NO other single event dug so deep into world consciousness until the Lindbergh flight 17 years later.
More reporters covered it than covered the Russo-Japanese War, and it received more space in British newspapers than major events of the Boer War.
A telegraph company official said that except for the San Francisco disaster of 1906 no greater volume of words had been handled for a single event in the history of telegraphy.
"Perhaps no other event," the Indianapolis Freeman said, "has held so universally the gaze of mankind."
This, of course, was an exaggeration, but it was understandable at the time. For this event mesmerized the world, and before it was over, scores had been killed or maimed in race riots, the foreign offices of governments had issued position papers, and the U.S. Congress had passed a law making it a federal crime to show moving pictures of it.
The cause of all these words, all this passion, was not a political crisis or a natural catastrophe--it was a prizefight, the 1910 contest between Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, and Jim Jeffries, who had been singled out as "the Great White Hope of the Western World." But this was obviously more, and less, than a prizefight. This was the first great modern happening; it was the first great media morality play. Johnson had captured the championship, whipped all available White talent, and thumbed his nose at the deepest values of the White populace. There he was, resplendent, triumphant, smiling his famous "golden smile," and leaning on a gold-tipped walking cane, with a blonde on each arm. Such a Black, in 1910 (and 2005) was obviously a threat to the social order. Such a Black, as Professor Al-Tony Gilmore has argued, was obviously a "Bad N----r," and the incarnation of the deepest fears of White racists. Such a Black had to be defeated and humiliated, dramatically, and publicly.
Thus it was that millions of Whites convinced themselves that their honor, their virtue and their sense of reality depended on the outcome of the struggle that matched Johnson and Jim Jeffries, who was said to be invincible, Thus it was that the Johnson-Jeffries fight was invested with a cosmic significance. This was no simple clash of two men; it was a clash of elemental forces. It was about sin and redemption. It was about the forces of evil and the avenging blonde warrior. It was Gotterdammerung. It was Revelations. It was Captain Ahab and the white whale, Bigger and Mary, Hemingway and the white snows of Kilimanjaro, Rudyard Kipling and the lesser breeds outside the law.
And it was real. On Monday, July 4, 1910, in Reno, a little frontier town in the Wild West, the Avenging Warrior and the Black champion were going to climb into a ring and fight for 45 rounds or until one of them was maimed or beaten into unconsciousness, How could the world resist such a drama? How could one fail to understand the prefight headline in the Chicago Tribune: "RENO NOW CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE."
Behind this headline and the state of mind it reflected were years of controversy centering on the person and personality of John Arthur (Jack) Johnson, who is still considered by many experts to be the greatest boxer in the history of prizefighting. And to understand exaggerations that seemed obvious to the men of that day, we must back up a few years and consider the long road that carried Jack Johnson to Reno and the center of the universe. Johnson was born on March 31, 1878, in Galveston, Texas. He seems to have deplored the inadequacies of the Jim Crow environment of Galveston. At any rate, he quit school at the age of 12 and ran away from home, traveling by boxcar to the East and West coasts. Returning to Galveston, he did odd jobs and ended up on the docks as a longshoreman. In his years of roaming, and in his years on the docks, he acquired certain fighting skills as a simple function of his need to survive; and he drifted by easy stages into the boxing business, which was illegal then almost everywhere. Johnson lost few fights and climbed to the top of his chosen profession, acquiring polish and a formidable style on the way. He was then and later a master of defensive technique. And he was fast. He was so fast, a friend said later, "that he could block a punch and hit you with the same hand."
By 1904, Johnson had defeated the major Black heavyweights and was issuing challenges to the heavyweight champion, who drew the color line and refused to meet him. Undaunted, Johnson fought wherever he could and continued to press his suit.
Bold, independent, unconventional, he had acquired certain personality traits that made him a controversial figure in Black and White America. He loved fast horses, fast cars, and fast women--not necessarily in that order. He spent money freely on expensive champagne, tailored suits and handmade shoes and gave no thought to tomorrow or what people thought of him. In this period, and later, he was in and out of traffic courts, controversies, gambling houses, and bordellos.
He was a curious man, John Arthur Johnson, full of quirks and odd contradictions. He had a brilliant mind, a natural flair for drama, and an apparently deep appreciation of art, culture and history. But there was a raging fire within him. He was fascinated by speed and the limits of the possible, and he couldn't resist dramatic gestures that expressed his contempt for the White social order.
This was the man--cool, flamboyant, defiant--who captured the imagination of the world with a brilliant three-year campaign for a shot at the heavyweight championship. Heavyweight champion Tommy Burns tried to ignore the Black challenger and scurried from continent to continent with Johnson in hot pursuit, issuing challenges and capturing headlines. Finally, after a great deal of public pressure, a public declaration in favor of the fight by EdwardVII and a reputed private declaration by President Roosevelt, Burns gave in and the fight was scheduled for Sydney, Australia, on the day after Christmas in 1908. Johnson, fighting brilliantly and coolly contemptuous of the jeering White mob, cut Burns to pieces and the police stopped the fight for humanitarian reasons in the 14th round. For the first time in history, a Black man was heavyweight champion of the world.
