American History Reform

Chapter Title: BRING HOME THE BACON: The Black Proletariat and the Prizefighter 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.5

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1 BrIng hoMe the Bacon

The Black Proletariat and the Prizefighter

By the sixty-sixth round, the “Two Blowing Africans Contending for the Muscular Mastery” stood caked in blood. The combatants had battled for nearly an hour and a half when Cincinnati’s Henry Woodson, the “Black Diamond,” finally landed his knockout punch on Steve Williams, the black champion of Troy, New York. Williams, a thirty-year-old solidly built 5'9", 190-pound man, controlled the first thirteen rounds with constant move- ment and aggression, and though he knocked Woodson down several times, he could not finish his adversary; the pressure of growing up poor and black in Cincinnati had made the “Black Diamond” tough. Born a Kentucky slave in 1857, Woodson came of age in one of Cincinnati’s most notorious areas, Little Bucktown, where his widowed mother ran a saloon that doubled as a house of ill repute. Occasionally, Woodson provided the muscle. Working at the saloon, Woodson had seen his mom’s life threatened and had been shot. Steve Williams did not intimidate him.1 During the last fifty-three rounds of their fight, the grown man from Little Bucktown overcame Williams’s ini- tial onslaught and “showed the Troy darkey that science is something better than slugging” and viciously beat his opponent.2 “In the sixty-sixth round Woodson rushed at Williams, landing his left hand with the force of a pile driver on Williams’ right cheek, sending him staggering to his corner. Wil- liams could not respond when time was called for the sixty-seventh round, and Woodson was declared the victor. Williams was badly punished about the head.”3 Why would these two black men subject themselves to this type of physical punishment? Money. The $200 side bet Woodson won in his bout

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br ing home t he b acon · 23

against Williams, plus portions of the gate receipts he received from the four hundred paying customers, earned him more than the year’s worth of wages he would have made on the Ohio River. In Woodson’s Cincinnati, most black men struggled to make a living. Economist Nancy Bertaux noted, “when Cincinnati underwent the dynamic change from a preindustrial to an industrial economy, blacks’ occupational status actually worsened.”4 Although white natives and immigrants battled each other for jobs, they remained solid in keeping blacks away from desir- able employment. The menial work that most blacks could obtain was com- prised of “job market leftovers” that whites did not want.5 Feeling the sting of underemployment, in 1877 a group of black leaders in Cincinnati sought to buy federal land and establish a black colony in the West. In search of resources and recruits, they pleaded, “The condition of the colored laborer in the North is growing precarious.” They told prospective investors, “trade unions are closing their doors against [the colored laborers in the North], and that all the avenues that lead to the mechanical industries and leading business are barred against him. . . . The future of the colored laborer seems to be covered with portentous clouds.”6 But a poor black man from Little Bucktown could not invest in a homestead. Instead, Woodson remained in a life of drudgery as he worked as a river man, a common black job on the Ohio River. For a black man, life on a steamboat held little promise. For little pay, colored roustabouts did the most dangerous jobs. The fireman, Woodson’s position, had to work every moment in fear for his life as he labored near intense heat and risked dehydration. If the ship caught fire, he was sure to die. River work, however, slowly disappeared as a “black job” as the city in- vested in modern railroads. In 1880, one-third of black river men were laid off. Between 1860 and 1890, the black workforce in the steamboat industry dropped from 13 percent to 2 percent.7 The railroads did not come with job opportunities for black men. Through unionization and exclusionary practices, whites kept the better-paying skilled jobs and relegated blacks to porters, cooks, and other menial positions. In the end, racism and railroads pushed Woodson into the ring. The “Black Diamond” started his new trade in 1882. With hardened muscles from his tough job, and the necessary grit to succeed in boxing, Woodson showed tremendous promise as a fighter. Within his first year of fighting, a Cincinnati Enquirer writer noted he was a “fine specimen of manhood,” and observed, “he has for years been steamboating, but last

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24 . ch a p t e r 1

winter began training in sparring. He is a well-scienced and powerful man, and will make his mark.”8 After making headway locally, in January 1883 he left for New York—with his white backer, Cincinnati sporting man James McVeigh—to battle “Professor” Charles Hadley for the Colored Champion- ship. Although Woodson lost the match, his muscles, skills, and aggression earned him acclaim. After the Hadley fight, ex-fighter “Spring Heel Dick” observed that Woodson “never has been thoroughly taught in sparring, and, although a terrific hitter he lacks skill to go against such a man as Hadley, who is an old ’un.” But “Spring Heel” left room for improvement and noted Woodson was “wonderfully quick with fine muscular development, and I honestly believe that he is a marvel. I or any one well posted could take him in hand and soon develop him into a splendid boxer.”9 He was right. By January 1884, the National Police Gazette considered Woodson “the best colored pugilist in the country.”10 This was high praise for a man who started at the bottom. In the end, however, Woodson’s battles with tough black foes like Billy Wilson, Charles Hadley, and McHenry Johnson, and his desire to prove his manhood in the sporting culture, took their toll on his body, and his ring prowess started to fade. By 1887, he was struggling to make a living in the ring. Woodson fought five times in St. Paul, Minnesota, between February and May and only managed to win one of those battles, a close decision over the forty-six-year-old Hadley, in which Woodson broke his hand. Still desperate for money after the Hadley fight, he competed in two more con- tests—he had to quit against McHenry Johnson and Billy Wilson thrashed him—before retiring.11 Soon, everything ended. The man who grew up in the notorious “Little Bucktown,” surrounded by pimps and prostitutes, finally lost his bout to the sporting culture. In September 1887, Woodson traveled to Chicago to provide muscle for his mother’s new saloon. There, Woodson drank too much and fell in bed with an old flame from the past. As he slept in his room with his woman, a black porter from Chicago walked in on the two and murdered Woodson.12 After hearing about Woodson’s tragic death, instead of offering condolences, black newspaperman John Quincy Adams mockingly quipped, “The only question now is: Where will his next ring be pitched and who will be his next antagonist.”13 Despite Woodson’s tragic death, and Adams’s insensitive comments, black fighters’ presence had social implications for a race of men that had been barred from the market economy. In a larger context, success in the ring demonstrated that black men had the fortitude to succeed in the market economy. As one white writer observed, “Prize fighting, in the minds of most people is not a very noble occupation. But success in it calls for a constant attendance to busi-

