restless, and he had set his sights on the biggest and most impossible prize of them all.

Against all odds, Jack Johnson was determined to be the heavyweight champion of the world.

Man: "It was easy to like Jack Johnson in those days.

"I was, of course, impressed by his huge and perfect form, "his terrible strength, "and the supreme ease and grace of his every muscular movement.

"However, watching his face, sad until he smiled, "listening to his soft Southern speech and laughter, "and hearing him talk so wistfully "about his big chance yet to come, "I found it difficult to think of him as a prizefighter."

James Weldon Johnson.

Narrator: On May 16, 1902, at the age of 24, Johnson got his first big break: a fight in Los Angeles with Jack Jeffries, the younger brother of the current heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries.

Jack Jeffries resembled a Greek god, the "Los Angeles Times" reassured its readers, while Johnson was just a good-natured Black animal; a long, lean, bullet-headed, flat-chested coon.

Man: "Mistah Johnsing is one of those Africans "who look too Black to have the heart of a fighter, "but he has not yet shown the white feather.

"Still, if there is a favorite, the white man is it.

"He certainly has a host of well-wishers here, and his would be a popular victory."

"Los Angeles Times."

Narrator: Jack Jeffries shared his brother's last name but none of his talent.

Johnson toyed with him for 5 rounds, knocked him out, then helped carry him to his corner.

Seated at ringside was the heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries.

Johnson leaned over and told the champion he could whip him, too.

Few would have put money on that.

Jim Jeffries was a fearsome fighter and a legend to his fans.

A big, hard-hitting, one-time boilermaker, he had twice knocked out the great Jim Corbett, once kept a grizzly bear as a pet, and was said to have drunk an entire case of whiskey in two days to cure himself of pneumonia.

Jeffries had fought and beaten Black boxers before winning the title, but now as champion, he, too, drew the color line.

"When there are no white men left to fight," Jeffries said, "I will quit the business."

Man: "This fellow Johnson is a fair fighter, "but he is a Black, "and for that reason I will never fight him.

"If I were not champion, "I would as soon meet a Negro as any other man, "but the title will never go to a Black man if I can help it."

Jim Jeffries.

Narrator: Meanwhile, there were still more victories and more headlines for Jack Johnson.

In Los Angeles in February of 1903, Johnson beat Denver Ed Martin to win the unofficial Negro heavyweight championship.

He then defeated the other 3 best Black heavyweights of his day: Sam McVey... Joe Jennette... and Sam Langford.

Sportswriters liked to refer to Johnson as "the dinge," "the Ethiopian," and "The Big Smoke," but they were paying attention now, and Johnson provided good copy.

They wrote about his finely tailored suits, the gold caps he had placed on his front teeth, the grand way he handed out nickels to newsboys after every win.

He was what was called a "sport," at home in the uniquely integrated world of gamblers, fixers, high fashion, and fast women that have always surrounded the fight game.

A great word that we have lost is the "sport."

Everything had to be larger than life.

The sport drank in a certain way.

He dressed larger than life.

He wore diamond stickpins.

He wore wide lapels.

They frequented houses of prostitution.

If they were married, you couldn't tell.

They were in the know.

And Jack Johnson was the quintessential sport.

Crouch: You look at Jack Johnson and say, "Jack Johnson was sharp."

I mean, everything he had on: the shoes he picked, the socks he wore, the cut of his pants, the cut of his jackets, the shirts, the ties.

He was always--the hats-- he was always much sharper than they were.

So, he's like this big Black Beau Brummell in these beautiful clothes and smiling with his gold teeth at the camera as if, "I'm here, and you're not."

Narrator: Somewhere along the way, Johnson had met a young Black woman named Mary Austin, who traveled with him for a time.

Although they were never actually married, she was introduced everywhere as his wife.

She would be the first of many Mrs.

Jack Johnsons.

Later, Mary would be replaced by a prostitute, a sporting woman named Clara Kerr, with whom he moved to an all-white neighborhood in Bakersfield, California.

When local merchants had him arrested for being slow to pay his bills, a reporter revealed what else was behind it.

It is said that Jack had made himself somewhat obnoxious to various persons who are unhappy that he is living in the forbidden district.

Johnson stayed put.

And when his white manager suggested that he and Clara were getting above themselves, Johnson fired him.

He never saw any reason to take orders from anybody, a position that put him at odds with the most powerful Black man in America.

Man: "In all things that are purely social, "we can be as separate as the fingers "yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

Booker T. Washington.

Narrator: An ex-slave who ran the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Booker T. Washington argued that the best way for African Americans to better themselves economically was to accept the separation of the races, at least for the foreseeable future.

That didn't sit well with some African Americans who were born after slavery.

They called themselves new Negroes.

Jack Johnson was a new Negro.

Man as Johnson: "White people often point "to the writings of Booker T. Washington "as the best example of a desirable attitude "on the part of the colored population.

"I had never been able to agree "with the point of view of Washington "because he has, to my mind, "not been altogether frank in his statement of the problems "or courageous in his solution to them.

"I have found no better way of avoiding race prejudice "than to act with people of other races as if prejudice did not exist."

Jack Johnson.

Man: "Los Angeles Times."

"Jack Johnson is now the logical opponent for champion Jeffries.

"The color-line gag does not go now.

"Johnson has met all comers in his class, "has defeated each and every one.

"Now he stands ready to box for the world's championship.

"When they meet, the world will see a battle "before which the gladiatorial combats of ancient Rome "pale into childish insignificance.

"And meet they someday will.

It's up to Jeffries to say when."

Narrator: By the end of 1903, Jack Johnson's talents could not be ignored.

Even the "Police Gazette," the most influential sporting paper in the country, began to call on Jeffries to give Johnson a chance.

But Jim Jeffries continued to say no.

One night in October 1904, Johnson cornered the champion in a San Francisco saloon and demanded a shot at the title.

Jeffries refused again to meet Johnson or any other Black challenger in the ring.