This caused consternation in sports and political circles, and a worldwide search began for "White Hopes" The literary leader of this athletic posse comitatus was Jack London, a famous American author with radical social views and retarded racial refluxes. London covered the Sydney fight for the New York Herald, and his story from ringside became the literary testament of the White Hope movement. Here is the meat of the London story:
"The fight! There was no fight! No American massacre could compare to the hopeless slaughter that took place in the Sydney Stadium ... But one thing now remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face.
"Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued."
Jeffries, who seems to have had good instincts, despite his racism, resisted this pressure for several years. In the interim, Johnson disposed of various and sundry White Hopes and became a major attraction on the vaudeville circuit in America, Europe and Canada. He traveled with a big entourage of managers, valets, secretaries, and blondes.
The White public and, to tell the truth, large sectors of the Black public were offended by stories of Johnson speeding through the streets of Paris, London and Chicago in big crimson racing cars filled with White women. There were other points of aggravation. Johnson, it was said, had no gratitude. What this meant was that Jack Johnson was Jack Johnson's manager, a point Johnson emphasized from time to time by dismissing uppity White managers.
It was against this background and in a climate approaching hysteria that Jim Jeffries announced that he was returning to the ring to redeem the honor of the White race. Johnson was delighted, not so much, one gathers, by the racial implications as by financial predictions that a Johnson-Jeffries fight would bring the winner the largest amount of money ever paid to an artist or entertainer for a single appearance or exhibition. This was a powerful inducement to both Johnson and Jeffries, and a match was speedily arranged for San Francisco. When the governor of California yielded to the anti-boxing lobby and banned the fight, promoter Tex Rickard shifted the battle to Nevada, the only state in the union where boxing was legal. The fight was scheduled for Monday, July 4,1910, in Reno, a dusty little frontier town with some 10,000 inhabitants.
While all this was going on, large segments of the White and Black worlds were whipping themselves into a frenzy of anticipation. The White world was almost unanimous in support of Jeffries, who reportedly could not be hurt and who could, some said, kill a man with one blow. These assertions did not disturb the Black community, which was almost solidly behind Johnson. In a famous cartoon on the front page of its February 4, 1910, edition, the Chicago Defender pictured Johnson in a ring with Jeffries, who was surrounded by phantom figures labeled "Race Hatred," "Prejudice," "Negro Persecution." The ringside was packed with what the cartoon called "Jim Crow Delegates." The caption of the cartoon said: "He Will Have Them All To Beat." In this cartoon, and in a barrage of front-page comment leading up to the fight, the Defender expressed the point of view of the overwhelming majority of Blacks, who were hemmed in by segregation and discrimination and desperately needed someone or something to cheer for. The world of the Defender, and the Defender readers, was a world of violence and humiliation and intimidation. It was a world in which, as the Defender reported (on March 19), "100 Negroes [Are] Murdered Weekly in the United States by White Americans."
This was the world, a world of triumphant White supremacy, in which the drama of the Johnson-Jeffries fight unfolded; and it was this world that Whites were defending and Blacks were attacking in and through the person of John Arthur Johnson. Almost everyone recognized this. As John Callan O'Laughlin said in a story in the Chicago Tribune on the day of the fight, there was a fear abroad that the spectacle of Johnson whipping White men would give Blacks dangerous ideas.
All these hopes and fears converged on the little town of Reno, which was a swirling mass of humanity by the last week of June. Never before had so many people from so many places come together for an athletic or entertainment event. There were sports and big-money men from America, England, Canada, Australia, India, China, Cuba, Brazil and Burma. There were hoboes, miners, cowboys, cattle herders, businessmen, politicians, touts, pickpockets, and prostitutes. The population of the town had more than doubled, and special trains were arriving daily from the East and West coasts. The main street, Centre Street, was virtually impassable, and the lobby of the Golden Hotel, where the big spenders were staying, was a solid mass of wall-to-wall people. By Sunday, July 3, Reno and every hamlet and city within reach of the telegraph were pressure cookers of conflicting rumors, reports, and expectations.
In Reno, Tom Corbett, the leading oddsmaker, predicted that at least $3,000,000 would change hands on the fight. In the Black communities of Chicago, Galveston and other cities, Blacks were betting heavily. Some Blacks were mortgaging their homes; some were discounting their paychecks for weeks in advance; some were borrowing or pawning clothes and jewels to get money to put down on Johnson. Some of this activity was stimulated by a confident telegram Johnson sent his brother. The telegram said, in effect: "BET YOUR LAST COPPER ON ME."
