American History Reform
Chapter Title: RACE MAN OR RACE MENACE? Pugilists, Patriarchy, and Pathology Book Title: I Fight for a Living
Book Subtitle: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915
Book Author(s): LOUIS MOORE
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1vsk8nk.6
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2 race Man or race Menace?
Pugilists, Patriarchy, and Pathology
Frank Erne did not have a chance. When Joe Gans fought on the level, not many fighters did. Although Erne had beaten Gans in their first bout—a nasty cut on Gans’s eye from a head butt forced him to quit—nothing would stop Gans this time. He had come too far from the days of battle royals to face defeat now. On May 12, 1902, Gans, the greatest counterpuncher of his generation, so slick in the ring they called him the “Old Master,” came out of his corner the aggressor. Erne was not ready for what awaited him. An unexpected right-hand lead to Erne’s ear wobbled the champion. Then Gans flipped a sharp jab that shot through Erne’s guard and bloodied his nose. He rushed in with another quick left, followed by a right to the jaw, and the champ crumbled to the canvas. Fight over! In one minute and forty seconds in the first round, Joe Gans, the poor kid from Baltimore, won the lightweight championship. “I did not expect to win so quickly, but I believe the end would have been the same had the fight gone much farther.”1 For his work, he won $3,500. Now it was time to party.2 Joe Gans was good at that too. Seemingly all of black Baltimore had jammed the streets to celebrate their fistic hero. Dressed in Maryland’s state colors of black and gold, the poor denizens, the colored sports, and race men blended together. During the festivities some boasted loudly, while others stood quietly and took in the moment. The parade of hacks carrying the participants stretched two scores deep, the colored sports in the procession coolly smoked their cigars, a black band played “Hail to the Chief ” and “See, the Conquering Hero Comes,” and Gans, impeccably dressed, sparkled in diamonds. When the parade finished, the leading black social clubs tendered Gans a dinner. At two dollars a plate,
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r ace m a n or r ace me n ace? · 45
the price kept the poor denizens out, but inside the building, colored sports and race men celebrated.3 At a time when the politics of respectability kept the sporting class and race men at odds with each other, Gans’s presence brought the two factions together. With diamond stickpins, elaborate canes, and flashy clothes, Gans epito- mized the term “colored sport.” “Joe Gans dropped in a few days ago,” a black Nashville writer reported, “Joe looked like a Bermuda millionaire in his fur-lined coat and diamond studded tie.”4 He looked the part and played the part. A year and a half prior to his championship victory, Gans teamed up with Chicago’s leading black gambler, John “Mushmouth” Johnson, and fixed his fight against Terry McGovern. Gans, who started as a 3–1 favorite, took a dive and brought colored sports with him to swim in the pool of easy money. According to one report, “colored men had received an advance tip and bet freely against Gans, with whom their sympathies would naturally be. ‘Mushmouth’ Johnson is said to have made up a pool on McGovern. A num- ber of west side saloonkeepers lost money to colored sports on the knockout
Joe Gans, “The Old Master,” shows off his boxing pose in a studio photo. Gans is consid- ered one of the best fighters of his generation. (1898, Library of Congress)
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46 . ch a p t e r 2
proposition.”5 The Chicago Daily News claimed, “The negroes around John- son’s place were close-mouthed and expressed utter ignorance. It is said that here Gans leaned back in his chair while playing poker a night or so before the fight and exclaimed: ‘Boys ’eres a chance to make your fortunes. Bet on McGovern.’”6 In Denver, New York, and Baltimore, cities where Gans had ties to the sporting community, colored sports also hit big. The greatest pound-for-pound fighter of his generation took a lot of chances, but he rarely weighed the risks. By 1906, he had squandered $100,000 and hit rock bottom. “I have made about $100,000 but all I have left to show for it is a couple of houses in Baltimore. The rest went backing sure things in the race tracks—dope right from the stable—the can’t-loose [sic] kind, you know. Every man in this business is going to get his sometime.”7 Like a true sporting man, however, he took it all in stride and quickly rebounded. How? He bet on himself. A few months after he lost all of his money, Gans took an advance on his entire $11,000 purse for the Bat Nelson contest, and he let it ride. He won the fight, the money, and returned back to black Baltimore for another glorious celebration. The majority of the black fighters of this generation, by virtue of their pro- fession, spent a considerable amount of time in the sporting community. A colored sport like Gans proved his manhood in a myriad of ways, including in how much money he spent, what kind of chances he took, and his ability to take care of other sporting men. In other words, he had to be a good fel- low and impress his brothers in the sporting community. It was nothing for Gans to bet hundreds on a craps game and thousands at the tracks. “I used to rush to the race track right after every fight and throw my earnings away on the ponies,” Gans said. “The last time I got trimmed for $15,000 in a few days. I had given all my money to my mother to take care of, and I had to go to her for $15,000.”8 That was the life of a good fellow. Good fellows sel- dom banked their money; instead they carried their roll of cash with them, ready to bet on horse races, play card games, shoot dice, or pay for rounds of drinks. But as fast as he could throw his combinations in the ring, and toss his money at a game of chance, the successful pugilist could transition to perform a role of manly patriarchy. Black fighters’ construction of manhood straddled the line between Vic- torian respectability and sporting manhood.9 In other words, many tried to emulate their middle-class brothers. As part of the black-middle class’ strategy to prove their equality, race men grounded their manhood in thrift and patriarchy. Speaking to an audience about uplift, one black speaker pleaded, “the elevation and ennobling of our race never can be accomplished
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r ace m a n or r ace me n ace? · 47
