Jack Johnson : The First Black Heavy Weight Champion

People are judged through their actions and characteristics, but racism can easily blur a person’s perspective. In Almost Free: A Story About Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia, Samuel Johnson, a former slave, fights for his freedom with the help of influential white friends he made throughout his life. Eventually he buys his freedom and petitions the court to stay in Virginia, where his family resides. Even after emancipated, he works hard to free his family and petitions the court in their cause. Despite his relationships, family values, and law abiding, Samuel Johnson’s skin color ultimately acts as boundary in his Virginia society.

“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.”(Lyndon Johnson). For generations in the United Stated, ethnic minorities have been discriminated against and denied fair opportunity and equal rights. In the beginning there was slavery, and thereafter came an era of racism which directly impacted millions of minorities lives. This period called Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system up in till mid 1960s. Jim Crow was more than just a series of severe anti-Black laws, it became a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were positioned to the status of second class citizens. What Jim Crow

As a boxer, Johnson went from being an unknown to the first African American heavyweight champion of the world. With little regard for his safety, he destroyed white fighters when blacks were expected to submit to whites. Johnson saw himself as an equal amongst whites; therefore he paid little attention to the chaos he caused throughout his professional career.

Johnson uses words like “disdainful”, “magnificent”, “pompous”, “incompetent”, “imitate”, “supercilious”, “arrogant,” “meed,” and bold to describe the Negro in Harlem and to show their ‘supercilious’ nature towards other cultures.

For America present day, the change in race relation has changed, “technically” for no longer are acts of hatred as blatantly open and accepted; while they still do exist they are not as common and frequently exposed as appropriate. The Black Slave Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and Color-Line are within our societies normative cluster cultures. This is where groups of culture habit a vicinity of likeness and share appropriations, such as racial norms, bed rocked by realtor support, financed lender discrimination, city-property tax inequality increases, and school zonings. These are some of the new erected obstacles that “blacks” face when trying to assimilate into a society not made for their habituation. Now don’t take my word for it, but just as a Racist would claim their non-racist ways, so would an individual who bares no observation from the receiving end of inequality. Just take for example the school teacher interviewed during a psychological experiment in Europe on Racism. (Elliot, Jane)

Boxing, an official sanctioned sport in the early 20th century, is a sport that is known as one of the most violent and physically demanding sports on the earth. Professional boxers that get paid to fight must be in top shape in order to preform at the highest level. Being a professional boxer is a tough life. Boxers train hard for many months leading up to one fight and either win, lose, knock out the opponent or even get knocked out. The sport has been around for centuries, but has most recently taken off over the last 100 years. It is a multibillion dollar industry with fighters taking home hundreds of thousands of dollars if not even millions of dollars for big matches. In his novel Papa Jack, Roberts tells the story of the famous African American boxer Jack Johnson. He details the boxers rise to fame and fortune and his downward spiral that would soon follow. In Papa Jack, Roberts displays life of a professional boxer through firsthand accounts with events that happened during Johnson’s life and shows how boxing not only influenced his life but also how he influenced the African American community.

     This was a time when blacks were being discriminated against, the military was segregated, blacks were not allowed to play Major League Baseball. When he started boxing early in the 1930's hero worship was not achievable in any professional sports, there were none that were able

Jefferies constantly denied Johnson a fight and in 1904 they came across each other in a bar and Jefferies told Johnson he would fight him alone in the cellar and bet 2500 dollars but Johnson said he wasn’t a cellar fighter and in 1905 Jefferies retired opening a new gate for Jack Johnson. This pissed off Johnson for he was in need of money and so he hired a manager, Sam Fitzpatrick who helped Johnson earn up to 3000 dollars a night. Johnson was now starting to be openly seen with white women, They were prostitutes and he would take them every where with him, this was done during the time when he was lashing out on the white boxers, one of these prostitutes would be with him for the next 4 years, her name was Hattie McClay.

The discriminating social stratification in 1950’s developed a set of servile behavior on the blacks. They were thought to be inferior to whites, and were treated accordingly. Moreover, different parts of the country had various ranges of sensitivities while dealing with the blacks. For example, in Mississippi things were particularly tense after the Parker lynch case. No black man would dare look into any white man’s eyes in fear of the repercussions. On the bus, a man warned Griffin to watch himself closely until he caught onto Mississippi’s ways. In an extreme case like this, it was vital to learn about their roles and behave accordingly.

