UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

When I was a kid I loved boxing. I read about it, watched it on TV, even kept score round by round. What turned me off permanently was the Patterson-Ellis title bout on September 14, 1968. The old champ Floyd Patterson was attempting to regain the crown and become the heavyweight king for an unprecedented third time. He gave WBA (one of two crowning authorities, the WBC being the other) champ Ellis a beating and my scorecard gave it easily to my fellow Brooklynite and all-around good citizen. I'm paraphrasing but the post-fight dialogue with announcer Howard Cosell went something like this:

HOWARD: Champ! Champ! How do you feel? It looks like you're going to regain the crown and be the heavyweight champion again!

FLOYD: Let's wait and see what the referee says Howard.

The referee in Sweden was the sole judge and he gave the decision to Ellis for reasons unknown. My own conclusion as an 11-year-old buff was that there were powers greater than Floyd that wanted a young champion that they could control.

Part of being a young buff was learning the continuous lineage of the heavyweight championship line. From John L. Sullivan in 1885, there followed Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Hart, Burns and the greatest  champ of all time, Jack Johnson. Johnson lived like a modern man and how he avoided being shot, lynched, or physically destroyed is a testament to the sheer force that this man exuded. The racism of the time prevented him from fighting for the title for many years as white champs refused to fight him. Once he was given the opportunity, he took the title and held it from 1908-1915.

The Ken Burns documentary, UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, is very well done and especially clever in the showing of and commentary on real fight footage from 100 years ago. It's almost corny to dub in the sound of punches and the crowd noise but it works with silent footage. All the other Burns touches are there, such as period music and famous people reading from archival newspapers and magazines.

I particularly recommend the on-screen commentary from James Earl Jones, who played Johnson in THE GREAT WHITE HOPE on stage and screen. Some great still photos are shown of Jones and Muhammad Ali play sparring, back in the day when Ali was banned from boxing. Jones movingly talks about Johnson's ethos: how his heart, mind, soul, and very manhood was his alone: he was not a slave.

Part I concludes with Johnson's ascension to the title. Part II covers the fall and it's sad to see a man flee his country and have to bargain his way back in to serve a one-year jail term for violating the Mann Act. In 2011 there's recurring talk of a presidential pardon. Even though he lived his later years fighting bums and living off past glory, his final rounds are filled more dignity than many modern champs who end up addled from too many blows and broke: Joe Louis working as a casino greeter always comes to mind. I was happy to see Johnson make it to 68. It's implied that his fatal car crash was precipitated by some racial mistreatment; he drove off speeding in a rage. It's hard to believe that he would have done that.

Black History Month IV: Move Over Gabriel! Here Comes Satchmo!

Welcome to the 4th annual Black History Month for 1 On the Town. Check out the archives for 2010, 2009, and 2008 (there's some amazing prognostication or just hopefulness about our current president in the Pettigrew for President entry).

Move Over Gabriel! Here Comes Satchmo!

So said radio/TV man Fred Robbins at the end of his eulogy for Louis Armstrong in 1970. I can remember growing in the 1960s, the Golden Age of free television. A middle class kid could see the greatest artists of the 20th century on free TV on the late afternoon talk/variety shows and beg his parents to stay up and watch a late night show (9 pm) if it was a school night. Louis Armstrong was a frequent guest in that era, always welcome in the home. His avuncular ubiquitous presence was anodyne to the occasional racism a kid was exposed to by his older siblings. I can't recall feeling prejudice toward blacks and my Irish father scolded anyone in the house who used the N-word, but I can recall that one sibling liked to tell offensive Black jokes and another favored anti-Semitism. We had little exposure to African Americans inside the house, except for my father's friend from work, Holcombe Hall, who fixed TVs as a sideline, and the Edison man.

I recently read Terry Teachout's 2009 bio POPS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and recommend it. What comes though is the underlying sadness of the humorous trumpet icon who brought so much joy to the world. If Tracy Morgan wants to get his EGOT, he should star in the biopic.

"(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue?" Louis sang courtesy of Fats Waller and Andy Ratzaff. Twice Teachout comments and reports on Louis's interpretations of the song. From the first time he recorded it in 1929, Louis "made a point of blunting its confrontational edge," Teachout notes. When I hear anyone criticize Louis this is usually the thrust, that his good-natured stage and real-life personas made his people look meek or happy in their oppression, ignoring the reality of racism. They conveniently ignore the mixed-race bands he led, which did more to break down legal barriers and hidden prejudices than any professional speakers ever did or will do.

There's a beautiful scene in the documentary JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY (1959) (thank you Netflix streaming) with Louis and Jack Teagarden doing their old chestnut, "Rockin' Chair." Teachout describes a 1957 TV perf "in which the broad shouldered Teagarden puts an arm around the shorter Armstrong and looks affectionately at him as they amble through their well-worn routine:

 [JACK:] Fetch me some water, son!

[LOUIS:] You know you don't drink water, father.

If you don't dig this kind of good humor and bonhomie, then you can't dig Pops.

One more note on Louis and childhood: I think every kid in the family did a raspy impression, which was always followed by Mom warning that you'd ruin your throat. I can even remember bringing out a handkerchief for verisimilitude.