But the champion put $2,500 on the bar and told Jack Johnson he'd fight him in the cellar alone.

If Johnson could manage to make it back up the stairs, he could keep the money.

Johnson stalked out.

"I ain't a cellar fighter," he said.

Finally, in 1905, Jeffries declared that since he had now eliminated all logical opponents, by which he meant white ones, he would retire undefeated to his farm outside Burbank, California, and grow alfalfa.

First, though, he would referee a contest between two white challengers.

The heavyweight title would go to the winner.

A fighter named Marvin Hart won, only to lose the championship two years later to a young Canadian, Noah Brusso, who fought under the name of Tommy Burns.

Like Jeffries, Burns was unwilling to give Jack Johnson a chance.

If Johnson had been frustrated before Jim Jeffries retired, he was coldly angry afterwards.

Johnson sometimes took it easy on Black opponents, turning prizefights into mere exhibitions.

He fought his friend Joe Jennette 5 times in one year.

But lesser white opponents who dared to get into the ring with Johnson often received very different treatment.

He savaged Jack Monroe; knocked Joe Grim down more than 20 times; knocked out Charlie Haghey in one round; demolished former heavyweight champion Bob Fitzsimmons in two.

When John L. Sullivan, the old champion, helped groom a one-time wrestler named kid cutler especially to defeat Johnson, Johnson did away with him in the first round, then shouted to Sullivan, "how'd you like that, Captain John?"

Lincoln [indistinct] once observed that American virtuosity is based upon making something difficult look easy.

That's one of the Negro's best skills.

And I think that that may really have irritated people, because, you know, Johnson was supposed to have-- sometimes when boxing some guy, he'd hold him and say to his white girlfriend in the first row, "say, baby, what round you want me to knock this chump out in?"

"Knock him out in 4, Jack."

"OK."

"What round is it, baby?"

"Fourth round, Jack."

Splat!

Bam!

Now, if that's true and not just legend, that really had to irritate people.

Narrator: Johnson was a nationally known personality now, but there was much more below the surface that the public rarely saw.

He was an avid reader and a student of history, an admirer of Napoleon, who, like him, had risen to fame from nowhere.

He was endlessly curious, dabbled in inventions and would eventually hold a patent for a wrench to fix the fast cars he now loved to drive.

He had a new and well-connected manager named Sam Fitzpatrick, and if a fair chance at the championship continued to elude him, he was still fighting top fighters all over the country, now earning up to $3,000 a night and spending nearly every dollar he made.

His private life had begun to change as well.

Clara Kerr had run off with an old friend of his, and Johnson had begun to travel openly with white women.

His most frequent companion now was another sporting woman from New York named Hattie McClay.

When Johnson was warned to be more discreet, he was unrepentant.

"I have the right to choose who my mate shall be without the dictation of any man," he said.

"I am not a slave."

Later he would write, "Because my ancestors came here "before anyone had dreamed of a United States, I consider myself a pure-blooded American."

Much of the anger and resentment directed at Jack Johnson throughout his life would be caused by what one African American writer called "his unforgivable Blackness."

Between 1901 and 1910, 846 Americans were lynched in the United States.

754 of them were African Americans-- some murdered merely because someone had whispered that they had been too familiar with white women.

Man as Johnson: "I chased Tommy Burns around the world "in order to get him into the ring with me.

"It was a two-year job.

"I took on every potential contender "between myself and the champion.

I virtually had to mow my way to Burns."

"Always he made excuses, "and he openly insulted me by uttering unprintable remarks and calling me yellow."

Narrator: Rather than face Jack Johnson, the champion Tommy Burns took on a series of white challengers.

He fought and knocked out one man 3 different times while continuing to tell reporters, "all coons are yellow."

But Johnson refused to be ignored.

Everywhere Burns went, San Francisco to New York... New York to Paris... Paris to London... Johnson went, too, mocking the champion, questioning his courage, demanding his right to be tested in the ring, and provoking the foreign press.

Man: "With money in his pocket "and physical triumph over white men in his heart, "he displays all the gross and overbearing insolence "which makes what we call the buck nigger insufferable.

"He is one of the comparatively few men of African blood who, "in a half-perceiving way, "desire to make the white man pay for the undoubted ill-treatment of his forbears."

Narrator: But Johnson's skills were undeniable, and Burns' increasingly desperate efforts to duck him began to win Johnson public sympathy.

King Edward VII himself, an avid boxing fan, is said to have dismissed the Canadian champion as a mere bluffer.

Burns was a good fighter, and did not draw the color line exactly.

He simply put a price on it, refusing to consider breaking it for less than $30,000, a sum so vast he was sure no one would ever come up with it.

He was wrong.

In the fall of 1908, a flamboyant Australian promoter who had done everything from sell pies to serve in Parliament, put up the money.

His name was Hugh "Huge Deal" McIntosh.

Now suddenly the people behind Johnson are saying, "$30,000, Tommy, $30,000.

We will pay you $30,000 to fight Jack Johnson."

Narrator: Burns had run out of excuses.

He accepted the 30,000 plus the lion's share of the proceeds that would come from showing movies of the contest.

John L. Sullivan was livid.

"Shame on Burns," he said, "for upsetting good American precedent."

Johnson was to be paid just $5,000, but he'd gotten his chance.

The fight was set for the day after Christmas, 1908, in Sydney, Australia.

Man: "This battle may, in the future, "be looked back upon "as the first great battle of an inevitable race war.

"There is more in this fight to be considered than the pugilistic title of champion of the world."

"The Australian Star."

Narrator: "I'll beat this nigger," the champion told the press, "Or my name isn't Tommy Burns."

It wasn't, of course.

His real name was Noah Brusso.

One Australian sportswriter declared that the fight would pit white beauty against Black unloveliness, but Australian women flocked to Johnson's training camp just to have a look at him.

Man as Johnson: "How does Burns want it?

"Does he want it fast and willing?

"I'm his man in that case.