through mass meetings, conventions and leagues—it can only be effected through the economy and zeal of the masses of the race in the acquisition of wealth.” In the context of racial uplift and economic thrift, the home became a platform to prove racial parity. Historian Kevin Gaines suggests, “elite blacks celebrated the home and patriarchal family as institutions that symbolized the freedom, power, and security they aspired to.” Gaines added, “Through their frequent tributes to home and family life, African Ameri- cans laid claim to the respectability and stability withheld by the state and by minstrelsy’s slanders . . .” Thus the black family was “a sign of the race’s triumph over their ruinous impact of slavery. . . .”10 Seen from this perspec- tive, if the pugilist could avoid the perils of the sporting world, and live up to the ideals of the patriarch, he could properly represent the aspirations of the black middle class. Despite spending their leisure time in the sporting culture, when they had a chance most black prizefighters publicly placed themselves as economi- cally responsible patriarchs. They wanted to prove that their manhood went beyond their physicality, on the one hand, and was not solely rooted in the disreputable sporting culture, on the other hand. Prizefighters talked about investments, bought businesses, purchased homes for their families, and discussed their patriarchal role with the media. After Gans defeated Bat Nel- son, for example, he used his winnings to buy a hotel in Baltimore. Named the Goldfield Hotel after the location of his fight with Nelson, Gans spent $40,000 buying the property and used $30,000 of winnings from his next fights to outfit the interior.11 His hotel was the crown jewel of black Baltimore and stood as a symbol of race pride. Gans learned from his past gambling mistakes and publicly discussed his newfound economic discipline. He once told a black reporter, “I have earned $81,000 in the past sixteen months, and I haven’t thrown it away. I’ve got a good hotel and the best café in Baltimore, and I own every bit of it. It’s mine. . . . I’ve put my money in property, where it’ll always make a living for me.”12 When he died two years later, his estate was valued at $45,000, which included the Goldfield Hotel worth $30,000 that he left to his wife, a house he left to his mother, and $2,000 in diamonds, a fact the black middle class did not miss and celebrated in the press. Gans was one of them, but he was also a good fellow. To be sure, most black fighters lacked the education and refinement to perform Victorian respectability full-time; thus placing faith in prizefight- ers as examples of racial uplift and black equality included inherent risks for the black middle class. Prizefighters came from the sporting community, where alternative notions of manhood reigned supreme. The sporting culture
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48 . ch a p t e r 2
was a world of pimps, prostitutes, and players, where manhood was proved through deeds and actions understood within that context. Although race men celebrated black fighters as manly examples of hard work, black leaders quickly abandoned the boxer when they realized that many black pugilists did not consistently uphold the middle class’s respectable politics. Thus, great fighters who proved black superiority in the ring became ostracized figures in a battle for racial uplift if they failed outside the ring.
pugILISM and patrIarchy
The idea that a prizefighter could exemplify respectable patriarchy seems odd. After all, the very nature of his business epitomized the colored sport. Before he entered the ranks of prizefighter, when he finished his day at his menial job, if he did not patronize the colored sporting club he spent his leisure time at the all-male social spaces of gymnasiums, honing his skills in hopes of turning propensity for pugilism into a profession. Once he became a professional fighter—a decision that shunned his participation in the tra- ditional labor market—he spent his time in male social spaces like taverns, training camps, and arenas, where very few women were allowed. As part of his job, he migrated from city to city, riding the rails, staying at hotels, and ingratiating himself in the local sporting community. For the most popular fighters, hundreds and sometimes thousands of men cheered him at a train station or the local hotel, or congregated at his training camp to fawn over his manliness. How could the black prizefighter be a patriarch if he lived the life of a colored sport? If married, to reconcile their family life with the realities of the ring and the sporting culture, some fighters traveled with their spouses and children. Hank Griffin traveled with, trained with, and took his family in on the boxing business. At 6'4" and 175 pounds, Griffin, a Los Angeles–based fighter, was one of the best heavyweights at the turn of the century. Lean but muscular, and a very crafty boxer—they called him the Black Bob Fitzsimmons—Griffin started his career in 1890, at seventeen, battled in sixty-one bouts during his career, and only lost a handful of those affairs. He beat Jack Johnson once and fought two draws with the future champ. Throughout the Los Angeles area, he doggedly demonstrated his manly discipline and trained in front of the public so onlookers could see his determination while sparring, hitting the punching bag, running at the beaches, or rowing a boat. Although Griffin kept his kids away from the Los Angeles sporting clubs, like Lou Simpson’s United Republican Club, he often incorporated his family in his rowing
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r ace m a n or r ace me n ace? · 49
