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By TK Stewart - It was Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries who collided in Reno, Nevada on July 4, 1910 for the heavyweight championship of the world. But the fight was about much more than a battle over heavyweight bragging rights. This was an epic struggle that pitted a black man versus a white man for the greatest prize in all of sports – on the nation’s birthday.
It was a racially charged fight, stoked in part by writer Jack London. On the very day that the black Johnson won the heavyweight championship from the white Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia in 1908, London sent out the call for Jeffries to come out of retirement and win the title back from Johnson. In his column, which appeared in the New York Herald, London wrote: “One thing remains, Jeffries must emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that smile from Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you!”
For the next two years the public clamored for Jeffries to make his return to the ring and take the title back for the white man. Jeffries returned, but he failed miserably in his quest as Johnson humiliated him and knocked him out in the fifteenth round.
And here we are 97 years later. [details]
It was a racially charged fight, stoked in part by writer Jack London. On the very day that the black Johnson won the heavyweight championship from the white Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia in 1908, London sent out the call for Jeffries to come out of retirement and win the title back from Johnson. In his column, which appeared in the New York Herald, London wrote: “One thing remains, Jeffries must emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that smile from Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you!”
For the next two years the public clamored for Jeffries to make his return to the ring and take the title back for the white man. Jeffries returned, but he failed miserably in his quest as Johnson humiliated him and knocked him out in the fifteenth round.
And here we are 97 years later. [details]
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