"Does he want it flatfooted?

"Goodness, if he does, why, I'm his man again.

"Anything to suit.

But fast or slow, I'm gonna win."

Narrator: In the evenings, Johnson put on impromptu after-dinner shows at the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, playing his bass fiddle.

Among the newspapermen assigned to the big fight was the celebrity novelist Jack London.

He had been a mill worker and a hobo, a convict, a sailor, and a luckless gold miner before becoming a writer.

And he was a committed socialist.

His solidarity with the workingman, however, did not extend to Black people.

Man as London: "Personally, I am with Burns all the way.

"He is a white man, and so am I.

"Naturally, I want to see the white man win.

"Put the case to Johnson "and ask him if he were the spectator at a fight "between a white man and a Black man which he would like to see win."

Jack London.

Sugar: The stadium was right outside of Sydney in a place called Rushcutters Bay.

And they packed it with nary a Black face in it and with the understanding that if it got out of hand, the local constabulary would come in and stop the fight.

Narrator: The fight was scheduled for 20 3-minute rounds.

As Johnson waited to be introduced, some in the crowd jeered and cursed at him.

He showed no sign that he heard them, bowing grandly in all directions, even blowing kisses to the crowd.

The referee was Huge Deal McIntosh himself.

[bell rings] The opening bell rang at 11:07 in the morning.

"Here I am, Tommy," Johnson said as he came forward.

"Who told you I was yellow?"

Within a few seconds, Burns was on the floor.

Burns got up... and was knocked down again.

Man as Johnson: "Burns was a strong fellow "and had a good right-hand punch, but I had forgotten more about boxing than Burns ever knew."

[crowd cheering] Narrator: Burns called Johnson a cur, a big dog.

"Come on and fight, nigger," he said.

"Fight like a white man."

Man as Johnson: "Burns started it by calling me a yellow cur "and other language "which it would be impossible for me to report.

"I only kidded him in a nice way, "but he used the other sort of language.

"If I had killed Burns for the language he used to me, I would have been fully justified."

Narrator: Burns and his cornermen kept up a torrent of racial abuse.

Johnson just smiled back and gave as good as he got.

He pointed to parts of his own body-- his stomach, his sides.

"Hit here, Tommy," he said, "Hit here."

Whenever Burns tried, Johnson battered him again.

[bell rings] Roberts: And then he starts to emasculate him.

You know, he starts saying things like, "Where did you learn to punch, Tommy?

"Did your mother teach you how to punch?

"You punch like a woman.

You punch like a girl.

What's the matter, Tommy?"

And the crowd's hearing this, and Jack Johnson, he's almost bored with the fight.

He's talking to people in the crowd.

He's talking to people in Burns' corner.

That's more of a fight than what's taking place in the ring.

Sugar: Johnson never ceased smiling when the uncomplimentary remarks were addressed to him, nor did he cease smiling as he proceeded to wallop the naughty boy for his impertinence, but wallop him he did, in so smiling and summary a fashion as to take the steam out of Burns' verbal punches.

Roberts: And he just keeps grinding him down, round after round after round... exposing the fallacies of all the beliefs that Americans held-- the Americans held-- about Black fighters.

Narrator: Time and again, when Burns seemed about to fall, Johnson held him up so he could punish him some more.

Some in the crowd now began to shout, "stop the fight.

Stop the fight."

Man as London: "Stop the fight?

"The word is a misnomer.

"There was no fight.

"No Armenian massacre "would compete with the hopeless slaughter "that took place in the Sydney stadium.

"The fight, if fight it could be called, "was like that between a colossus and a toy automaton; "of a grown man cuffing a naughty child.

"So far as damage was concerned, Burns never landed a blow.

"A dewdrop had more chance in hell "than he with the giant Ethiopian.

"It was not a case of too much Johnson but of all Johnson."

Jack London.

[bell rings] Narrator: Finally, in the 14th round, as Johnson moved in for the kill... the police stopped the fight to save Burns further humiliation and ordered the movie cameras to stop grinding.

Man: When finally Burns is about to be knocked out, the world is spared the spectacle of a Black man knocking out a white man.

And the world is denied access to this historical moment because the white supremacy of the universe in 1908 is so demented and extreme, the knockout is stopped, and the film is stopped.

[bell rings] Narrator: Huge Deal McIntosh declared Jack Johnson the winner.

Burns later claimed the fight had been stopped too soon.

"The big nigger," he told reporters, "was tiring fast."

Johnson laughed it off.

"Burns is the easiest fighter I ever met," he said.

"I could have put him away quicker, "but I wanted to punish him.

I had my revenge."

At the age of 30, after 14 long years in the ring, Jack Johnson was the heavyweight champion of the world.

Man as Johnson: "I had attained my life's ambition.

"The little Galveston colored boy "had defeated the world's champion boxer, "and for the first and only time in history, "a Black man held one of the greatest honors which exists in the field of sports and athletics."

"To me, it was not a racial triumph, "but almost immediately the hue and cry went up because a colored man was holding the championship."

Oh, my goodness, a Black heavyweight champion of the world for the first time in the history of boxing.

It was--oh, no.

It was an offense--ha!-- to the white man.

It didn't seem possible to have such a thing.

The press reacted as if Armageddon was here, that this may be the moment when it all starts to fall apart for white society.

Narrator: "No event in 40 years," said the Richmond, Virginia "Planet," "has given more satisfaction "to the colored people of this country than has the signal victory of Jack Johnson."

But disappointed white fans now declared Johnson an impostor.

Tommy Burns had never been champion at all, they now argued.

The rightful title owner remained Jim Jeffries.

No one had taken his crown from him.

After all, he had retired undefeated.

Jeffries' admirers believed him invincible, so strong that he shattered people's hands when he shook them; broke the jaws and splintered the ribs of his opponents; and never hit anyone as hard as he could for fear of killing them.

Man as London: "A golden smile tells the story, "and the golden smile is Johnson's.

