Comments Thread For: When Jess Willard upended Jack Johnson: Did Johnson really take a dive?

[landotter]

Probably the best or second best non-fiction book I've ever read is about Jack Johnson. Its called 'Unforgiveable Blackness' & it is unbelievably brilliant in its scholarship as well as being really elegantly written. It pretty much dismisses any suggestion Johnson lay down but it makes clear that, by this stage in his career, he was so worn down by the abuse he faced that boxing sickened him & he could no longer bother to train properly. If you ever can read the book because it is exceptional.
(If you're wondering my other contender for best non-fiction book I've ever read is 'Profession of Violence' about the Kray twins).

I will look it up. I have long been both fascinated and at the same time a little reluctant to learn about Johnson. It was an ugly time, and what he needed to deal with to become the champ he was had to be unfathomable.

[1Eriugenus]

'Dr Z He was an overrated fighter with mixed results. The smaller men exposed him, while he avoided the best three men as champion'.

Strange comment. Jack never ducked anyone. He was reluctant to rematch Sam Langford, who he had already beaten. At this time boxing crowds were 99% white. You could not have drawn a paying crowd to see 2 black fighters. Yes, there were a small number of boxing 'coneisseurs' who would pay to watch a really good fight but not enough to sell out even a small arena. Most black people struggled to survive & didn't have a cent left over to go to a fight. There were more wealthy black people but many of them didn't even like boxing, most of them had better things to do with that money & few of them wanted to risk being attacked or abused by drunk, ignorant, racist, white louts in a crowd. You couldn't sell tickets to a white crowd to see 2 black fighters. They, literally, just wouldn't consider that.

[1Eriugenus]

Landotter

I found it an amazing & thoroughly enjoyable read. Jack must, most certainly, have found what he had to go through crushing & disappointing, but I never found reading about it had that effect. Some of the extraneous detail is fascinating. One of the things you hear is 'well, in those days all white people were racist' but that really wasn't so. Stan Ketchell & Bob Fitzsimmons were hardly racist at all, in fact they just liked to hang out with black people. Jim Jeffries & John L Sullivan were 'a bit' racist, but mainly in the sense they used the 'N' word. Tommy Burns was racist & Jim Corbett was most virulently racist. So, people did make a choice in their opinions.