SAD DAY, WHEN PBS HAS THE BEST BOXING ON TV:

Another round with Jack Johnson: The first black heavyweight champ is back in the ring (Vanessa E. Jones, January 11, 2005, Boston Globe)

There are people who know the subject of Ken Burns's upcoming documentary, Jack Johnson.

''I meet women who are in their 60s -- or men," says Burns, ''who say, 'My dad or my grandfather saw Jack Johnson. He was the best.' "

Boxing fans may know this turn-of-the-20th-century boxer who became the first African-American heavyweight champion in 1908 as a GOAT -- greatest of all time. Others learned his story through ''The Great White Hope," the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Johnson's life that started as a play starring James Earl Jones before becoming a movie of the same name in 1970.

But ask younger people about Johnson and you'll probably get a blank stare. Or they'll think you're talking about that surfer/folk singer.

''I think he has largely been forgotten," says Geoffrey Ward, a historian and Burns collaborator. ''And I've been trying to think why it is. It would be hard to exaggerate how famous he was in his lifetime. He was certainly the most famous black man in the world."

Now, thanks to Ward, Burns, and others, America is experiencing a Johnson revival. Burn's documentary ''Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," premieres Jan. 17 on PBS. Ward wrote Burns's film, then added a healthy helping of additional research for a critically lauded biography of Johnson of the same name published in November. ESPN just announced it will produce an original film about Johnson set to air later this year.

The boxer's legacy also haunts ''The Fight," a TV documentary that premiered in the fall about the two battles between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis, who became America's second black heavyweight champ in 1938. He's the inspiration for Miles Davis's 1970 album ''A Tribute to Jack Johnson," which gets reissued this month. Hip-hop's Mos Def not only names the black rock supergroup he formed to make his recent CD, ''The New Danger," Black Jack Johnson, he mentions the boxer liberally in a few songs. Director Spike Lee honored the boxer by displaying striking images of him in his recent film ''She Hate Me," out on DVD Feb. 1.

The focus of this interest is a man who exercised his individuality in a society that desperately wanted him to be like everyone else.

MORE:
Joe Louis: A Sense of Dignity (Red Smith)

When Joe Louis's tax troubles were still making headlines, a man told him: "You were 15 years ahead of your time. You should have been around today to cut in on these multi-million-dollar closed-circuit shows."

"No," Joe said, "when I was boxing I made $5 million and wound up broke, owing the Government a million. If I was boxing today I'd make $10 million and wind up broke, owing the Government two million."

Joe Louis Barrow lived a month less than 67 years. He was heavyweight champion of the world in an era when the heavyweight champion of the world was, in the view of many, the greatest man in the world. He held the title for 12 years, defended it 25 times and retired undefeated as a champion.

Not once in 66 years was he known to utter a word of complaint or bitterness or offer an excuse for anything. To be sure, he had nothing to make excuses about. In 71 recorded fights he lost three times, on a knockout by Max Schmeling before he won the championship, on a decision to Ezzard Charles when he tried to regain the title, and finally on a knockout by Rocky Marciano when that young man was on his way to the top.

Joe had just celebrated his 21st birthday when he came to New York the first time. This was 1935, not a long time ago, yet some people still saw any black man as the stereotype darky, who loved dancing and watermelon. Some news photographers bought a watermelon and asked Joe to pose eating a slice. He refused, saying he didn't like watermelon.

"And the funny thing is," said Harry Markson, telling the story, "Joe loves watermelon."

At 21, this unlettered son of Alabama sharecroppers had the perception to realize what the pictures would imply and the quiet dignity to have no part of the charade. Dignity was always a word that applied to him. Dignity and candor.

Early in Muhammad Ali's splendacious reign as heavyweight champion, he hired Joe as an "adviser" and they appeared on television together.

"Joe, you really think you coulda whupped me?" Ali said.

"When I had the title," Joe said, "I went on what they called a bum-of-the-month tour."

Ali's voice rose three octaves. "You mean I'm a bum?"

"You woulda been on the tour," Joe told his new employer.

'The Man with the Golden Smile': a review of Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward (Joyce Carol Oates, NY Review of Books)

Of great American heavyweight champions, Jack Johnson (1878–1946) remains sui generis. Though his dazzling and always controversial career reached its zenith in 1910, with Johnson's spectacular defense of his title against the first of the Great White Hope challengers, the former champion Jim Jeffries, Johnson's poised ring style, his counterpunching speed, precision, and the lethal economy of his punches, seem to us closer in time than the more earnest and forthright styles of Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Larry Holmes, Gerry Cooney, et al. That inspired simile "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," coined to describe the young Cassius Clay/ Muhammad Ali in his early dazzling fights, is an apt description of Jack Johnson's cruelly playful dissection of white opponents like Tommy Burns. Ali, a virtuoso of what was called in Johnson's time "mouth-fighting," a continuous barrage of taunts and insults intended to undermine an opponent psychologically, and the inventor of his own, insolently baiting "Ali shuffle," can be seen as a vengeful and victorious avatar of Jack Johnson who perfected the precarious art of playing with and to a hostile audience, like a bullfighter who seduces his clumsy opponent (including the collective clumsy "opponent" of the audience) into participating in, in fact heightening, the opponent's defeat. To step into the ring with a Trickster is to risk losing not only your fight but your dignity.

What was "unforgivable" in Johnson's boxing wasn't simply that he so decisively beat his white opponents but that he publicly humiliated them, demonstrating his smiling, seemingly cordial, contempt. Like Ali, except more astonishing than Ali, since he had no predecessors, Johnson transformed formerly capable, formidable opponents into stumbling yokels. Like Ali, Johnson believed in allowing his opponents to wear themselves out throwing useless punches.

Like Ali, Johnson understood that boxing is theater.

-A Fighter for the Ages: Jack Johnson risked being lynched to become world heavyweight champion. (GORDON MARINO, January 11, 2005, Opinion Journal)

It is widely held that between the Emancipation and World War I, the most significant date for African-Americans was Dec. 26, 1908, the day that Jack Johnson (1878-1946) drubbed Tommy Burns to the canvas and became the first black heavyweight champion of the world. The idea of a black man being the greatest symbolic warrior on the planet sent many people into a panic. Spurred on by race-baiting writers such as Jack London, the frantic search for a white hope began in earnest. In the summer of 1908, Jim Jeffries, the retired undefeated heavyweight king, came off of his farm to try and restore the old order. After Johnson dissected Jeffries, the nation erupted in riots that claimed as many as 26 lives.

Though Johnson did not talk a great deal about race, he risked being lynched at many of his fights and broke down barriers that seemed impassible. Still, if my informal polls are any indication, you would be lucky to find one in 10 college students who could identify him today. Ironically enough, Johnson relished the role of cynosure and his very being cried out, "Don't forget me." But the mid-January premiere of Ken Burns's documentary "The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson: Unforgivable Blackness" should prod our collective memory.

Over the next few weeks, there will be a great deal of discussion about the social significance of the comet that was Jack Johnson. And that is good, as Johnson's story resonates with many revelations about race in America; however, the politico-historical buzz should not mute the fact that Johnson was first and foremost a fighter for the ages.

-The Great Black Hope: Ken Burns' new documentary about boxer Jack Johnson tries to reconcile liberal ideals with American racism (Geoffrey Dunn, MetroActive)

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 17, 2005 6:01 AM