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br ing home t he b acon · 25

ness. To get to the top in that profession requires the hardest physical work and the strictest self-denial. One must indeed ‘keep stepping,’ or go backward.” The writer continued, “This rule for success is not confined to prize fighting.” “Those who ‘keep stepping,’” he added, “are the ones who succeed in anything. It is only those who stop stepping that fail. The rule is a more imperative one than ever in these days when competition is so intense and the stakes are so high. To stop is fatal.”14 In other words, one could only succeed in the ring and the workplace through dogged determination. They had to “keep stepping,” a term linked to race and class. For the above article, the particular sportswriter quoted Joe Gans’s mother, who had telegrammed her son to “keep stepping” as encouragement to win a fight. In fact, Gans and his mother are also responsible for bringing the phrase “bring home the bacon” into the American lexicon, a clear reference that linked black menial work and money with subsistence living. After Gans beat Bat Nelson in 1906, he wrote his mother, “Your boy Joe is bringing the bacon and lots of gravy.”15 To “keep stepping” and to “bring home the bacon” pronounced black America’s response to the daily racism they encountered in the job market and the interconnection between hope, work, and subsistence living. The phrases articulated aspirations that blacks’ hard work would ultimately overcome racism. By the 1890s, for a number of black leaders, the black fighter epitomized the hope of black America. Athletic success became part of black uplift strategy for economic and social equality. In an age where whites used social Darwinian thought to explain white market success and black economic drudgery, prizefighting became a proving ground for the black fighter and black spectator. In other words, success in the sweet science signified ideas of fairness and meritocracy. As one black writer wrote, “The pugilistic busi- ness is, however, indicative of something. It shows whenever a Negro is given a chance, to use the language of the street, he is sure ‘to get there.’”16 Race leaders’ paradoxical thoughts about black prize fighters is best under- stood in the context of labor, race, and uplift politics. To be sure, race men struggled to come to terms with the reality that prizefighting represented legitimate labor and not a form of unruly leisure. Moreover, they worried that fighters’ recalcitrant behavior outside the ring would hamper racial uplift if these pugilists continued to drift on a seemingly destructive path outside the ring. (This is discussed further in chapter 2.) These leaders, how- ever, also understood something else about the meaning of black manhood and the manly art: The black prizefighters’ fistic success represented black competence, work ethic, and grit and proved that blacks could succeed in the racist market economy if given an equal chance to compete in America and overcome white racism.

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Cigarette advertisement featuring a white and a black bare-knuckle fighter. (1886, Li- brary of Congress)

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br ing home t he b acon · 27

up FroM the BottoMS

For black men, prizefighting provided an opportunity to escape a life of drudgery. While most professional fighters, regardless of color, represented the proletariat of American and “sprung into world-wide notoriety from drudging obscurity through some sharp-sighted manager discovering their abilities,” the depth of drudgery was drastically different.17 As America’s in- dustrial economy continued to grow after Reconstruction, black workers saw their job opportunities shrink. As one Springfield, Massachusetts, man put it, “we are debarred from every avenue of work except the very menial. We cannot get a fair show in any line of work.”18 On this state of affairs, histo- rian Rayford Logan concluded, “The failure of the tremendous expansion of American industry to change materially the essentially peasant and domestic service status of most Negroes is evident from the fact that in 1890, 88 percent and in 1900, 86.7 percent of all Negroes were still employed in these least remunerative and least dignified occupations.”19 The racial division of labor between black fighters and white fighters is clearly seen when comparing heavyweight fighters at the turn of the century. “It is interesting to note,” a writer from the Cleveland Plain Dealer commented, “that many of the leading pugilists of the day started in the business with an uphill battle before them and received many hard knocks before getting to the top.” But these men had to climb up different hills. Of the thirteen white heavyweights listed in a 1902 article about the fighters’ past trades, their employment included careers as boilermaker, bank clerk, blacksmith, pressman, cooper, sailor, farmer, miner, horse-shoer, candy maker, miner, engineer, and plasterer.20 This list included heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries, a boilermaker, the most privileged of the bunch. As one Los Angeles writer reflected, “With bright spots here and there, the home life of champion pugilists generally has been a checkered one, replete with incidents of dissipation and ribaldry. Not so, however, with the present holder of the toga. His home life continues along the same even tenor with no incidents or riotous living to mar its happiness.”21 Jeffries grew up in a mansion on a one-hundred-acre farm his family owned. In compari- son, the notable black heavyweights of his generation Bob Armstrong (farm laborer and teamster), Frank Childs (railroad laborer), Hank Griffin (railroad laborer), Jack Johnson (stevedore), “Denver” Ed Martin (porter), and Sam McVey (farm laborer), were sons of ex-slaves.22 Martin and Armstrong, who were the only two black heavyweights listed in that 1902 article, made conscious decisions to fight their way out of poverty. Born in 1878, Martin “was picking up occasional quarters and half dollars