"But one thing remains: "Jeffries must emerge from his alfalfa farm "and remove that smile from Johnson's face.

Jeff, it's up to you."

Jack London.

Narrator: In March of 1909, Jack Johnson and Hattie McClay arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, fresh from the triumph in Sydney.

Johnson told the waiting reporters that he was willing to defend his title against Jim Jeffries or any other man.

He acted as if he was on top of the world, but things were not quite as they seemed.

He had to fire his white manager Sam Fitzpatrick after a quarrel about the presence of Hattie McClay.

"Before Johnson won the title, he would feed out of my hand," Fitzpatrick said.

Now he was a hard man to handle.

And when the American press saw that the heavyweight champion of the world was traveling with a white woman, all hell broke loose.

The finest hotel in Victoria refused him a room.

So did 5 of its competitors.

Then when word that he was traveling with a white woman reached his hometown of Galveston, the city fathers canceled a grand homecoming parade that had been planned in his honor.

Johnson tried to smooth things over by telling the press that Hattie was only partly white and came from Mississippi.

It wasn't true, but Johnson thought his private life was nobody's business.

He didn't hide the fact that he was attracted to women and to white women, and he didn't hide the fact that they were attracted to him.

He sort of made that as part of his persona.

But it was very, very threatening also at the time, and that's why he got in such an enormous amount of trouble.

Narrator: The trouble came from both sides of the color line.

Man: "It is reported that Jack Johnson has married "a woman who is not a member of his people.

"If that report is true, then Jack Johnson is wrong, "entirely wrong.

"And that point of order is raised and sustained "by every sensible and self-respecting Negro "of this country.

"Johnson was born and reared in the South, "where his relatives ill reside.

"And if he could not find a woman of his race "suitable for a wife, then he ought to have died a celibate."

"Nashville Globe."

Narrator: Johnson lived on the South Side of Chicago now, already home to thousands of Black refugees from the Jim Crow South... and soon to become one of the largest Black communities in the country.

He bought his widowed mother a handsome house at 3344 South Wabash Avenue.

But he rarely stayed home.

He had a new manager: a man named George Little, with political connections, who knew his way around the South Side vice district called the Levee.

The levee was home to 500 saloons and 500 whorehouses.

Johnson was welcome almost everywhere, but one door in Chicago was barred to him-- the Everleigh Club, at 2131 Dearborn.

It was the most opulent bordello outside of new Orleans.

All the women who worked there were white.

So were all of the customers.

But one March evening in 1909, with the help of George Little, Jack Johnson managed to get inside.

Later that night, Johnson persuaded 3 of the club's employees to accompany him to a hotel.

That spring, at least 6 more women followed.

All 9 would lose their jobs for sleeping with the heavyweight champion.

One of them, 23-year-old Belle Schreiber, a policeman's daughter from Milwaukee who said she preferred the sporting life to the stenography for which she had been trained, became Johnson's new favorite.

Now, both she and Hattie McClay went with him whenever and wherever he asked them to go.

Crouch: There's one story that some guy asked Johnson what was it about Black guys that attracted white women to them?

And Johnson, with a straight face, said, "we eat cold eels and think distant thoughts."

Ha ha ha!

Now, anybody who would say that, it's almost impossible to hate him.

What does that mean?

It doesn't mean anything, right?

But it's the perfect answer.

[jazz music playing] Narrator: Johnson roared around town as if there were no speed limits.

He turned over once, demolishing his car, walked away unscathed, and had bought himself a brand-new one by noon the next day.

He would be fined for speeding scores of times over the years-- sometimes because he really was going too fast, sometimes simply because white policemen couldn't stand to see a Black man behind the wheel of a costly racing car.

Roberts: There's the story once that Jack Johnson was driving, as he always did, too fast through Georgia, through some dusty red clay section of Jim Crow South, and he--he was stopped by a policeman.

And the policeman said, "Where you going so fast, boy?

That's gonna cost you."

Jack Johnson said, "How much?"

And he said, "$50."

And Jack Johnson pulled out a roll-- I mean, a heavyweight championship, a roll to fit the hand of a heavyweight champion-- and peeled off a $100 bill and gave it to the trooper and said, "There."

And the trooper said, "I can't change a 100."

And Johnson said, "Keep the change.

I'm coming back the same way I went through."

Narrator: Johnson also joined a touring vaudeville troupe, following a tradition among champions started by John L. Sullivan.

He danced, joked, shadowboxed, and sometimes played the bass.

The money was good-- $1,300 a week-- 1.5 times what the average workingman made in a year.

But working conditions were tough.

He was barred from the heated dressing rooms used by white performers; sometimes forced to dress in the cellar.

Theater managers tried to shortchange him.

He threatened to kill one if he didn't come up with the $2,500 he claimed to be owed.

The man paid up.

Later, he got in trouble in New York City for having beaten up a smaller man in a drunken argument.

When he was served with a summons, he threw it on the floor.

Friends began to worry more and more about what might happen if stories of his erratic behavior and relationships with white women continued to spread.

Johnson simply ignored them.

Man as Johnson: "If and suppose-- "two small words, "but nobody has ever been able to explain them.

"One man falls out of bed and is killed.

"Another falls from a 50-foot scaffold and lives.

"One man gets shot in the leg and is killed.

"Another gets a bullet in the brain and lives.

I always take a chance on my pleasures."

Jack Johnson.

Narrator: At the Coney Island racetrack one spring afternoon in 1909, Johnson met somebody new.

Etta Duryea was different.

She was from a well-to-do Brooklyn family; the troubled wife of a wealthy racecourse patron.

Soon, she became the most important woman in his entourage, living with him-- as others had before-- as Mrs.

Jack Johnson.

It turned out to be a lonely life.

Public appearances at Johnson's side we rare and always freighted with danger.

Whites shunned her for consorting with a Black man.

Black women were hostile for the same reason.

Everyone stared.

She spent most of her time in the hotel room waiting for her lover, who continued to travel with Hattie McClay, Belle Schreiber, and sometimes other women as well.