routine, a task that did not require him to be around the social male culture of boxing. “Hank Griffin finds a long, hard row in the inner harbor about as conducive to muscle building as anything he can do,” a reporter noted. “It has been his custom to take Mrs. Griffin and all the little Griffins, three in number, along with him on these jaunts . . .” During one training session, however, his son almost drowned when he fell out of the boat, but Griffin jumped in and saved him.13 Days later, and still drained from the incident, Griffin stepped in the ring with heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries for a four-round exhibition. Although the larger Jeffries physically punished and pushed around his foe, Griffin never took the count and lasted the full four rounds with the champ. Los Angeles’s black community appreciated Griffin’s efforts inside and out- side the ring. Less than a month after his battle with Jeffries, right before he went into the ring with “Denver” Ed Martin, local black citizens gifted Grif- fin a belt with red, white, and blue stripes, and big white stars. He was their ideal representation of citizenship and manhood. Before the gong, Griffin made a speech thanking the black community and promised he would not let them down. But on that night, he could not back up his words. Martin manhandled him over seven rounds. In the seventh and final round, Martin drilled him with several uppercuts that left Griffin limp. Instead of letting him fall to the canvas, Martin held him up and punished him more. A blow to the heart ended the fight.14 Miraculously, Griffin recovered from that beat- ing and bested Jack Johnson the next month. Griffin was more than a fighter. He also operated a boxing business with his wife. In 1903, they opened a boarding house for fighters in Monrovia, California, where he trained other fighters, including Sam McVey, and his wife cooked the meals.15 His business lasted a year until the fight game dried up in Los Angeles, and Griffin went on the road, joining a sparring exhibition with ex-champ Bob Fitzsimmons. Something happened to his marriage—it is not clear if his wife died, they separated, or he left her—and Griffin remarried while on the road. He met his new wife while on tour in Jackson, Michigan, and the couple, along with his kids, lived there for two years before moving to Ann Arbor. Although Griffin engaged in the occasional fight and sparring exhibition, he quit the ring because his wife “didn’t like the fight thing.”16 He eventually opened up a sparring academy in Ann Arbor and taught local college students the rudiments of the ring. The couple also ran a successful black hotel, the Griffin Hotel, until his untimely death in 1911. After Griffin passed, the local Ann Arbor press noted, “Griffin had the respect of many people in this city, both of his own race and among the white people, for
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50 . ch a p t e r 2
he was always courteous and obliging and he had a excellent reputations in every way.”17 In other words, he showed the respectability and patriarchy the middle class valued. Like Griffin, Joe Jeannette preferred patriarchy to being the good fellow. Jeannette, a Hoboken, New Jersey, native, was one of the greatest heavy- weights of his generation. As a youth, in hopes of saving money to attend veterinarian school, he worked for a coal company breaking in horses, but the allure of money made in the ring changed his career plans.18 Because top white fighters avoided Jeannette throughout his career, he had to spend most of his time battling other talented black fighters like Sam Langford, whom he fought eighteen times. He also traveled overseas to find better paydays, and when he made those trips he took his family. Discussing Jeannette’s popu- larity in France, American cyclist Floyd McFarland noted, the “Parisians are crazy about negro fighters. They are idolizing Joe Jeannette now and are ready to patronize the fighting game to the limit.”19 While Jeannette enter- tained the crowds with his physical manliness inside the ring, he performed middle-class patriarchy outside the squared circle. White athlete R. L. Baker observed, “Jeannette is a fine fellow, and thought very well of by everybody here. He has a white wife and two children, runs a fine motor car, but is in no way arrogant or flashy. When not boxing or training,” the writer noted, “Joe is with his wife and kiddies, or looking to the gardens surrounding his pretty home in the suburbs.”20 Jeannette was also one of the few black fighters of his generation to find financial success after his career. In 1919, ex-fighter Young Peter Jackson—a sailor in the Navy at that time—told a reporter, “Joe saved his money, and I think he is about the richest of the colored fighters. He has a family and spends most of his time at home.”21 Five years later, in 1924, Jeannette purchased property in New Jersey, spent $30,000 on renova- tions, and built his house and a gas station, and opened a gymnasium on the land. He also ran a Cadillac limousine service for funerals and weddings and became an example of black economic uplift.22 As late as 1947, at the age of sixty-seven, Jeannette still ran the business.23 To be sure, white writers were not always willing to celebrate black patri- archy unfiltered. To assuage white anxieties about the challenge of the black self-made man, writers often crafted the black fighter’s words to resemble childlike Sambo dialect. Take, for example, how a white reporter rephrased Sam Langford’s discussion of his patriarchy in a 1914 interview. He transcribed Langford’s words, writing, “You see, I’se now 28 and dis fightin’ am one tough game. I likes to fight all right, ’cause I likes de money. But now I’se got about enough coin salted down to quit an’ settle down on a little farm I’se got back
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r ace m a n or r ace me n ace? · 51
near Boston. I’se got a wife and baby and I done just started the youngster to school and now I want to quit kickin’ around and go back home to be with my wife an’ kid.” When the white writer asked Langford how much money he made, Langford reportedly replied, “Ma wife looks after de coin, and I does the fightin’. Whenever I gets my share of de receipts after a fight I always makes tracks for my ole friend, de Western Union and ebery cent of day money goes direct to Mrs. Langford in Boston. And what does she do with it? Why, she banks it of course. You didn’t think she totes it around in her stocking, did you?”24 Despite the fact the paper chose to quote Langford in Sambo dialect, what we see in Langford’s words is his proclamation of his patriarchy through fiscal responsibility and financial control. The interview allowed Langford to situate himself as an accountable and attentive authority figure. During his career, he bought three homes and invested in a poultry farm.25 While the white American press often failed to show positive acts of black fatherhood, we know that Langford was a publicly loving father. In 1912, dur- ing his sojourn to Australia to participate in the fight game, Langford had his wife (Martha) and four-year old daughter (Charlotte) visit him. Upon his family’s arrival, an Australian newspaper reported that Langford “jumped for joy when he saw his household of two straining over the rails to single him out from the waiting crowd, and the joy soon became contagious.” Langford told a reporter, “I’m sure I wouldn’t be more pleased if I beat Jack Johnson and won a fortune than I feel right now.”26 In another article, a local reporter captured Langford