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28 . ch a p t e r 1

doing odd jobs of one sort and another around the streets of Denver” before stepping into the ring. Martin’s life of labor built his body for ring battles. “Be- ing six feet and four inches tall and weighing considerably over 200 pounds, not an ounce of it superfluous, he was able to wrestle with some burdens that other men could not have handled and the rough work made him rugged and strong, brought his back to the breadth and firmness of that of a horse, made his legs like steel springs and the grip of his arms like the grasp of a vise.” Dissatisfied with his life of drudgery, Martin hung around local gymnasiums during his leisure hours to exercise and study the manly art. “One day he put on the mitts with another dusky son of Ham somewhat shorter, but whose experience in manipulating the padded mitts was much more extensive,” and after Martin handled himself well, “athletic club promoters learned about the big fellow and were told that he was strong as well as willing. Before long a chance was given him to show what he could do, and he made good in his first appearance.”23 By the turn of the century, Martin was the most popular black heavyweight in America, but the color line meant he had to maintain a career battling some of ring history’s toughest black fighters. Unfortunately for Martin, while top white fighters ducked him, great black fighters beat him. Vicious defeats to Jack Johnson and Sam McVey in 1903 derailed his rise to the top. In his first fight with Johnson, in February 1903, in what was the most important fight of Martin’s career, he went twenty rounds with the future champ, but lost the decision. Martin used his long reach to throw his piston like jabs, but against Johnson, a defensive fighter and a fine counterpuncher, Martin’s aggression played into the champ’s hands. In the eleventh round, Martin got careless and “a hard jolt from Johnson’s right, which landed on Martin’s neck, sent the big fellow to the floor.” Martin got up, but Johnson quickly pounced and continued to shred him with his sharp jab until the bell rang. For the final eight rounds, Johnson played it safe and coasted to an easy victory.24 In his fight with McVey, a teenager from Oxnard, the “Oxnard Wonder” dug a left- right combination to Martin’s ribs in the first round that sent Martin rolling to the floor in agony. Martin could not get up without assistance.25 By 1904, Martin was a second-rate fighter just getting by on his name and trying to pick up meaningful meal-ticket fights. When he next fought McVey again in August 1904, Martin lived in Los Angeles “without a penny in his pocket or a money manager to fall back on . . .”26 Martin beat McVey in August 1904, but two months later, Johnson knocked him out. Martin never had another credible fight. With few skills besides his fistic prowess and, in reality, facing a racist job market, Martin stayed in the business of boxing, training and finding meal-ticket fights, well into the 1920s.

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br ing home t he b acon · 29

Of the significant black fighters this study covers, only C.A.C Smith (a barber in Michigan) and Jack Blackburn (a barber in Indiana) held a skilled job before entering the ring. And only Bill Tate went to college (Alabama Normal). Otherwise, they were fish handlers, farm laborers, porters, team- sters, cabin boys, stevedores, and waiters, lines of work thought suitable for black men. Sometimes, the black fighter’s nickname told one all he needed to know about the fighter’s life of drudgery. For example, “Hock Bones,” a popular fighter in Memphis, received his name because he was “picked off the street selling ‘hock bones’” before turning to prizefighting.27 Unfortunately, “Hock Bones” never climbed out of second-tier status in the Memphis fight scene and found himself relegated to fighting black men like Kid Congo or “Indian Joe,” who, like Hock Bones, were meal-ticket fighters. For some fighters, the racial violence at work pushed them into the ring. At industrial job sites, white workers saw black men as economic competi- tion and often violently beat them to protect what they believed were their jobs. White Cleveland fighter Phil Brock—he was born Phil Slamovitz in Russia—got his start in the fight game by “whipping negroes.” After being kicked out of school and then losing his job as a newspaper boy for fighting, Brock took a job at a livery stable, where he attacked any black person that came around his work. “Negroes never did look good to Phil and any smoke that showed around the livery stable was his target. He fought ’em all and he won all his fights.” After seeing Brock in several of these racist attacks, the stable owner, Frank Thomas, convinced Brock to become a professional fighter. Unfortunately, the work world was full of Phil Brocks.28 Sam McVey had to face such bullies. According to Billy Roche, McVey’s manager at the time, Roche discovered McVey working at a livery stable in Oxnard, Cali- fornia. McVey “was a big, strapping, hard-muscled, colored man and had a way of defending himself against those who attempted to bullrag him.”29 McVey’s white attackers clearly made a mistake. Although just a teenager at the time, at 6’2” and 220 pounds, McVey had already won eight fights in Australia while working as a seaman. After witnessing McVey’s self-defense, Roche offered him an opportunity to fight professionally. McVey gladly ac- cepted. Knowing the desperation of black men, white promoters often searched typical black job sites to recruit hungry black men to serve as opponents. Jack Johnson remembered that early in his career he came to Pittsburgh, “without a penny to my name. I didn’t even have enough to buy a plate of beans.” With no job prospects on the horizon and no money in his pocket, Johnson looked for a free ride home back to Texas and headed to the slaughterhouses to sneak on a train. While at the station, a white man spotted the lean and desperate

