Unforgivable Blackness

American author Geoffrey C. Ward’s Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004) is a biography of the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Described as a “sturdy and surprising work: good reading for fans of boxing and American history alike” (Kirkus Reviews), Ward’s book was the basis for a 2004 Ken Burns documentary of the same title.

Arthur John Johnson was born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas, the son of former slaves Henry and Tina Johnson. Ward admits that there is some difficulty in reconstructing the truth about Johnson’s early life, because the boxer was “an inexhaustible tender of his own legend, a teller of tall tales in the frontier tradition of his native state.” For instance, he described his father as “the most perfect physical specimen I have ever seen,” when in reality, Henry Johnson was only just over five feet tall and had injured his leg in the Civil War.

Like everyone else in his family—indeed, in his neighborhood—Johnson started hard manual work when he was still young. He was introduced to boxing during his apprenticeship with carriage painter Walter Lewis, who enjoyed watching local amateur sparring events.



Johnson began his professional career in the last years of the 19th century, fighting African-American fighters. At this stage, he was far from the dominant champion he would become, losing several of his fights, once by technical knockout.

In 1901, Johnson fought the white heavyweight Joe Choynski, who knocked Johnson out in three rounds. It was a prizefight, which at the time was illegal in Texas, and both men were arrested. Neither man could afford bail, but the sheriff agreed to let them go home at night if they would spend their days sparring for the entertainment of local people. Johnson would later tell reporters that Choynski taught him how to box during this time, and the two men remained lifelong friends.

By 1907, Johnson had defeated every black boxer who could claim to be a contender for the heavyweight champion. Initially, white boxers refused to face him, using racist arguments to justify their decisions. The current world heavyweight champion, James Jeffries, retired rather than face Johnson. Eventually, former champion Bob Fitzsimmons agreed to fight Johnson, who knocked him out in two rounds. This made it harder for the new world champion, Canadian Tommy Burns, to refuse him. Johnson followed him around the world, taunting him in the press, and the two men met in Australia in 1908. Johnson was crowned champion of the world, but the white press insisted that he was not a “real” champion, because Jeffries had retired undefeated.



The idea of a black champion was already anathema to many white Americans, and Johnson became the target of deeper racial hatred when he returned to the States with a white girlfriend, Hattie McClay: “The reporters knew that the mere existence of this woman in Johnson's company was enough to make headlines. Interracial marriage was officially outlawed in thirty of the forty-six states and discouraged by custom and the threat of violence in many of the rest. Nearly seven hundred Negroes had been lynched in the United States since 1900, some simply because someone had whispered that they had been ‘too familiar’ with white women.”

Although African-Americans were, by-and-large, proud of Johnson, delighted by his ability to prove that black men could defeat their white counterparts in the ring, even some black commentators were “made unhappy by Johnson's purported marriage to a white woman, their objections based on both racial pride and the impact they feared Johnson's actions might have on the safety and well-being of other black people.”

As a result, a planned parade in Johnson’s hometown of Galveston was canceled. Meanwhile, Jeffries still refused to fight him. He had taken up alfalfa farming and was out of shape. However, white boxing fans, desperate to see the black champion dethroned, goaded Jeffries, offering him huge sums of money to get back in shape.



Meanwhile, Johnson took up with another white woman, former sex worker Belle Schreiber. Johnson further enraged observers by bringing both Schreiber and McClay to live with him. He also enraged the women themselves. "Naturally, there was a state of warfare between Hattie and Belle which threatened to break out into open and disastrous hostilities at any moment…I slipped in and out of the hotel in a manner that would have aroused newspaper reporters to much-excited speculation…had they known of my maneuvers."

Jeffries finally agreed to fight Johnson, “for the sole purpose,” in his words, “of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” The press stoked the racial tension going into the fight, with the British magazine Boxing declaring, “The road is cleared for the long-expected battle between the black champion and the great hero, the only man to whom we can look to wrest back the title for the dominant race. It is not so much a matter of racial pride as one of racial existence, which urges us so ardently to desire the ex-boilermaker's triumph. 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.”

For his part, Johnson wrote, “I have found no better way of avoiding race prejudice than to act with people of other races as if prejudice did not exist.”



Johnson beat Jeffries conclusively. The defeated boxer admitted, “I could never have whipped Johnson at my best. I couldn't have hit him. No, I couldn't have reached him in 1,000 years.” The result triggered race riots across the country.

Two years later, still undefeated, Johnson was twice prosecuted under the Mann Act for “transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes.” Ward shows that the charges were racially motivated. Belle Schreiber testified against him: “Schreiber [was] asked whether she had given herself over to Johnson ‘out of affection or [for] compensation.’ ‘Compensation, mostly,’ she answered. But when pressed as to whether she had ever been in love with Johnson, she would say only, ‘I don't know what love is.’ She did not say no.”

Johnson was convicted by an all-white jury despite the fact that the incidents Schreiber described took place before the Mann Act was even passed. Sentenced to a year in prison, he skipped the country and moved to Paris, France.



In Europe, Johnson continued to fight and to live according to his own lights. Eventually, he returned to the US where he spent nine months in a federal prison before being released for good behavior. By that time, he was past his physical peak, and although he continued fighting for decades, he was unable to regain his championship. Nevertheless, he became wealthy through endorsements and prize money, investing the money wisely. He died in 1946, aged just 68, after racing his car home from a North Carolina diner that refused to serve him.