at play with Charlotte as he bounced her on his knee and spoke glowingly of her. “She likes the boys better than the girls,” Langford bragged. “Funny, ain’t it but she’s just the cherry kid, I tell you.” Langford also joked, “I call her Tom because she likes the boys,” and added, “She’s a winner everywhere she goes.”27 For whatever reason, very few athletes, black or white, had been captured in this fatherly fashion.28 Sadly, for Sam, although he made at least $300,000 in his career, he struggled to hold onto his earnings, and he spent the last thirty years of his life a broke and blind charity case and died in a Boston nursing home. According to Jeannette, “He made lots of money, more than I did, but he spent it fast or gave it away. He always said what good was money except to spend or give it to somebody.”29 Before he died in 1956, Langford told a reporter, “I spent most of it having a wonderful time. And I don’t regret it.”30 He lived the life of a patriarch and a good fellow, but the latter won. Black fighters publicly discussed their patriarchy and economic thrift to push back against the racism they faced in society. They wanted to be seen
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52 . ch a p t e r 2
as a self-made man, and not the Sambo caricature whites viewed him as. In one account, Gans noted he and his family “were poor people. My mother, when I was a little boy, had to work hard. My father didn’t do much to sup- port the family, and my mother took in washing and did other things. She got me two or three suits of clothes a year, of course, and was always anxious to have me go to school and learn something.” To provide for his family, Gans worked as an oyster huckster, making $6 a week, but that was not enough to lift them out of poverty, so he chipped in money with coworkers, and they bought a pair of boxing gloves for $5. After his first big money fight—he beat Kid McPartland for $5,000 in 1897—Gans gave his winnings to his mother so, “she never had to do any more hard work after that. I always looked out for her, even when I was down to a hard thin dime.”31 In her effort to ensure that her husband was not just remembered as a colored sport, Gans’s wife wrote a powerful letter to the New York Age about the man she loved. First, she wanted to clear the air about Gans’s finances. “Joe is no millionaire,” she claimed, “but he has, thank God, saved enough so that his family need not want after his days are ended.” She also pleaded that his fans not throw him a benefit, as was customary among the sporting fraternity to help a poverty-stricken boxer. “I feel that you will be interested in knowing that neither Joe nor I would for a moment countenance a benefit of any sort and in his dying moments he feels a thrill of pleasure in knowing that he has cared for his loved ones so that they will not be forced to look for charity from anyone else.” Mrs. Gans emphasized, “You will be doing Joe and his family a big favor if you will emphasize this fact most strongly.”32 Gans did not waste his money as a colored sport. He was a real man, not a menace to his race, and race men recognized and applauded that fact. He was one of them. Likewise, Jack Johnson used the press to construct an image of his mas- culine responsibility. Johnson had a keen understanding of how the media portrayed him as an irresponsible sport—he purposely fed that narrative through his flashy clothes, cars, and jewelry—but he also wanted to craft an image of respectability and prove he was a self-made man. As early as 1903, for example, we see Johnson straddling the line between colored sport and patriarch, as he easily moved from being a good fellow to a good man. Explaining to a Los Angeles reporter about how and why he spent his win- nings so fast, Johnson bragged, “I always like the very finest clothes, and I generally wear them. So I bought some new togs. And I put a few hundred in diamonds and gave ’em to my wife. I like diamonds and so does she.” “Then if you’re in my profession,” Johnson added, “you’ve always got to have your
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r ace m a n or r ace me n ace? · 53
hand in your pocket when you meet the crowd in the bar—and all that sort of thing counts way up, you know. A hundred a week won’t near last a first- class boxing man.” Demonstrating his sporting confidence, Johnson showed no worries about making more money: “I’m going to try mighty hard to cut a clean thousand out of my next fight with McVey—and if I do, you bet I’ll soak it away!”33 After Johnson beat McVey, however, instead of blowing all his money, he traveled with his wife back to Galveston to visit his family. As one reporter wrote, “Jack brings back a big wad of the needed coin and says he proposes to make his old mother independent for life, and so she will have some of the benefits from his success in life.”34 Johnson’s trip home, however, was one of the last times he went back to Galveston to visit his fam- ily. In 1909, his mother reflected, “It is six years since he was home, but he never forgot us. He always says it would be better for me to have the money he would spend making the trip than to see him, so he writes and sends me the money. He has done well by us.”35 Three weeks after Johnson arrived in Galveston in March 1903, he came back to Los Angeles with his good friend, Joe Walcott, to watch Walcott battle Billy Woods and to celebrate their birth- days with the local colored sports. The Los Angeles media, of course, took
A well-dressed Jack John- son posing for a photo in his trademark attire. (1909, Library of Congress)
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54 . ch a p t e r 2