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30 . ch a p t e r 1

Johnson and asked if he knew how to box, to which Johnson replied, “Are you telling me there’s a way to make a little money around here?” The man told the future champ, “Fact is, we have a very strong, very well built man who has knocked out every man who’s stood up to him. Do you want to put on the gloves with him?” Johnson asked, “How much money are we talking?” In terms that Johnson surely understood, the stranger replied, “I guarantee it will be enough to buy beans for a few weeks.” The white promoter figured Johnson would get his head bashed in for the pleasure of the white audience, but despite the fact that Johnson lacked the time to train and the money to buy food, he dusted off his opponent and collected $75, a substantial payday for a meal-ticket fighter.30 To be sure, fighters faced a long road to the top to earn livable wages. Most were meal-ticket men. As Johnson said, “When you consider the relatively sizeable sums earned by top-ranked boxers, you might be led to believe that being a boxer is the ideal career. But, for every fighter who breaks through, how many are there who barely manage to scrape out a living? And all of them, champions and journeymen alike, experience hard times at the start.”31 John- son knew hard times. In recalling the first time he saw Johnson in Stockton, California, one white promoter reflected, “I went out and [George Eckhardt] pointed to a long, lanky coon who was leaning up against the wall. The fellow looked like a hobo. He was about the shabbiest and most forlorn object I ever looked upon.” Johnson was begging for a chance to fight, but the promoter would not put him in the show because there was a “complaint around the club about his having so many negro fighters on his string.” Too many black fighters were getting paid to box. “We allowed the fighters in preliminaries the big fat sum of $2.50,” the promoter recalled. “Jack Johnson needed the money: he was hungry and in rags, and begged hard to be put on.”32 But the white promoters ran Johnson off. He lost his meal ticket that day. Johnson’s words about his past poverty help us understand the economic choices of working-class black men as he articulated a race- and class-based understanding of his entrance into the prize ring. His dad, who was born a Maryland slave, could not read or write and worked as a janitor. Johnson’s mother—born a North Carolina slave—held a domestic servant job. On his upbringing, Johnson remembered, “there were some hard times in our little house in Galveston, and as soon as I was big enough, my father took me on as his helper, as his work as a cleaning man kept him very busy.”33 This poverty pushed Johnson to pugilism: “The seed of discontent ripened fast within me and at the age of 12 I could stand it no longer. I laid awake one night thinking of the world beyond—of all that was to be seen, but more

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br ing home t he b acon · 31

than all, of escaping the drudgery of janitorship [sic].”34 Wanting more out of life than the assigned drudgery allowed for black men, the adventurous Johnson hopped on a freight train and left Galveston to find meaningful work. He tried various jobs, but in his early teenage years he realized prizefighting provided him his best hope, and he started fighting professionally at the age of sixteen. During the first eight years of his career, Johnson struggled to find fights and food; he even had to fight in a battle royal just so he could eat.35 He never forgot those days, and always made sure to remind the white press of where he came from. In his first autobiography, Johnson claimed his father, Henry, “was one of the strongest men, physically, I have ever known,” but slavery deprived him of an education, fighting in the Civil War stripped him of his strength, and the racist job market took his opportunity to support his family. That Johnson’s big, strong, strapping dad could only climb to the rank of a janitor ate away at the champ. Johnson recalled, “At the age of nine, I was already looking for ways to earn my living. I was not content pushing a broom behind my father; I wanted to get out and work on my own.”36 On another occasion he told a reporter, “I am glad that I had to rough it.” He continued, “I have had money sometimes and others time have been broke. Now that I have fought my way into the championship, and to fortune as well, all my other experiences will count.” In words that reflected his understand- ing of race and class, the champion added, “Corbett or Jeffries, or any of the other champions never had the hard times I had in my early life in the ring. They do not know what it is to have been in want.”37 Johnson made the right career decision. Between 1908 and 1912, for in- stance, he made $196,000, or “$2,513 per round or an average of $833 per minute.”38 In 1913, Johnson also earned $5,000 for fighting “Battling” Jim Johnson (black) and $35,000 battling “white hope” Frank Moran in Paris. When adding $100,000 from the stage, Johnson had accumulated $327,000 in five years.39 Columnist John E. Wray of the St. Louis Post Dispatch pointedly noted, “With nothing but nature’s fistic gifts the poor stevedore has climbed in less than four years into the earning ability of captains of industry.” Wray ended his article by romanticizing Johnson’s rapid rise in the ring and re- marked, “Few romances of fiction dare to build up a quarter millionaire here out of stevedore material in three and one half years.”40 Johnson’s economic success allowed whites to uphold a tired trope of American exceptionalism while ignoring American racism. In other words, if a man worked hard, he could make it in America. Black writers, invested in the bootstrapping business of racial uplift, also told stories about the hard roads of black boxers. As one black writer put it