Etta often consoled herself with champagne.

Twice, she tried to kill herself.

Man as Johnson: "There have been countless women in my life "they have participated in my triumphs "and suffered with me in my moments of disappointment.

"They have inspired me to attainment, "and they have bought me.

"They have caused me joy, "and they have heaped misery upon me.

"They have been faithful to the utmost, "and they have been faithless.

"They have praised and loved me, "and they have hated and denounced me.

"Always a woman has swayed me.

"Sometimes many have demanded my attention at the same moment."

Jack Johnson.

Crouch: Well, in America, you have a couple of myths about paradise lost.

One of them is your childhood, which is seriously a myth, and the other one is that things used to be great below the Mason-Dixon line, which is an even bigger myth than a happy childhood.

So I think that in some way, that Great White Hope, that returning the title back to its rightful ethnic group, connects to the lost cause of the South--the Civil War-- and all of those desires to get things back to normal, I.E., us on top, them below us.

Sugar: There became something called the White Hope era.

Plowboys, gandy dancers, ranchers... anyone of the right complexion who was 175 pounds or over was thought to be a challenger.

"We need somebody."

And they came out of the woodwork, out of the circus tents, out of everywhere.

And they were terrible.

Narrator: With Jim Jeffries staying stubbornly on his farm, promoters scoured the continent for alternative white challengers.

In the heat of the search, one sportswriter recalled, well-muscled white boys more than 6' 2" tall were not safe out of their mother's sight.

One by one, Johnson demolished them all.

The first was a young man named Victor McLaglen.

Johnson toyed with him, not even bothering to sit down between rounds.

Mclaglen, grateful for Johnson's kindly treatment, went on to become a movie actor and win an Academy Award for his performance in John Ford's "The Informer."

In the months to come, Johnson beat Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, Tony Ross, and Big Al Kaufman.

And then, in October of 1909, having run out of likely white heavyweights he took on the middleweight champion of the world: the Michigan Assassin, Stanley Ketchel.

Ketchel weighed 25 pounds less than Johnson and stood 3 inches shorter.

To fool the public into thinking they were more or less the same size, Ketchel dressed for the photographers in a specially constructed oversized coat and cowboy boots with built-in lifts.

But Ketchel's size was deceptive.

He was a savage brawler, a tumultuous ferocious person-- according to one heavyweight who barely survived a fight with him-- and he had an appetite for women that nearly matched Johnson's own.

The two men were old friends.

They had gambled and drunk and haunted whorehouses together for years.

Man: Stanley Ketchel was a great middleweight-- one of the all-time great middleweights-- and was a great fighter and a hungry fighter and a street-fighter kind of a guy.

And Jack Johnson outweighed him and outreached him and everything else, so I think this was probably a fight where they just wanted to go along and have a good time and everybody would get paid.

Narrator: The fight was scheduled for 20 rounds.

The longer it lasted, the more likely fight fans would pay to see it replayed at the movies.

Johnson was said to have promised the promoters not to knock Ketchel out, and the volatile Ketchel promised not to try to win.

[bell rings] As the rounds ticked by, Johnson picked off Ketchel's lunges... counterpunched whenever he felt like it, chatted with ringsiders... and cheerfully carried his smaller challenger.

[bell rings] In the 12th, Ketchel strayed from the script.

Out of nowhere, he threw a right hand as hard as he could.

It proved to be a tactical error.

Early: Ketchel sees an opening and levels Johnson and knocks him down.

Big mistake!

Huge mistake!

I mean, Ketchel is just a middleweight.

Johnson is a heavyweight, plus, he'd be-- you know, Johnson felt, "oh, god, this guy is-- this isn't in the script."

OK, he gets up, and he knocks Ketchel out.

It was a punch that was so powerful, he took out Ketchel's teeth, and in fact, there were a couple of the teeth embedded in Johnson's glove.

But he knocked him cold.

The moral of that story is, follow the script, especially when you're fighting a guy who's bigger and better than you are.

Sugar: It was obvious now, Ketchel being the best white fighter out there, that there was only one answer.

It's up to you, Jeff.

It was a theory by many that Jeffries still was the heavyweight champion.

He had not lost his title in the ring, which was the accepted rule.

He still was, in their minds' eye, even lo, these 6 years later, the champion of the world.

Man as Johnson: "It amuses me to hear this talk "of Jeffries claiming the championship.

"When a mayor leaves office, he's an ex-mayor, isn't he?

"When a champion leaves the ring, "he's an ex-champion.

"Well, that is Jeffries.

"If he wants to try to get the championship back, then I'm willing to take him on."

Narrator: The pressure on the 34-year-old Jim Jeffries to return to the ring was growing.

But he liked farming, and now weighed nearly 300 pounds.

Still, hundreds of letters flooded his farm.

The honor of the white race was at stake.

Only he could save it.

He was, they said, "The Great White Hope."

Finally, Jeffries gave in and began to train for a showdown with Jack Johnson.

All the top promoters in the sport bid for the right to stage it.

In the end, a former horse wrangler and United States marshal named Tex Rickard won.

Rickard guaranteed $101,000 plus most of the lucrative motion-picture rights.

The winner would get 2/3 of the total.

Each man would also receive a $10,000 bonus upon signing.

No one had ever seen that kind of money in boxing before.

Roberts: I think Jeffries came out of retirement for a few reasons.

Number one was money.

$100,000 isn't chump change, certainly in 1910.

Number two is... I think all this talk about, "Jeff, America's depending on you.

"The white race is depending on you.

"Nobody else can do it.

"We've had two years of Great White Hopes, "and they've been Great White Jokes.

"We need you.

You are special, Jeff.

You can still do it.

You can beat this guy."

And number 3... very few athletes want to retire.

Narrator: The fight was scheduled to take place in San Francisco on the Fourth of July, 1910.

But from the moment the fight was announced, there was opposition.

