This is the last surviving film frame of a famous boxing match in 1908.
A world heavyweight championship.
Fought in Sydney, Australia, between American boxer Jack Johnson and defending champion,
Canadian boxer Tommy Burns.
Johnson won.
The fight wasn’t even close.
And the film displayed signature traits of Johnson’s:
his habit of taunting his opponents,
and flashing his famous “golden smile” while he fought.
The reel ends moments before police stepped into the ring and put a stop to it, preventing
Johnson from knocking Burns out.
This is the night Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight champion of the world.
In front of 20,000 mostly-white spectators.
And, more importantly, motion picture cameras.
Copies of the fight film spread throughout Australia within days.
Replaying Johnson’s effortless victory over and over at screening events attended by paying
crowds.
Pretty soon, that film was seen worldwide.
And from the moment Jack Johnson’s reign as world heavyweight champion began,
a target was on his back.
Commercial motion pictures and professional boxing both came to prominence around the turn
of the 20th century.
Boxing’s format, short rounds fought in a stationary ring,
lent itself well to early film, with its clunky cameras and relatively short film reels.
Film companies would travel around the country, projecting reels of prizefights in packed
theaters and opera houses.
Champions were celebrated as heroes.
And that’s because boxing, going back centuries, has been wrapped up in themes of identity
and pride.
Boxers symbolized their communities.
Not just their national communities, but also their race.
Theresa Runstedtler teaches history at American University.
And specializes in the intersection of race and sport.
They imagined that boxers in the ring, particularly for interracial fights,
that they were almost engaged in this kind of… Darwinian struggle.
Fights between white men and Black men, they became a kind of metaphor for race relations.
So in other words, if a white man won, it would reinforce ideas of white supremacy.
But if a Black man won, then it would upend ideas of white supremacy.
As professional boxing, or “prizefighting”, became more popular around the turn of the
century, fights pitting Black boxers against white boxers were organized at all levels.
Except for the highest honor in the sport:
the heavyweight championship.
There had been a kind of unwritten rule that white heavyweight fighters were not to fight
Black fighters in title fights.
This de facto line of segregation was called the “color line.”
And so Jack Johnson, being the best Black fighter at the time, struggled to find white
opponents.
Johnson, who by 1908 had already defended his separate title of World Colored Heavyweight
Champion 17 times, was repeatedly denied a shot at the most prestigious title in the
world.
Until defending champion Tommy Burns accepted his challenge in 1908.
And you already know how that turned out.
Burns's defeat at the hands of a Black American fighter disrupted that narrative of white
supremacy.
You can see this happening in how newspapers framed the fight.
Reporting on Johnson was heavily skewed to appeal to white readers.
And overwhelmingly drew attention to his race, sometimes before using his name.
Jack Johnson, holding on to the heavyweight crown was just not acceptable in an era of
of white imperialism, Jim Crow and global white supremacy.
The search for a white heavyweight to take the title back from Johnson began the night
he won it.
Former heavyweights claimed they would come out of retirement to fight him, and that “a
white man must hold the title.”
The most popular choice among promoters and white boxing fans was James Jeffries.
A former heavyweight champion who had retired undefeated in 1905.
And was named “the only hope of the white race.”
Johnson, for his part, was ready to defend his title against anyone, the retired Jeffries
included.
Jeffries was out of shape, and hadn’t stepped into the ring in over four years.
They had him believing that if he just trained a little bit and got back in shape, that he
could win.
And get the heavyweight crown back for the white race.
The pressure, and the promise of big money, worked.
Johnson and Jeffries signed a deal, setting a date for the following year.
White press coverage leading up to the fight depicted racist cartoons of an over-confident
Johnson.
And predicted his downfall at the hands of Jeffries.
This fight, hyped as the “battle of the century,” was to be a contest of racial
supremacy.
And, of course, it would all be on camera.
The fight was set for July 4th, 1910, in Reno Nevada.
And a massive stadium was constructed.
Outfitted with nine motion picture cameras positioned around the ring.
To document and then commercially distribute the event.
On July 4th, Independence Day, over 20,000 spectators crowded inside.
They imagined that this would be the ultimate way to celebrate.
To watch Jim Jeffries, their great white hope, beat the crap out of this uppity, unruly African-American
who didn't know his place.
Crowds gathered outside in cities all across the US too.
And packed into theaters, separated by race, because of segregation laws in the US,
to listen to instantaneous telegram updates of every round.
Waiting to find out if Jack Johnson,
who, 9 months earlier, knocked out challenger Stanley Ketchel so hard,
he fell down himself from the momentum.
Would lose his heavyweight title to Jim Jeffries.
But of course, that didn’t happen.
In the 15th round, Johnson knocked Jeffries down for the first time in Jeffries’ career.
Waited for him to get up.
And when he tried, sent him through the ropes.
Jeffries’ corner helped him to his feet and entered the ring, which technically should
have ended the fight.
And let the former champ get punched in the face and thrown to the mat one more time
before stepping in to call it.
Johnson was once again the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.
And the nation erupted.
Violence broke out in American cities, where anxious crowds had been awaiting news of the
fight.
And they called them race riots, but essentially it was white mob violence against African-Americans.
It became this kind of attempt to put African-Americans back in their place.
At least 19 people died the night of July 4th in the violence following the fight, with
hundreds more injured.
Fear of further unrest led to an immediate attempt to ban the much-hyped Johnson-Jeffries
fight film.
Black press outlets pointed out the hypocrisy of this ban.
Like the Afro-American Ledger, which printed:
“It was a race question from the start to the finish, for which the negro was not and
is not responsible. The results, riots, deaths and injuries lie at the door of the white
man and his prejudices”
The Professional World noted that: “A real fight was advertised and a real
fight was had. What more or less could have been expected?”
Police were instructed to break up screening events.
White authorities were worried about the symbolic implications of the Jack Johnson victory being
replayed.
They worried that any demonstration of Black victory and any demonstration of white weakness
or defeat, would undercut the narratives of white supremacy.
Not just in the United States, but in colonies like South Africa, also India, the Philippines.
But the hype that surrounded the fight meant there was no way to completely suppress it.
So it became this kind of Pandora's box and they tried to shut it.
But any time you make something illegal, you just push it underground.
So they criminalized it, but. They couldn't ultimately get rid of it.
Congress banned the distribution of all prizefight films of prize fights in 1912,
citing the “race feeling stirred up by the exhibition of the Jeffries-Johnson moving
pictures.”
But by that point, the film was notorious worldwide.
It was the most talked-about motion picture of its time,
and screenings drew crowds for years following the event.
Jack Johnson lost the heavyweight title in 1915, after successfully defending it 8 times.
His legacy of crossing the color line and becoming the first Black heavyweight champion
inspired generations after him.
This is a picture of one his greatest fans in 1968,
outside of a theater producing a play called “The Great White Hope,” which was loosely
based on Johnson’s life.
A legendary heavyweight champion who named Johnson as a major inspiration:
Muhammad Ali.