the opportunity to mock Johnson’s actions. In a supposed conversation he had with a cigar store owner, Johnson reportedly asked, “Now, Mistah Hook- stratten, ah was bohn in Galveston Mahch thuhty fuhst, 1878. How old does dat mek me, now?” When asked if he was kidding, the Colored Champion reportedly replied “Ah’se not kiddin’ no sich thing. Ah’se tahkin’ business.” Johnson refused to pay for his cigar and invited all the surrounding sports in for a drink of wine.36 To the white press, he was nothing more than a black man-child. Because whites insisted on portraying Johnson as a man-child, Johnson at- tempted to publicly craft an image of respectability. When he dictated his life story, Johnson denounced the sporting life and assured a white writer, “Now that I have fought my way into the championship, and to fortune as well, all my other experiences will count. I am going to hold on to what I have—not in a stingy manner, but I am not going to be foolish like a good many other fighters have been.” Johnson claimed, “I used to gamble at race tracks, and I liked shooting craps, but I have no more time for either diversion.” The champion continued, “the race-track is dangerous and crap-shooting is a game for a fellow who works for wages.” To clarify that last part—one that was seemingly an attack on the working class—Johnson added, “I mean that the weekly wage man sometimes is lucky enough to get a bunch of money at one time which he would never get by saving. It’s a bad business anyhow.”37 In another instance, while preparing for his fight with Jim Jeffries, Johnson gave a talk at a New York YMCA, entitled “Manliness,” in which he told the black audience, “Sobriety, application and again sobriety, are cardinal requisites for success in life, with devotion to one’s aged mother as a close fourth.” He also told the captivated audience, “Learn to use your hands and not fall over your feet, and your social success will follow.” The champion’s suggestion about “social success,” however, irritated one southern writer who argued, “some one ought to take a shotgun to any fool negro who springs that ‘social success’ talk.”38 For Johnson, part of portraying the “good family man” meant proving he made thrifty economic investments to support his family’s financial needs. As champion, he invested nearly $200,000 in property. Johnson claimed he learned from his days of poverty that he never wanted to be hungry again. “With me the remembrance of those bean days is very keen, and I am invest- ing the money I won in purses and am still earning on the road. . . . Since I fought Burns and won the championship I have been pretty careful of my fortune.”39 Most of his investments went to buying real estate in Chicago’s South Side. In 1909, he purchased an $11,000 building, which prompted a
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r ace m a n or r ace me n ace? · 55
black writer to proclaim, “that eleven thousand dollar Chicago real estate investment of ‘Jack’ Johnson’s last week, would indicate that he intends to ‘side-step’ the heartrending poverty fate that overtook poor Peter Jackson and George Dixon.”40 Jackson and Dixon died broke because they lived the sporting life. In 1912, Johnson also purchased a $25,000 mansion in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for his wife: “I desired to give Mrs. Johnson a Christmas gift which would please her and I believed that a nice home would be the best kind of a gift.” As an added investment he bought a thirty-acre farm near the property, where he planned to breed cattle, noting, “I am tired of the fight game and am going to turn farmer.” When discussing cattle breeding, Johnson told a reporter he wanted to “breed a cross between the buffalo and the Texas Hereford to try to get a better beef animal. That will prove a good investment I am sure.”41 During this time period studied, no boxer better represented black mid- dle-class patriarchy than George Godfrey, the colored champion from 1883 to 1888. Though a member of the sporting community where booze flowed freely, Godfrey “did not destroy his manhood with intoxicants,” and, in fact, while most colored sports spent their time at the bar, he “spoke against the saloon, worked against it, and voted against it.” Godfrey once told the Boston Globe, “I don’t drink any ‘booz,’ you see, but eat three square meals every day, and four if I’m hungry. My digestion is perfect. I can digest a wooden toothpick.”42 He also used his home and family as a point of emphasis to showcase his respectability.43 For example, while negotiating terms of condi- tions for his fight with Jack Ashton, Godfrey told a reporter, “I have a fam- ily to look out for and I must get something for them to live on should any accident take me from them.” While he prepared to battle Joe Choynski for $5,000, Godfrey claimed that he wanted “that $5,000 for the education of his children and their future.” To spend more time with his family, he out- fitted his “elegantly furnished” home with workout equipment.44 According to one writer, Godfrey was “better than most of the class with which he as- sociated.” Another reporter noted, “Godfrey would rather train at his home than elsewhere, for he is more contented and does not have to worry about his family.” Other than the gym equipment there was “nothing in his house that would indicate it was the home of a prize fighter.”45 Godfrey also invested his winnings wisely. He owned $40,000 in real es- tate, and he lived in “comfortable circumstances pecuniarily, owning quite a block of real estate in Chelsea, Mass.” Godfrey even shared his economic strategies with his fellow fighters. Peter Jackson once told the San Francisco Chronicle:
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56 . ch a p t e r 2
I feel since getting acquainted with George Godfrey of Boston that I have made several great mistakes in my way of conducting my affairs. While God- frey was here we talked several times about the pecuniary phases of a boxer’s life, and he often urged the wisdom of banking or investing the proceeds of matches as soon as they were received. His argument was that, during the golden days of a boxer’s life, he would have friends in plenty, and if taken sick would receive the best of care, but if permanent disability should come and the boxer be compelled to seek other employment, no one would hold out a helping hand . . . 46
Unfortunately for Jackson, he did not follow the plan Godfrey prescribed. Jackson died in poverty in 1901. Godfrey had the discipline and determination to represent the race. One black writer suggested that boxing was “strictly business” to Godfrey and bragged that with each fight Godfrey bought “a house with the proceeds of every victory.”47 Godfrey was a man to emulate. On another occasion, the Cleveland Gazette claimed, “Godfrey tells stories how he built his house, and other tales that mark him a man who would succeed in every thing where push and tenacity count, and deserves all his good fortune. He has had a hard row to hoe, but has stuck manfully to his aim.”48 Twenty years after his death, a black writer recalled, “he was perhaps one of the most thrifty of the colored fighters. He worked in a butcher shop in a Boston market during the day and trained at night. He also worked at night on the foundation of his home.”49 But most black fighters were not like Godfrey. While they strived to be both a pugilist and a patriarch, the allure of the sporting community kept pulling them. After all, they more readily found the acceptance of their manhood and their equality in the sporting community.