Man: "If the Black man wins, "thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers "will misrepresent his victory as justifying claims "to much more than physical equality with their white neighbors."

"The New York Times."

Narrator: Race had a lot to do with it, but so did the growing national movement led by religious and other progressive reformers against boxing itself.

The sport was brutal, wicked, they said; a terrible example for young people.

An Ohio clergyman called for a million postcards to be sent to California governor J.N.

Gillett reading, "Stop the fight.

This is the 20th century."

On June 6, the governor gave in and refused to have the fight in California.

Rickard, who had presold 25,000 tickets and even built a brand-new stadium, had just over 3 weeks to find a new venue.

Prizefighting was legal in only one state: Nevada.

Two towns bid for the fight-- goldfield and the divorce capital of America, Reno.

Rickard picked Reno mostly because railroads from both the east and west coasts ran through it.

But before he would sanction the bout, Nevada governor Denver S. Dickerson insisted that Rickard assure him man-to-man that it's on the level.

There had been widespread rumors that the fight was fixed; that Johnson had agreed to lose; that only a guaranteed victory could have persuaded the reluctant Jeffries to return to the ring.

Rickard promised the governor, "it will be the squarest fight ever pulled off."

Newfield: And the governor of Nevada said, "of course I'll welcome the fight.

"We usually--in this state, we're used to shootouts "and gunfights in saloons.

"This is a boxing match with rules.

"This is civilized.

Weave no problem with a boxing match."

Narrator: The fight was back on.

It was billed as "the battle of the century."

But no one could have imagined the passions it would unleash all around the world.

Man: "The colored races outnumber the whites, "and have, hitherto, only been kept in subjection "by a recognition on their part of physical and mental inferiority."

"B here we are, the hitherto dominant race, "compelled to recognize that an American Negro, "the descendant of an emancipated slave, "is our acknowledged master at the one great physical sport "in which actual personal superiority can ever be authoritatively tested."

"Does anyone imagine for a moment "that Johnson's success is without its political influence?"

"Jeff may smash Johnson when they meet, "and by so doing, restore us to something like our old position.

"We shall never quite regain it, "because a recollection of our temporary deposition "will always remain to inspire the colored peoples with hope.

"While, if after all, Johnson should smash Jeffries..." but the thought is too awful to contemplate."

"Boxing" magazine.

Man: "The darker races of mankind, "and the Black race in particular, "will keep the white race busy for the next hundred years "in defending the interests of white supremacy.

"The Black singer's coming with his song; "the poet with his dreams; "the sculptor with her conception of beauty and awe; "and the scholar with his truth.

"The greatest marathon race of the ages is about to begin "between the white race and the darker races of mankind.

"What Jack Johnson seeks to do to Jeffries in the roped arena "will be the ambition of Negroes in every domain of human endeavor."

The Reverend Reverdy Ransom.

Narrator: In the weeks leading up to the fight, and with more than 500 reporters descending on Reno, every detail of the two boxers' training made international news.

Man: "June 27, 1910."

"The man is a puzzle-- "physically the greatest athlete "the colored race has produced "and mentally as keen as a razor in a sort of undeveloped way."

"But he fiddles away on his bull fiddle, "swaps jokes with ready wit, "shoots craps, plays baseball, "listens dreamily to classical love songs "on the phonograph, "and he's going to fight Jim Jeffries for the world's championship one week from tomorrow."

"Chicago Tribune."

Narrator: Johnson and his entourage set up camp at Rick's Roadhouse, a few miles outside Reno.

He had fired George Little before coming to the desert.

"I am my own manager and always have been," he told the press, and he seemed supremely confident.

Man: "Johnson took a short run in the morning.

"Then he rigged up a kangaroo trial on the veranda "and put his attendants "and attaches of his menagerie through their paces "for various real or fictitious offenses, "such as stealing chickens and flirting with white women.

"Johnson caught Tom Flanagan in the yard and gave him a sound trouncing with a 4-foot stick."

Man as Jeffries: "I realize full well what depends on me, "and I am not going to disappoint the public.

"That portion of the white race that has been looking to me "to defend its athletic supremacy may feel assured "that I am fit to do my very best.

I will win as quickly as I can."

Jim Jeffries.

Narrator: At the Jeffries camp, the gum-chewing ex-champion received a steady stream of well-wishers, including John L. Sullivan.

But in private, he was tense, snappish.

"He growls and snarls and grumbles like an old grizzly," someone said.

By the end of June, he had managed to lose an astounding 100 pounds... and was savaging his sparring partners.

The former champion Tommy Burns predicted Jeffries would win easily.

"Johnson is game only against little fellows like Ketchel and myself," he said.

"If Jeff ever wallops him, he'll cave in all his ribs."

Jim Corbett, who had helped train the ex-champion, agreed.

"I want Jeffries to win," he said, "not so much because Johnson is a Negro, "but because I think he is one of those fresh Negroes "that not alone thinks he is as good as a white man, "but is better.

Take it from me, the Black boy has a yellow streak."

Joe Choynski, Johnson's old mentor, was now in Jeffries' camp, too.

Even George Little, Johnson's ex-manager, planned to bet against his former friend.

Man as London: "Reno, Nevada, July 1, 1910.

"I am glad I'm here.

"No man who loves the fighting game, "has the price, "and is within striking distance of Reno should miss this fight.

"There has never been anything like it in the history of the ring."

Jack London.

Man: "Reno is a town of 15,000, "and there are 12,000 visitors.

"Thieves of all shapes and sizes throng the little town.

"If a hand is not dipped into your pocket sooner or later, "it is almost a sign of disrespect.

"People eat at ragtime.

"One restaurant with a seating capacity of 40 "served 3,600 suppers.

"For sleeping, you take anything you can get: "sometimes a $7 room, sometimes a private car, "a cot, a billiard table, a hammock, or a park bench."

Sugar: The town was bustling.

The jails were full, and the people were excited.

But in the main, there were white people, and the betting parlor run by Tom Corbett, Jim's brother, was taking Jeffries money.