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32 . ch a p t e r 1

when Johnson won the heavyweight championship: “John A. Johnson, in his field, has set an example of persistence and courage in going to Australia for the title that every other Negro should resolve to follow. Pursue your object to the end of the world, if necessary, in order to accomplish it.”41 Thirty years prior to Johnson’s fistic and financial success, however, the ascent of the black prizefighter in the 1880s put tremendous pressure on the black middle class to come to terms with a new assertive working-class manhood. By turning his leisure into his labor, the boxer rejected the traditional means of manhood and uplift that the middle class had previously prescribed. In their battle to uplift the race and secure civil rights, black leaders openly questioned the leisure habits of the working class.

FIgurIng cLaSS wIth race: LeISure vS. LaBor and the BLack preSS

Looking to find meaningful work, Billy Wilson arrived in St. Paul, Minne- sota, in November 1884 to take advantage of the growing fight industry in the city, a fight market that Thomas Jefferson, the leading black fight promoter of his generation, helped create. Wilson came with top-notch credentials. In June 1884, Wilson fought McHenry Johnson in New York, in a fight a local reporter noted as one of the best the city witnessed. For three rounds, before the police broke it up, the two black men tore into each other. In the third round, excitement was “at fever heat as the men faced each other and went into do or die” and the crowd screamed at each man to knock the other out. The police stepped in, declared it a draw, and that was that.42 Shortly after- ward, the city banned boxing, so Wilson traveled to Boston to earn money. Unfortunately for Wilson, racism in the ring restricted his revenue. Local white fighters chased him away. For Wilson, however, this violent situation tested and proved his physical manhood. According to Wilson, “Before I left Boston my endurance was tested. I was put in a room and nine men were sent at me, one after the other. One was big Mike Sullivan, and I reckon he can hit as hard as [Patsy] Cardiff. He hammered me all over the head, and at the end of two and a half hours I was still in the room, ready for nine more men.”43 When he arrived in St. Paul, Wilson immediately challenged C.A.C. Smith to a fight. He had to work. For a month, the two challenged each other in the press, but they never could agree on the terms of their contest. Although they were both black men, race got in the way. Wilson’s white manager, Tom McAlpine, did not trust Smith’s manager, Thomas Jefferson, a black man, to hold the forfeit money. The racial slight angered Smith and Jefferson, so they

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br ing home t he b acon · 33

walked away from the fight. Wilson eventually left McAlpine for Jefferson, and had his first fight in St. Paul in March 1885 defeating “Professor” Hadley. The program organized by Jefferson featured a number of local black fight- ers including Louis Liverpool, Frank Wilson, The “Black Star” Jerry Murphy, Gilbert Murphy, Tom Murphy, Jack Caldwell, Charlie Page, and Bill Butts. After Wilson’s victory, Jefferson knew he had a star attraction in a city starved for boxing and wanted to bring in a top contender to test Wilson. On behalf of Wilson, Jefferson challenged a number of top white fighters, but only Mervine Thompson, who was passing as white, was brave enough to battle, while the other white fighters drew the color line. The match ex- cited local white “sports” who believed that this was an interracial contest of physical manhood.44 Leading up to the contest, fans bet more than $10,000 on the outcome. At 6 foot, 220 pounds, Thompson appeared a sure thing to whites. But the battle did not live up to the hype. More than 1,500 specta- tors witnessed Wilson knock out Thompson in the first round. Wilson took home $800.45 After the Thompson fight, in June 1885, Wilson signed to fight the formidable Patsy Cardiff, “The Peoria Giant.” The Cardiff–Wilson fight, a battle between “models of muscular physique,” created so much excitement that promoters knew the police would not allow the battle to proceed in the city. The promoters arranged for the fight to take place in an undisclosed location up the Mississippi River, away from law enforcement’s jurisdiction. At the St. Paul docks nearly one thousand fans boarded steamboats to go to the fight, and thousands of dollars exchanged hands as bets flowed freely on the boats and at the fight.46 The fight lacked science, but made up for it with hard slugging and throwing. The London Rules of fighting, opposed to the more sophisticated Queensberry rules that forbid wrestling, governed the fight. Cardiff knocked Wilson down several times, and each time he jumped on him to ensure his opponent stayed down. Cardiff, the slight favorite, roughed up Wilson and knocked him out for good in the eighth round. For his victory he took home an estimated $2,000 while Wilson only received $55, which Cardiff collected for him out of pity.47 Despite the fact that lawmakers tried to crack down on boxing, the sport’s popularity continued to grow in St. Paul, mainly because of the abundance of black fighting talent in the city. These black boxers, however, became a nuisance for the black leaders trying to advance the race. A week before the Patsy Cardiff–Billy Wilson fight, Samuel Hardy and John T. Burgett, founders of the Western Appeal, published their first issue on June 6, 1885.48 By the end of the decade, the Western Appeal became one of the most successful black newspapers in America.49 For racial uplift, the