the good FeLLow
Joe Walcott came from nothing. At the age of nine he left Barbados, hopped on a schooner, and worked as a cabin boy to earn a living. On the ship, Wal- cott had to learn how to fight for protection, and to keep his job, he learned how to cook “slum,” a concoction of the leftover food the guests did not want. But this line of work did not suit him. As a teenager, he quit the ship and made his home in Boston. His ability to cook slum landed him employment, but his propensity to land a punch earned him a career. Each day after work, Walcott headed to a local gymnasium for sparring lessons to round the rough edges off his fighting skills.50 At 5’2”, with muscles the size of a heavyweight,
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his ferocity and prowess caught the attention of George Dixon, who brought Walcott on as a sparring partner. Soon, Walcott would be one of the best fighters in the world and one of the highest-paid pugilists. At the peak of his career, Walcott represented an anomaly for the white press. Here was a man so dark, muscular, and relentless in the ring, writers labeled him the “Barbados Demon.” He was physical manliness personified; Walcott was one of the top fighters in the world—he won the welterweight championship in 1901—but white writers marked his darkness and power in the ring as supposed uncivilized savageness. Pound for pound, no fighter hit harder than Walcott. In 1900, for example, as a welterweight, he knocked out Joe Choynski, a light heavyweight, and a 4–1 favorite. For the white audience, the fight was a racial nightmare. “The white man was hopelessly beaten before a minute of the first round had passed. But Choynski was game and stood the gaff like a hero.” The fight continued as Walcott whipped Choynski until the seventh round, when Walcott knocked him down three times. After the first knock down, “the White man’s burden at that moment looked as if it might crush him,” but Choynski rose for more punishment. Before the final blow, “Walcott crept up to him with a grin that looked almost inhuman and started in to finish the helpless victim.”51 To put this victory in perspective, the following year, Choynski knocked out Jack Johnson. In the ring, Walcott was the demon, but the “Demon” mastered so-called respectable manliness too. In 1903, with his wife, four kids, and stepmother, Walcott purchased a $6,000 home, outfitted it with training quarters, and raised his family in a wealthy white neighborhood in Malden, Massachu- setts, on Belmont Street next to the millionaire rubber manufacturer E. S. Converse. For race men, Walcott’s home signified a sign that their plan of economic racial uplift worked. Of course, his white neighbors wanted him to move. He did not budge.52 Walcott tried his best to reconcile the ring with his respectability and used politics as his platform. In 1904, for example, he ran for the mayor of Malden. Although the white press mocked him, this was no joke. The previous year, Walcott led the Walcott Republican Club and organized the four hundred black voters in Malden, and for this may- oral campaign he planned to spend $2,500 of his own money. As part of his campaign he promised, “the town will be an open town, but respectable, and poor men and colored gentlemen will get a show.” He also wanted to lower taxes because, as he said, “I own two houses in the burg and I want lower taxes, and rascals turned out of office.” He added, “I’m against dynamite, and want lives of children protected.” The champ continued, “I’m for a new city
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58 . ch a p t e r 2
hall. I’m for recognition of colored people.”53 Did Walcott really have a shot at winning? History will never know, because a week after he announced his bid for mayor, Walcott accidently killed a man at a black dance hall. While everyone partied that night, Walcott and a group of colored sports, includ- ing Nelson C. Hall, lounged in the corner as the champion showed the crew his new revolver. As he displayed the gun, he accidentally pulled the trigger, which sent a bullet threw his right hand and into the heart of Hall, who in- stantly died.54 The champion survived the incident, but with a wounded hand his career was virtually over. The money stopped flowing, and without his large fight purses he could no longer survive his penchant for the sporting life. A decade after the shooting, Walcott wandered the streets of Boston, broke, and a tragic tale of so-called Negro pathology. In 1913, in an article entitled “They were Good Fellows When They Had It,” white writer Hal Coffman described the pitiful scene of seeing a broken Walcott: “Ten years ago—in Los Angeles—I saw Walcott training for his fight with Billy Woods. At that time Joe had money—lots of money—diamonds—big diamonds—and every- thing he wanted.” After Walcott shot himself in the hand, Coffman claimed the ex-champion “went the pace harder than ever and now is a common sight wandering around Boston, but instead of a crowd of admirers telling him what a great fellow he is, no one seems to have time for him anymore.”55 With no job prospects, Walcott left Boston to work on a schooner. When Walcott’s ship docked in New York in 1916, white writer Paul Purman told his readers, “He was a good fellow when he had the coin. That tells the story of Joe Walcott, perhaps the world’s greatest welterweight in his time, who slipped into New York a few days ago as a stoke on an Australian liner.” Pur- man continued, “Penniless, down and out, ragged, a pitiful figure he made as he crossed the plank and made his way to the places he used to haunt as a popular hero.” How did he lose his money? According to the writer, “Drink, women, dice—they draw the picture of downfall.”56 Walcott spent the next twenty years of his life a broke charity case. White writers, however, never looked at the individual failings of a fighter as the failings of an individual. For whites, a black pugilist’s inability to save money proved black pathol- ogy: a reflection that blacks—especially those black men who were the most visible in the country and thus came to represent the “Negro problem”—did not have the necessary culture or discipline to succeed in society and prove manly patriarchy. In his racist thinking, one writer observed, “It seems to be an unfortunate trait with the colored fighters that they have not sense enough to lay up a little of worldly goods against the coming of old age.