There was no Johnson money.

Narrator: As carpenters worked furiously to finish reassembling Rickard's San Francisco stadium, tensions continued to rise in every region of the country.

Man: "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 3.

"The police today interdicted a jollification and parade "which the Negroes of the Wylie Avenue District "proposed to hold tomorrow "in the expectation that Johnson would win.

"The police were informed by the white residents "that leaders of several ward gangs "had planned to get on housetops "and bombard the parading Negroes "with bricks from chimneys.

"Several tough gangs such as the Red Onions, "the Owls, and the 49ers would not hesitate to start a race riot."

"The Negroes are in an ugly mood, "claiming they have the right to celebrate the Fourth of July, and there may be trouble."

"Chicago Tribune."

Narrator: The next day, July 4, 1910, thousands gathered in front of big-city newspaper offices, waiting for the telegraph bulletin from Reno to be posted for all to see.

In San Francisco, the Examiner" set up a ring and hired two boxers, one Black, one white, to reenact the fight round by round and punch by punch.

Booker T. Washington disapproved of Jack Johnson, but even he had a ticker set up in the assembly room at Tuskegee so that his students could keep track of what was happening in the ring.

On the morning of the fight, the odds against Johnson were 10:4.

While white passengers started toward the stadium, sure Jeffries would take back his crown, Black pullman porters and diner chefs hurried to the betting booths to bet their wages and tips on Johnson.

There were anonymous threats to kill him if he won, and Tex Rickard posted a deputy sheriff at every gate to confiscate firearms.

Roberts: The fight was on July 4.

When else are you gonna hold a fight like that?

It's--it's on Independence Day, America's day.

It's in Reno, sin capital of America, where people go to get drunk and divorced and gamble.

It's--it's just people pouring into the stadium.

It's filling up.

It's just... the excitement-- it just keeps building and building and building.

Man as Johnson: "It was a beautiful day.

"The weather, excepting for the intense heat, "was superb.

"The atmosphere was clear as crystal, "and one could see for miles.

"More than 20,000 people had gathered to watch the fight, "and as I scanned that sea of white faces, "I felt the auspiciousness of the occasion.

"There were few men of my own race "among the spectators.

"I was well aware that most of that great audience "was hostile to me.

"These things did not disturb or worry me.

I was cool and perfectly at ease."

Man as London: "It was half past two "when Johnson entered, happy and smiling, "greeting friends and acquaintances, "cool as ice "with never a signal of hesitancy or timidity.

"But the great madness of applause went up when Jeffries entered the ring."

[crowd cheering] "when he stripped and his mighty body could be seen "covered with mats of hair, "all the primordial adjectives ever applied to him "received their vindication.

"The man of iron, the grizzly giant, "was grim and serious.

The man of summer temperament smiled and smiled."

Jack London.

Narrator: Jeffries refused to shake hands.

[bell rings] From the opening bell, Jeffries stalked Johnson, looked for an opening, then tried to force his way inside.

Johnson calmly held his ground and tied Jeffries up.

As Jeffries tried to come in behind that long left-- and he always fought with his left out-- and he tried to push him and he tried to shove him, and Johnson would just hug him in the early rounds.

And then when Jeffries would hug him back, he would holler, "No hugging me, Mr.

Jeff.

No hugging."

At one point, Corbett called out, "why don't you do something, Johnson?

Why don't you do something?"

Trying to goad him.

And Johnson just looked at him over Jeffries' shoulder and said, "I'm just fighting like you did, Mr.

Corbett."

[bell rings] Narrator: For the next several rounds, Jeffries attempted again and again to force the action, rushing in and trying to land blows to Johnson's midsection.

But the brawling style that had terrified earlier opponents had no effect against Johnson's impenetrable defense and fast hands.

In Jeffries' corner, Jim Corbett spewed a stream of racial insults.

Johnson just pounded Jeffries and grinned back.

Crouch: Quite frankly, in his case, I doubt that it meant anything to him, because I think that finally he realized that these guys, every last one of them, did not want to be in a room with him alone.

And see, that's a very different kind of a feeling than most people have.

So he knew that "you can call me these names, "but we know that if everybody ran away except you, you'd start running, too."

Roberts: He starts verbal side play with James Corbett who's in Jeffries' corner, and they're taunting each other, and Jack Johnson's used to this.

And Corbett's idea was to make Jack Johnson mad.

By round 6 or 7, Corbett is spitting.

I mean, he's so furious, his face is red.

He can't take it very much longer.

Narrator: "Don't rush, Jim," Johnson said.

I can do this all afternoon."

"How do you feel, Jim?

How do you like it?

Does it hurt?"

Jeffries kept trying, but it was now clear to everyone that 6 years out of the ring had been too long.

He was too slow, too old to catch the champion.

Unable to land a solid punch, his defense all but gone, Jeffries somehow found the will to keep moving forward, but Johnson's sharp, accurate punches were taking a devastating toll.

[bell rings] By the end of the 14th round, Jeffries' nose was broken, his eyes were swollen nearly shut, his face and shoulders and thighs were splattered with his own blood, and he was desperately weary.

Even Jim Corbett now fell silent.

[bell rings] Finally, in the 15th round, Johnson made his move.

Man: He who had never been knocked down was knocked down repeatedly.

As he lay across the lower rope while the seconds were tolled off, a cry that had in it tears and abject broken pride went up.

"Don't let the nigger knock him out.

Don't let the nigger knock him out."

Narrator: Jeffries' side called it quits.

[bell rings] The fight was over.

When white fans rushed into the ring, Johnson's cornermen formed a protective circle around him.

As Tex Rickard raised Johnson's arm in victory, one newspaperman noted, the overwhelmingly white crowd started to file out grim and silent.

Crouch: I think that Johnson-Jeffries fight was more or less the boxing version of Gettysburg, actually: very poorly thought out.