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34 . ch a p t e r 1

editors argued, blacks had to follow the professionals, not the prizefighters. For example, in 1885, Frederick Douglass Parker, the editor of the Western Appeal, complained, “We do not impress those that are interested in our welfare, with much favor if we instead of enlightening our minds with knowl- edge, and employing our hands with usefulness, continue to encourage the science of the manly art, and to worship the king of the green cloth, to the exclusion of everything else we will retard our progress in the right direction and cause a feeling of distrust to prevail against us. . . .”50 A week later, Par- ker continued his battle against the working class’s leisure habits. He noted, “There are [black] men in this city who have not done an honest day’s work for years and yet they are allow [sic] to loaf arund [sic] and remain ilde [sic], creating, mischief, and corrupting the good standing of the race, the time has come for action and we insist on it.”51 Parker then pleaded with his black readers, “Let us purify ourselves, respect ourselves, respect our race, and you can demand respect and protection from others.”52 Parker’s complaints about the black working class must be understood in context of class, leisure, and black migration. Migration was central for fighters to find work, and black prizefighters traveled to cities like St. Paul that had growing black communities and a thriving sporting culture. In 1883, St. Paul was the ninth-ranked commer- cial and financial city in the United States.53 As a port city on the Mississippi River, St. Paul offered job opportunities for blacks who wanted to leave the South. Most black migrant males were young and single and came from the Upper South. By 1885, 49 percent of blacks in St. Paul were southern born.54 Owing to institutional racism, most black men worked as unskilled laborers and toiled in menial work in the shipping, railroad, or the hotel industries. “Service and menial jobs became synonymous with ‘negro’ work.”55 As the black migrant population increased, St. Paul became one of the top prizefight cities in the country. Between 1884 and 1887, notable heavyweights Henry Woodson, C.A.C. Smith, Charles Hadley, Billy Wilson, and McHenry John- son moved to the city to fight. They joined notable locals Louis Liverpool, “Black Frank” Taylor, the “Black Pearl” Harris Martin, and Thomas Jefferson, a leading black Democrat and the sporting man responsible for recruiting the fighters to St. Paul. Because of Jefferson’s entrepreneurial skills and his ability to recruit black fighters to the city, he put on the best local shows and controlled local boxing for a year. By fall of 1884, prizefighting became the most popular sport in St. Paul. Jefferson also created his own touring combination of black fight- ers—the first of its kind in the nation—and he and his black fighters traveled

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around the Northwest and crossed the border to Winnipeg, Canada, to put on exhibitions.56 The arrival in St. Paul of large numbers of working-class people, along with black prizefighters, however, posed a challenge to the cul- tural hegemony of the black elite, leading to intraracial contests over social, economic, and political ideas about racial representation. The black editors’ complaints about black leisure habits reflect their grow- ing concerns about black pugilist’s popularity in the city, and who would represent the race: the men of the ring or “respectable” men. In 1887, from January 1 to April 30, for example, more than fifty articles appeared about black prizefighters in the Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Tribune. On March 28, 1887, the Harry Woodson–Billy Wilson fight attracted more than two thousand fans. By April, prizefighting had become so popular that the Olympic Theatre added an extra night to hold boxing exhibitions, in addi- tion to their Friday night schedule.57 Black leaders also believed, and correctly so, that white writers used prize- fighting to mock the aspirations of black men. In 1884, for example, while covering a Thomas Jefferson athletic combination, in an article entitled “Coon Hunting,” the St. Paul Globe used the word “coon” fifteen times to charac- terize the black fighters. After the Cardiff–Wilson fight, Parker attacked the Minneapolis Tribune for using the word “Nigger,” complaining:

This is an age when all sober minded people lose Their gravity and drop in to levity cease from philosophizing and takes up the task of being funny, this is sad but true, this may be said of the Minneapolis Tribune they have been dealing in prize fights, and spelling nigger with two gg’s for negro. Now Mr. Tribune we are not in favor of prize fights, neither are we given incite prejudice in the minds of intelligent people, we admire the zeal with which you give news to the public and we also admire the obtuseness of the negro who buys it, paying five American cents to see himself soundly abused and maligned, perhaps the Anglo African will learn some sense before the world come to and [sic] end.58

Parker asserted that only his paper would respect blacks, so blacks should spend their money on the Western Appeal. The black editors feared that the minstrelsy representation of the boxer in the press reflected on the race. The middle class opposed minstrel representations because the characterization assumed that only whites had genteel culture.59 Attending these black fights for whites was an extension of white voyeur- ism that had pushed these same white folks to attend the minstrel show. De- spite the athletic display from these black bodies, most whites saw what they