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Practically every one of them has been an object of charity at some time or other. Contrast these negro boxers with the average white scrapper of the same skill and prominence. While the colored man grovels in poverty the white chap toils in the lap of luxury.”57 Great white fighters including John L. Sullivan, Terry McGovern, Sandy Ferguson, and Jake Kilrain went bust, but white privilege meant that the media treated their failure as representative of the individuals and not their race. In his take on black fighters, former fighter Jack Skelly (white) observed, “It seems to me that most of the black champions make a bad finish in this fickle world of ours. . . . They have nearly all fallen by the wayside, and soon go down and out.” Although Skelly admitted white fighters’ financial failures, he believed the inability to save money and live up to manly responsibility was innate in black men. “Too much money and luxury seems to sap all the vitality of the black gladiators. They do not thrive on champagne, hot birds, silk underwear, automobiles and other high rolling stuff,” Skelly observed. The ex-pugilist ended his rac- ist rant reflecting, “It’s a well founded fact that however strong as a negro boxer may be, he’s usually weak in the top story. This does not seem to be so with most of the white fighters, for I know many who have retired from the ring years ago and are today successful business men, holding responsible positions throughout the civilized world.”58 On a similar note, another white writer concluded, “poverty, it appears, is a traditional nemesis of our great colored prize ring champions. With, hardly an exception, one after another, despite the immense sums their powers gained them, have faced the great Reaper absolutely penniless.” That white writer blamed black boxers going broke on bad business decisions and “an unwholesome desire for drink.”59 With so much discussion about black prizefighters, pathology, and poverty, the black middle class had to take note. Black leaders believed the race could not rise if prizefighters like Walcott, George Dixon, and Jack Johnson continued to drag them down. Thus, blinded by uplift politics, race men often fell into the trap of blaming and scapegoat- ing the supposed individual failures of a black fighter for what plagued black America, while momentarily choosing to ignore social, economic, and po- litical discrimination. Denigrated in Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s popular novel The Sports of the Gods, the saloon was the hub for the bachelor lifestyle and black pathology, and, according to the middle class, led to the downfall of many young colored men and women, especially new urban migrants. For black fighters, other than purchasing a home, buying a saloon constituted the most common investment. Notably, Henry Woodson, McHenry Johnson, Billy Wilson, George Dixon, Joe Gans, Peter Jackson, Joe Walcott, Jack John-
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son, and Sam Langford invested in saloons. All of the establishments failed. In their quest to uplift the race, black leaders worried that whites would view black saloon patronage and ownership as proof of black pathology. In 1889, for example, black newspaperman John Quincy Adams of St. Paul—who had to compete with black saloon owners like boxer Thomas Jefferson, who used his saloon to run the black Democratic Party—complained, “It is a misfortune to both races, that the white people are so constantly forced to witness and learn of the bad conduct of the saloon-loafers and criminals of the Colored race and that they take such pains to keep themselves from witnessing the decent and creditable performances of the intelligent virtuous and industrious ones.”60 Fifteen years later, black leaders in Los Angeles asked the police to shut down two prominent black saloons, the Republican and the Manhattan Clubs, the main hangout for colored sports and black prizefighters. When the police did not immediately oblige, J. J. Neimore complained to the Los Angeles Times, “These places are a disgrace to the colored race in Los Angeles. We do not know why they are permitted to do business.” He also argued that the clubs destroyed the black family, and stated, “Colored boys have too many tempta- tions in a city like this, and it is not any easy matter for a father to keep them from evil. But with such dens open to them and frequented by members are more than doubled. It is the duty of the police to close those places, even if they have to resort to the same methods they used at the Manhattan Athletic Club.” Invoking his class status, Neimore claimed, “I know I speak for the re- spectable portion of the colored population of the city when I say that such places should not be tolerated in any city no matter who keeps them.”61 In his newspaper, the California Eagle, Neimore further complained, “There is no need of these dives, they promote neither happiness nor wealth; they produce sin and only sin.”62 For race men, denigrating the colored sports became a way for the middle class to prove black respectability and show whites that they were conservative and deserving of social equality. In the context of race, the ring, and recalcitrant behavior, George Dixon was the first fistic hero to move from fame to infamy in the black press. Dixon, who won the featherweight championship in 1890, had lost nearly $100,000 in earnings by 1896. Although he continued to earn more money throughout the decade—he made roughly $250,000—he continued to spend his money as fast as he made it. “No instance seems more pathetic than the career of George Dixon,” recounted one white writer. Lack of responsibility and “‘carelessness’ which embraces that ‘good fellow’ stuff ” did him in.63 Ac- cording to champion Bob Fitzsimmons, Dixon “couldn’t seem to make money stick to him anyway he got it. He bought everything in sight and was a ‘good fellow’ all the time.”64 In 1900, a nearly broke Dixon gave a candid interview
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about his money troubles and reflected on his lack of financial responsibility. Dixon, who had “a few hundred dollars” at that time, and a $6,000 house in Boston, said “I lost my money by gambling, playing the races, leading a fast life and by lending my money to friends.” “I was a good fellow,” he continued, “I guess, with my money, but, as all good fellows generally see a day when they need a dollar, I certainly have seen that time very often.”65 In 1903, Dixon went back to England to earn some necessary money. Within a year he had made $7,000 and vowed to save his earnings. In a state- ment Dixon admitted, “I used to be a fool when I was younger and careless. I never used to know the value of money. It was like nothing to me. But I have tasted the bitter pangs of poverty and know what it is to be hungry.” Unfortunately for Dixon, these joyful feelings did not last long, and in 1905 he came back to the States penniless.66 On his deathbed, Dixon sadly admitted: “The men who followed me in the days of prosperity can’t see me when I am close enough to speak to them.”67 Joe Gans supposedly reached out to Dixon and invited him to live in his Baltimore Hotel, but according to Dixon, Gans “was advertising his show when he said that,” and only wanted publicity. The homeless Dixon added, “his hotel would sure look good to muh right now.”68 Facing death, Dixon only had one friend, the racist John L. Sullivan. Sullivan claimed, “between the white and the black bluffers, Dixon is getting the con good and strong, and it isn’t putting any meals under his belt nor any over- coats on his back. . . . If Dixon had even the interest on the stacks of stuff he put into the pockets of some of his ‘friends,’ he wouldn’t be wondering today where his next highball is coming from.”69 In 1908, at thirty-eight years old, Dixon died a penniless alcoholic in New York City. Because Dixon was one of the most popular black figures in America, for the black middle class, the financially failed fighting figure became an example of failed manliness. Their critique of the once-celebrated Dixon’s downfall fit a familiar narrative of the black middle class trying to appease and prove their equality through uplift and economic responsibility, and the working-class and colored sports often became a scapegoat for this strategy. In 1902, the Colored American asked, “How many young men in the heyday of prosperity will be warned by the improvidence of George Dixon to save up a few pennies for the rainy day that is sure to come?”70 In another issue a writer bemoaned, “to-day George Dixon is practically penniless and unno- ticed. Had his money been safely invested, he would have been in his retire- ment, independently wealthy.” “Young men,” the writer warned, “‘make hay while the sun shines.’ Don’t live up to all you earn. Store up your substance for harvest days are over when the chilly blast of age comes athwart our path- way.”71 Six years later, when Dixon lost his final bout to the sporting culture,