And the impact on Jim Jeffries was very obvious-- that I think he felt at the end of that the way those confederate soldiers felt after those 3 days.

"Perhaps we should have been walking in another direction."

And I think that, actually, Johnson probably could have beaten him much earlier than he did.

I think that he probably was smart enough to know that if he had gone in there and really beaten him down immediately, there might actually have been a riot.

Narrator: Jack Johnson was now the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Even Jeffries admitted his greatness.

"I could never have whipped Jack Johnson at my best," he told his friends.

"I couldn't have reached him in a thousand years."

It was the only loss in Jim Jeffries' career.

Man as London: "Once again has Johnson sent down to defeat "the chosen representative of the white race, "and this time, the greatest of them all.

"And, as of old, it was play for Johnson.

"The ferocity of the hairy-chested cave man "and grizzly giant combined "did not intimidate the cool-headed Negro.

He has not the yellow streak."

Jack London.

Man: "July 5, 1910.

"A word to the Black man: do not point your nose too high."

"Do not swell your chest too much.

"Do not boast too loudly.

"Do not be puffed up.

"Let not your ambition be inordinate "or take a wrong direction.

"Remember, you have done nothing at all.

You are just the same member of society you were last week."

"You are on no higher plane, deserve no new consideration, and will get none."

"No man will think a bit higher of you "because your complexion is the same as that of the victor at Reno."

"Los Angeles Times."

Narrator: After the fight, Johnson, Etta, and the rest of the champion's party boarded a private railroad car attached to the overland limited bound for Chicago.

He was carrying his winnings, more than $65,000 in cash.

But as their train moved across the country and the champagne flowed, word began to reach them of trouble almost everywhere.

Man: "July 5, 1910.

"Rioting broke out like prickly heat "all over the country last night "between whites, sore and angry "that Jeffries had lost the big fight at Reno, and Negroes, jubilant that Johnson had won."

Crouch: The country went into a kind of convulsion.

Blacks celebrated the fight, which was hardly surprising.

Whites responded with violence.

Roberts: There have been two major events that have precipitated widespread racial rioting.

One was the assassination of Martin Luther King and the other was Jack Johnson's victory over Jim Jeffries on July 4, 1910.

There were race riots throughout America.

Americans, and overwhelmingly Black Americans, died in these race riots.

So this is-- this is open race warfare throughout every section of America.

Narrator: There were confrontations in Chattanooga, Chicago, and Columbus, in Los Angeles and Norfolk, Pueblo and Philadelphia, in Roanoke and Washington, D.C.

On Canal Street in New Orleans, a 10-year-old paperboy named Louis Armstrong was told to run for his life.

"Jack Johnson has knocked out Jim Jeffries," one of his friends shouted.

"The white boys are sore about it, and they're gonna take it out on us."

On a Houston streetcar, an enraged white passenger slit a Black man's throat because he had cheered for Jack Johnson.

White riflemen open fire on a Black construction camp near Uvalda, Georgia, killing 3 and wounding 5.

In Manhattan's San Juan Hill neighborhood, a white crowd set a Black tenement on fire, then tried to block the doors and windows so that no one could get out.

Man: "Philadelphia.

"A crowd of white men "were chasing a frightened Negro in Chestnut Street "when another Negro, "who was approaching from the opposite direction, "was knocked down by someone in the crowd.

He arose dazed and with a broken nose."

Woman: "St.

Louis.

"Negroes filled the streets, "pushing whites from the sidewalks "and insulting men and women.

"Squads of patrolmen were hurried into the district.

The Negroes were clubbed into order."

Man: "Shreveport, Louisiana.

"L.E.

Roberts of the Iron Mountain Railroad is dead; "John Anderson, a Negro, is dead; "an unknown Negro woman is dying, "shot through the head; "and a race riot is imminent.

The authorities seem to have no control of the situation."

Narrator: No one knows for sure how many Americans died.

Scores were wounded-- white and Black.

The violence sparked by Johnson's victory encouraged the movement to abolish professional boxing completely, and a bill was introduced in congress to ban all fight films.

Man: "What folly.

"There are separate moving-picture theaters "among the whites and the Blacks in this country.

"Let the pictures be shown.

"If the whites get mad with themselves "and fight themselves, they are to blame.

"The Blacks, on the other hand, will shout amongst themselves only."

"The Washington Bee."

Narrator: But neither the riots nor the quarrel over the fight films could diminish Jack Johnson's triumph in the eyes of millions of African Americans.

Man: "It was a good deal better for Johnson to win "and a few Negroes be killed in body for it "than for Johnson to have lost "and Negroes to have been killed in spirit "by the preachments of inferiority from the combined white press."

"It is better for us to succeed, though some die, than for us to fail, though all live."

"The fact of the fight will outdo a mountain peak of theory "about the Negro as a physical man and as a man of self-control and courage."

Professor William Pickens, Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama.

Narrator: On July 7, thousands of Black Chicagoans greeted Johnson and his party at the railroad station and escorted them to the home he had bought for his mother.

Man: "Jack Johnson came to town with the blare of trumpets.

"His pathway was strewn with flowers.

"Rich and poor alike lost distinction in the crushing throng to seize his hand."

"The Freedman."

Narrator: Johnson reveled in all the attention, but life had taught him to be wary.

"I only hope the colored people of the world will not be like the French," he told the crowd.

"History tells us "that when Napoleon was winning all his victories, "the French were with him, "but when he lost, the people turned against him.

"When Jack Johnson meets defeat, "I want the colored people to like and love me the same as when I was the champion."

That night, a white man with a rifle tried to break into Johnson's home.

He intended to kill the champion.

The police stopped him.

But Jack Johnson's troubles were just beginning.

Announcer: Next time on "Unforgivable Blackness:... Man as Johnson: Certain unfair persons decided if they could not get me one way they would another.

Man: Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive Different man: Where he was vulnerable was his sex life, and this sis where society decided to attack him.

Announcer: Don't miss the conclusion of "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" Next time only on PBS.

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