He won his first title on February 3, 1903, beating "Denver" Ed Martin over 20 rounds for the "Colored Heavyweight Championship." His efforts to win the full title were thwarted as World Heavyweight Champion James J. However, World Heavyweight Champion "Gentleman" Jim Corbett, who was white, had used many of the same techniques a decade earlier, and was praised by the white press as "the cleverest man in boxing."īy 1902, Johnson had won at least 50 fights against both white and black opponents. Johnson's style was very effective, but it was criticized in the white press as being cowardly and devious. He often gave the impression of having much more to offer and, if pushed, he could punch quite powerfully. He often fought to punish his opponents rather than knock them out, endlessly avoiding their blows and striking with swift counters. Johnson always began a bout cautiously, slowly building up over the rounds into a more aggressive fighter. ![]() He developed a more patient approach than was customary in that day: playing defensively, waiting for a mistake, and then capitalizing on it. Johnson's fighting style was very distinctive. (Although boxing was one of the three most popular sports in America at the time, along with baseball and horse-racing, the practice was officially illegal in most states, including Texas.) Choynski began training Johnson in jail and helped him develop his style, especially when fighting larger men. They were both arrested for "engaging in an illegal contest" and jailed for 23 days. In 1901, Joe Choynski, small but powerful Jewish heavyweight, came to Galveston and fought a match with Johnson, knocking him out in round three. He turned professional around 1897, fighting in private clubs and making more money then he had ever seen. Johnson fought his first bout, a 16-round victory, at age 15. He rebelled against religion, however, and was kicked out of church when he stated that God did not exist and that the church dominated people's lives. Jack Johnson had five years of formal education. Jack Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas on March 31, 1878, as the second child and first son of Henry and Tina "Tiny" Johnson, former slaves and faithful Methodists, who both worked blue-collar jobs to earn enough to raise six children (the Johnsons had nine children, five of whom lived to adulthood, and an adopted son) and taught them how to read and write. Johnson was admitted to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954. The play, The Great White Hope, by Howard Sackler, which was also made into a movie starring James Earl Jones, is based on his life. He died as the result of an automobile accident near Raleigh, North Carolina, in June 1946. Outside the ring, he took the worst that America's racists could give him and gave it right back to them by his haughty attitude and public breaking of racial taboos.Īfter his career in boxing, Johnson, an amateur cellist and fiddler who was a connoisseur of Harlem night life, eventually opened his own supper club, Club Deluxe, at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue. As a boxer, some of his greatest victories came after he himself had been knocked down and appeared to be nearing defeat. Johnson had the quality to endure, both inside the ring out outside of it. The aftermath of the fight left at least 23 blacks and two whites dead in racial incidents around the country. They arranged for ex-heavyweight champion James Jeffries to fight Johnson in Reno, Nevada, in 1910, in what was billed at "The Fight of the Century." However, their "hope" was dashed in the fifteenth round. Johnson was not fully accepted as champion and white supremacists searched methodically for what they termed a "great white hope" to take the title away from him. Johnson's career was legendary-in 47 years of fighting, he was only knocked out three times-but his life was full of problems. For more than a decade, Johnson was probably the most famous, and certainly the most notorious African-American in the world.įrom 1902-1907 Johnson won over 50 matches, some of them against other African-American boxers such as Joe Jeannette, Sam Langford, and Sam McVey. He was the first black Heavyweight Champion of the World, 1908-1915 and became infamous for his interracial relationships with white women. ![]() ![]() John Arthur Johnson (Ma– June 10, 1946), better known as Jack Johnson and nicknamed the "Galveston Giant," was an American boxer and arguably the best heavyweight of his generation.
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