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62 . ch a p t e r 2
black writers once again reminded their readers of his failures. The Nashville Globe lamented, “It might be well to live high when you are making plenty of money, but at the same time one would do well to save a little to care for one’s self during his last days.”72 Similarly, the Iowa State Bystander said, “this is a great object lesson for young men today.” The paper noted that all the money Dixon won “has only this particular effect upon the race, that the race is producing a good man as the best, but upon the other hand if his energy and same amount of labor had been applied in [the] same worthy direction ultimate results would have been lasting.” The writer further warned, “Ill gotten gains seldom profit much; evil associates and whiskey will ruin any man. It is a shame to see some of our young men and girls going crazy after the minstrel show and the sporting business, neither ought to receive our approval.”73 The paper’s last warning about shady associates, whiskey, and minstrels, was an indictment of the colored sport. Like Dixon, Jack Johnson went from a celebrated prizefighter to a deni- grated pariah. In a well-told story, the massive black middle-class disapproval of Johnson started as a reactionary response to white backlash to Johnson’s social behavior. These fears swelled up after Johnson opened his controversial Café de Champion in July 1912 and found himself under government investi- gation for violating the Mann Act (the white slavery law) in October of that year. During Johnson’s legal troubles, Chicago’s city council urged Mayor Carter Harrison to revoke Johnson’s liquor license and resolved, “Johnson has brought burning shame to the fair name of Chicago.” Alderman Ellis Geiger claimed, Johnson “scandalized and outraged all decent citizens of all races. His depraved and immoral character stands as a menace to good public morals, righteousness, and decency. He has disgraced his race, and his alleged calling.”74 Among the black community, Johnson’s court situation quickly reverber- ated outside the “Windy City.” Booker T. Washington argued, “Chicago is at present witnessing a good example of the result of educating a man to make money, without due attention having been given his mental and spiritual development. It is unfortunate that a man with money should use it in a way to injure his own people when those who are seeking to uplift his race and improve its condition. In misrepresenting the colored people of the country, he harms himself the least.” He closed his remarks saying, “It only goes to prove my contention that all men should be educated along mental and spiri- tual lines in connection with their physical education. A man with muscle minus brains, is a useless creature.”75 In Philadelphia, G. Grant Williams, of the Philadelphia Tribune, reasoned, “It is unfair for whites to try to class
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all colored men with Johnson. . . . Yet, with all of his faults, Jack Johnson is the champion of the world, and unlike the whites, we condemn him for his bad traits and give him credit for his good ones. We appreciate his physical ability, but not his mental or moral weakness, and we want it understood that all colored men are not like Jack Johnson is alleged to be.” Williams also urged, “Johnson does not represent our better class, therefore, he is not to be considered socially, but when it comes to the prize ring he is king of all races . . .”76 But Johnson also had his defenders. Several black leaders, including Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois, believed that the attack on the black boxer con- stituted a larger assault on black people and that whites used Johnson as an excuse to release racism. Concerned that whites would blame all blacks for Johnson’s actions, black leaders in Chicago held several meetings to discuss their fallen hero. As more southern black men migrated to the city to seek work, and also find comfort in the sporting culture, it was important for the black middle class to demonstrate that Johnson—a southern migrant—was an anomaly. One black reverend urged, “Every man, colored or white, who acts in a way or conducts his business in a manner as to injure public mor- als, and who persist in doing so after having been warned to detest, should be tried by the courts, and, if found guilty, punished; and whether he is con- victed or not, he should be ostracized by all who believe in common decency and good morals.”77 In November, Wells called a meeting of leading black Chicagoans to discuss how to proceed with Johnson’s problems. In the end, two thousand citizens signed a resolution that acknowledged “the sensational exploitation of charges against Jack Johnson great injury has been done to the civic, industrial and business relations between colored and white citizens of Chicago,” and appealed “to the public for the presumption of innocence which is every man’s due . . .”78 And in 1914, after the court found Johnson guilty of violating the Mann Act and Johnson was in Europe, on the run from the law, Du Bois used his position in the NAACP and editor of their national magazine, The Crisis, and jabbed at the notion that whites had a problem with Johnson’s sexual and marital affairs but not his race: “Of course some pretend to object to Mr. Johnson’s character. But we have yet to hear, in the case of White America, that marital troubles have disqualified prize fighters or ball players or even statesmen. It comes down, then, after all to this un- forgivable blackness.” But Johnson’s support in the black middle class could not defeat the politics of respectability. Despite understanding that whites used Johnson as a weapon to attack black folks, many in the middle class tried to distance themselves from the champ.
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In 1915, after Jess Willard defeated Johnson, to correct the menace’s so- called mistakes, black writers continued to insist that Johnson was a racial anomaly. Lester Walton of the New York Age concluded, “Although the preva- lent belief exists in this country that the caliber of a man is determined by the color of his skin, those of education and culture and who are real Christians, not hypocrites, know that CHARACTER, after all, counts most.” He further added, “I do not regard the defeat of Jack Johnson by Jess Willard as a calamity to the Negro, but merely an incident. If the white citizens view it as an event of great satisfaction, let them be happy in the thoughts and perhaps in their jubilant frame of mind they will treat the colored brother with more fairness and go about with less envy and race hatred.”79 Believing that Willard’s victory would change how whites treated blacks, in Philadelphia, Williams argued, “We feel it is for the best Jack Johnson has met defeat.” Williams and other race leaders must have been relieved by the Philadelphia Record’s willing- ness to acknowledge that Johnson was an individual and not a reflection of black people. The Record’s white sportswriter acknowledged, “Johnson was the man who caused the drawing of the color line, for it was not because he was a Negro that the people disliked him, but simply because he was Jack Johnson. He was disliked by colored people, as well as by whites.” Williams agreed, and claimed “Johnson’s personality shut him out from all races and he ostracized himself.” In the end, the one-time symbol of race manhood quickly became a race menace.
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