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wanted to see, a “Desperate Coon” or a “Black Diamond” slugging away at another black foe. As sociologist Jennifer C. Lena suggests, “The voyeuristic gaze is a learned mode of appreciation that draws upon stereotypic notions of the ‘other.’ . . . Voyeurs mobilize preconceptions of experience, landscape and people to see ‘exotic’ others. They draw upon expectations of what ‘typi- cal black behavior’ or ‘the inner city’ will look like, when encountered.”60 In regard to white voyeurism and boxing in the 1880s, the minstrel image of the boxer is best understood in the context of the trickster and the fake fight. A lot of fights involving black fighters throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were often labeled as “hippodromes” or fixed fights.61 I am not arguing that hippodrome is synonymous with black fighters, because white fighters were suspected of being involved in fixed fights too; rather, I am suggesting that the term carried a different connotation with the black pugilist. Owing to the “old darkey” images, whites naturally thought of black men as tricksters trying to pull a fast one on whites. If a fight did not meet the white fans’ expectations—they expected little science and lots of hard punching—fans believed that black fighters had tricked them. The trickster as a boxer represented a conundrum to whites, because if their suspicions were true, the trickster outsmarted the white fans that expected blacks would only slug each other because blacks supposedly lacked science as fighters. In April 1887, the Minneapolis Tribune argued, “It seems that the colored pugi- list who were meeting on the Olympic stage of late have got the science of deceiving the audience by slapping each other with the open hand down to a fine point.” The paper continued, “To the audience it appears by the sound of the slaps that terrific blows are being struck; but it must be remembered that a slap with the open had does no injury and causes more of a sound than of a blow struck with the clinched fist.” The Tribune predicted that after the previous evenings fight in which Harry Woodson quit with a broken hand against Billy Wilson, the audience had finally caught on. “Last evening will probably put a finishing touch to this kind of work which kills pugilism.”62 The Tribune had it wrong. The white fans kept attending black fights. The following week a sizable audience watched the “Desperate Coon” Julius Fos- ter battle the “Black Pearl” Harris Martin. The next week they packed the auditorium for a thirty-eight-round fight between Martin and “Black Frank” Taylor. Two weeks later, fans traveled to Dakota County and paid $5 to watch a Wilson and Woodson rematch.63 Race men hated the attention these ring men received. “Black Frank,” “Black Pearl,” “Black Dynamite,” and the “Des- perate Coon” did not represent the race.

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For John Quincy Adams, who took over the Western Appeal in 1887, the fight over labor and leisure became a question of black manhood and con- vincing his black readers that pugilism was a performance of pathology, not professionalism. At times, Adams’s criticism constituted consigning a question mark when referring to the phrase “manly art” in his editorials. Adams once complained, “The sporting element figures quite extensively in this part of the moral vineyard and the daily newspapers devote a large amount of space to accounts of sparring matches, prize fights and local ‘scraps.’ There used to be a time where it was considered very disreputable business, but at present the ‘Professors of the Manly (?) Art,’ are bigger than ‘Ole Grant.’” In the same edition, Adams said, “Prize fighters, or pu- gilists, may be perfect gentlemen—and we think too much of our head to run the risk of saying they are not—but they do not very often belong to the Y.M.C.A, or teach in the Sabbath Schools. Neither are they generally advocates of temperance or members of church.”64 Adams reasoned that if black men spent their time training for fights, then they were not being industrious and taking advantage of the available job opportunities. Men engaged in “The ‘manly art’ (?),” Adams suggested, “had better spend their muscle in mauling rails.”65 But Adams, like other race men, would have a change or heart about labor, leisure, and fighting. The arrival of Peter Jackson in 1888 changed the thinking of many race men about the meaning of prizefighting. Jackson, a West Indian–born migrant who labored as a seaman before becoming a boxer, migrated to San Fran- cisco from Sydney, Australia, in April 1888 as the Australian Heavyweight Champion to challenge John L. Sullivan for his championship.66 Despite the fact that Jackson never won the heavyweight championship—white champi- ons Sullivan, Corbett, and Bob Fitzsimmons hid behind the color line—the black press “praised Jackson as a race hero of unparalleled proportions.”67 One of the first black newspapermen to understand the changing dynamics of manhood and race relations that placed intellectualism and physicality on the same plane was T. Thomas Fortune. Coincidentally, Fortune’s recogni- tion of Jackson’s capabilities to help the race started after Jackson defeated his first noteworthy white fighter, Joe McAuliffe, on December 28, 1888, in San Francisco. Jackson’s first major fight in America, a victory against God- frey for the Colored Championship, barely registered in the black press. After Jackson knocked out McAuliffe, however, Fortune acknowledged the equality of intellectualism to physicality as they related to racial, social, and political power. He noted that sports “have taken the place in public im-