They were still betting in Chicago and Galveston and New York and London and Berlin, in thousands of cities and hamlets all over the world, when the sun cleared the mountains surrounding Reno on Monday, July 4. Jack Johnson got up early and consumed a huge breakfast of three scrambled eggs, four lamb chops and a side order of rare steak. At the Jeffries camp across town, the mood was somber. Jeffries ate sparingly, taking a little fruit, toast, and tea.
Both camps issued victory statements. Johnson, as usual, was more articulate. How did he feel on the morning of the greatest fight of his career? "I'm just like a kid" he said, "on Christmas morning."
The fight was scheduled to begin at 1:30, but at 10 a.m. a crowd of 25,000 began to move in waves toward the arena, which was about three-fourths of a mile east of the station and close to the railroad tracks. When, at noon, the gates were opened, lines of people stretched away from the arena for half a mile. There was only one entrance, and there was a stampede to get in. This created a tense and ugly moment which Promoter Rickard resolved by knocking holes in the fence and taking cash from all comers. At 1:30 the arena was packed with some 18,000 ticketholders and some 2,000 persons who had paid $5 for the privilege of standing on the top tier.
Shortly before 1 p.m., the Reno band entered the ring and played "America" and "Dixie." The spectators stood up and waved small American flags. By 1:45, the crowd was getting restless, and Billy Jordan, a famous announcer of the day, climbed into the ring and introduced the leading fighters and has-beens. These pleasantries and diversions continued until 2:27 when there was a commotion in the northeast corner. The spectators came to their feet, jostling and shoving, and presently Jack Johnson came into view, wearing a flowing black and white silk robe which reached to his feet. He was smiling his famous "golden smile," so called because of its warmth and the large number of gold teeth it exposed. Johnson received perfunctory applause, and some jeers. He scaled the second rope, stepped into the ring and raised himself to his full height, beaming. He was 32 years old and in perfect physical condition, standing 6-foot-3, weighing some 200 pounds and wearing blue tights.
At this point, Sam Berger, a Jeffries aide, approached Johnson and offered to flip a coin for comers. Johnson, who was a master of the grand put-down, waved him away contemptuously, saying: "You can take any corner you want. Any corner is good enough for me." Berger chose the southeast corner, so Jeffries would have the sun at his back.
Johnson swept regally across the ring, installed himself in the northeast corner and looked into the sun. What was he thinking at this moment? "As I looked about me," he said later, "and scanned the sea of White faces, I felt the auspiciousness--his word--of the occasion. There were few men of my own race among the spectators. I realized that my victory in this event meant more than on any previous occasion. It wasn't just the championship that was at stake--it was my own honor, and in a degree, the honor of my race. I was well aware of all these things, and I sensed that most of that great audience was hostile to me ... and that there might be a gunman somewhere in that vast array of humanity."
Johnson's reverie was broken by a wild whoop in the back of the arena. Jim Jeffries, the great White Hope, was on his way. The crowd came to its feet, screaming and celebrating Jeffries, who was preceded, like an emperor, by Bob Armstrong, a Black sparring partner who held aloft a great circular five-foot paper shade. Jeffries wore a light gray business suit over his blue tights and a golf hat on his head. He slipped through the ropes, jumped up and down on the platform and glared at Johnson's corner. "I had a seat," Arthur Ruhl said, "directly opposite him, and I can unhesitatingly state that I have never seen a human being more calculated to strike terror into an opponent's heart than this scowling brown [the great White Hope had a brown suntan!] Colossus as he came through the ropes, stamped like a bull pawing the ground before his charge, and, chewing gum rapidly, glared at the Black man across the ring. If looks could have throttled, burned and torn to pieces, Mr. Jack Arthur Johnson would have disappeared that minute into a few specks of inanimate dust."
Johnson was neither intimidated nor disconcerted by the look. He seemed to be amused by the huge cheer that Jeffries received. Somewhat to the surprise of the spectators, he joined in, clapping his hands and beaming.
Johnson was the first to strip. As he did so, a strange thing happened: The crowd gasped. "There was," the New York Times man said, "a sigh of involuntary admiration as his naked body stood in the white sunlight." Rex E. Beach, a prominent novelist who was covering for a syndicate of newspapers, noted the same phenomenon, saying that as Johnson "stepped forth for the lenses to register his image he was a thing of surpassing beauty from the anatomist's point of view. He had none of that giant play of brawn and muscle that Jeffries displayed a moment later, but instead a rounded symmetry more in line with the ideals of the ancient Greek artists. His head, though slightly larger than an ostrich egg, was of the same shape and shaved to an equal smoothness. From crown to sole he was a living life-size bronze, chiseled by the cunning hands of a master."