This moment took place over a span of time, when there were countless cases of racism across the American south and north. Another term for this span of time is referred as the Jim Crow era. In the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves in the southern states with his Emancipation Proclamation. By then the 1865 amendment was passed which outlawed slavery in every state, but it still took the use of federal military occupation of the old south to enforce the release of freed slaves. The southern white majority didn’t approve of this federal mandate and passed Jim Crow Laws issuing separate, but equal, was fair when it wasn’t. Some of the segregated sites included public transportation, schools, and all public facilities. “Lynch mobs were common, as was rape by white males of African American women” (Baldwin). “Between 1940 and 1960 the Great Migration brought six million African Americans to industrial centers in the urban North and West, where migrants were met with new forms of racial containment” (Baldwin). It was illegal for anyone in the states to sell, rent, or even to lease housing to black people. This caused the clear majority of African Americans to live in poor housing, while paying too much for them. World War II brought much relief to a poor American economy, and African Americans left to fight the war with the promise of better treatment. “During the war, however African Americans began to

The “new” negro no longer embodied “old” characteristics that defined a black man. Society had always taught a black man how to act; however, now he was adapting to the world. Locke declared that ‘the Old Negro’ had long become more of a myth than a man” (Locke, 1). A furthered and detailed definition of an “Old Negro” was that he “was a creature of moral debating historical controversy” (Locke, 1). The four

Johnson followed Jeffries from town to town. “Jeffries, however, refused to fight a black boxer and instead decided to retire undefeated.”(Unforgivable Blackness). The Championship was handed over to a white named Tommy Burns, who as well declined to fight Johnson but eventually gave in at the cost of thirty thousand dollars. In the year 1908, Johnson knocked out Burns in the sixteenth round, to win the title and create history. “He was a fast and brilliant defensive boxer who fought at a time when white champions like John L. Sullivan and James Jeffries refused to fight black fighters. Jeffries retired rather than face Johnson, but he returned six years later when the clamor for a great white hope could not be ignored”(Sandomir D3). Even James Jefferies was beaten and and thus, Johnson had beat all that stood in his way, from bottom to the top. Through perseverance and relentlessness, Johnson had achieved his dream.

Back then, not all blacks had the same privileges and racism wasn’t just about black and white people. This is an example of colourism. Colourism can be “defined as a conscious or unconscious state of prejudice that may be experienced by both blacks and whites so that they label as less attractive and intelligent individuals of a darker complexion, particularly, when it comes to black women” (“Demystifying”). Among the black community, there is racism between it as well. Back then, white slave owners “allowed those of a lighter complexion certain privileges and denied those of a darker complexion those privileges and created in the minds of blacks that “light” is better. In addition, the selling of lighter-skinned women into prostitution or to salve masters to become their mistresses helped to concretize the idea that light skin is better” (“Demystifying”). But racism is not just about blacks and whites. It can be between any races. With the internet and the power of social networking these days, it is even easier to repudiate and excoriate people. People can criticize you secretly and not include you in certain events without your knowing. You can express racism even behind a computer screen on a website plus make it private so it can’t be seen by the public.

In the past racism was something of the norm, from being treated like animals to also being taken as a joke. We as African Americans have gone through it all, and today I as a proud African American will talk about the uprising and the downfalls of my people. Anyhow during the uproar of segregation African Americans encountered degrading acts towards them as bad as seeing their moms, dads, brothers, and sisters being lynched. However such terrifying acts came to a minor halt when the murder of Emmett Till arose.

I was a whore, and I have heard about a black man trying to get the boxing champion title and for all, I knew that couldn't be true it was a fairy tale but then I saw him at the whore house and I knew it was real for I saw it with my very own eyes. His name is Jack Johnson I asked around for his life story. I wanted to understand because from what I have seen that man didn’t know his place. Ha, a black name thinking he's better than us white folks what a pathetic disgrace really what has this world come to. I got a few things out from some people he was born on March 31st in 1878 and from what I hear he has nine-siblings. Now no black woman should have that many children running around, he walked up to Ashley asking to take her out and from