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portance once occupied by the Senate, the lecture field, literature and art” and that “the greatest of all contemporary idols is the boss slugger.” He also observed that Sullivan and white fighters Jake Kilrain and Charles Mitchell were idolized in the white press as symbols of white manliness, and bragged that a “new fistic wonder” named Peter Jackson gave blacks a representative in this type of manhood. According to Fortune, “Great was the astonishment therefore when the black man wiped the floor with the white man.” Real- izing the importance boxing played in American society he hoped Jackson would “smash all the biggest pugilists in the two worlds.”68 In a sports-crazed America, Fortune thought Jackson’s championship status would give blacks a claim to physical manliness and prove black equality beyond athletics. For John Quincy Adams, Jackson’s ability to beat white men brought out his race pride. In March 1889, Adams pointedly suggested, “A few more vic- tories, which only Men can win will probably convince some of our preju- diced white brothers that we are MEN.”69 The following month, after Ad- ams learned Jackson beat Patsy Cardiff in April 1889—the same Cardiff that beat Billy Wilson four years prior in St. Paul—Adams gloated again. In the Jackson–Cardiff bout, Jackson dominated his opponent in San Francisco so severely that Jackson asked his white foe, “Do you want to quit?” As a lo- cal San Francisco reporter put it, “Jackson showed few signs of fatigue; his opponent was well marked, but he had been hit so often he did not know where he was hurt most.” The reporter reflected, “From the beginning Jack- son showed himself superior in every respect, and the great wonder was that a man so insignificant in the manly art as is Cardiff should have sought to earn fame and money by whipping him.”70 Writing like that, where it was clear that racial superiority was demonstrated, captured Adams’s attention. Adams applauded, “The Colored people of the country are highly elated over the success of Peter Jackson in fighting Patsy Cardiff to a stand still last week. Jackson has demonstrated, that though he is a despised decendant [sic] of Ham he is a man amongst men.”71 To be sure, Jackson was more than a fighter. He was a man just like them. Part of Jackson’s appeal to the black middle class was that he embodied the kind of manhood that black leaders could support. In other words, the recalcitrant man of the ring could be redeemed. He dressed in fine clothes, supposedly spoke multiple languages, and presented a public image of perfect black manhood. For example, the Indianapolis Freeman reported Jackson was a “very modest man and temperate in his habit.”72 One of the most impor- tant aspects of Jackson’s personality was that he did not embarrass the race like other sporting men reportedly had done. The Freeman observed, “Peter Jackson does this generation a service by proving that a man can be both a

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prize-fighter and a gentleman.”73 And after reading about a banquet black Philadelphians held in Jackson’s honor, the Freeman commented, “PETER JACKSON, as far as we have been able to know him, is our kind of a man. Gifted with unusual strength, he is not a bully. Flattered and fawned upon him, he never loses his head. [Dined] and wined by the best people of his race, he bears his honors in a modest and dignified manner.”74 According to writer James Weldon Johnson, “Peter Jackson was the first example in the United States of a man acting upon the assumption that he could be a prize- fighter and at the same time a cultured gentleman.”75Another black writer acknowledged, “Jackson, though a pugilist, is a gentleman, and is a credit to the manhood and skill of our race.”76 Frederick Douglass, the great black leader, also lionized the fighter, placing Jackson’s picture on the wall next to Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Charles Sumner. During an interview with T. Thomas Fortune in 1892, Douglass made sure to tell the editor about his photo of Jackson. After Fortune asked him about each portrait, Douglass said, “Don’t forget Peter’s picture,” adding, “I consider him one of the best missionaries abroad.”77At that moment Jackson was in England fighting various contenders, and according to Douglass represent- ing the race properly. James Weldon Johnson remembered Douglass “used to point to it [Jackson’s picture] and say, ‘Peter is doing a great deal with his fist to solve the Negro question.’”78 Douglass’s acknowledgment of Jackson’s physical prowess suggests that he saw the limits of blacks’ assimilation strat- egy in regard to Victorian culture. Jackson’s athletic success provided blacks with a new chance to fight for equality. Jackson, and featherweight champion George Dixon, who became the first black champion when he defeated Nunc Wallace in 1890, epitomized the brawn-and-brain combination that some black leaders hoped would elevate the race. In other words, sports mattered. Boxing became proving grounds that blacks had the stuff to succeed. By the 1890s, as part of their uplift strategy, black writers combined the best qualities of the intellectual and the athlete to characterize the race. In fact, 1890 represented a banner year for blacks in America, and black accomplishments allowed black leaders to advance their brawn-and-brain theory with confidence. That year Dixon defeated British boxer Nunc Wallace for the bantamweight championship, Du Bois delivered the commencement speech at Harvard University, and black jockey Isaac Murphy won another major racing event. The black press combined these events as proof of black equality. In April 1890, after observ- ing that “physical culture is becoming a favorite diversion with the Afro- American,” the Indianapolis Freeman concluded, “The Negro must grow in brawn as well as brain.” The editorial noted, “Brain and brawn will tell” and

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“with our men of broad intelligence and statesmanlike qualities upon the floor of Congress, our champions of muscle winning victories in the squared ring and green diamond, and the avenues of trade opening wider and wider daily, the Negro race promises to be in at the finish.”79 Later that year, an editorial in the Cleveland Gazette quipped, “Will someone tell us what this country is coming to? Young Afro-Americans are winning prizes at colleges, riding winning horses in leading races and winning world’s championships in the pugilistic arena. There are other avenues in which we have excelled in the past year. Isn’t all this an indication of progress?”80 In July, T. Thomas Fortune wrote a full-page article on Isaac Murphy and noted, “In the pulpit, in the schools and the colleges, in journalism, in the law, on the turf, in the prize ring, in all the life of our civilization, the Afro-American is acquitting himself as ‘a man and a brother.’”81 A few months later, Fortune made an- other pointed observation in an article entitled, “In the College and the Prize Ring,” and argued that blacks had been outperforming whites in colleges, proving that blacks had the brain capacity to succeed as a race. While college students provided the brain, George Godfrey, Dixon, and Jackson had the muscle. Through athletes’ bodies, Fortune claimed, “We shall yet convince the Anglo-Saxons that they are not the monopolized salt of the earth and sea.” He closed his thought by saying, “may the best man win.”82 Black writers’ words about “ability,” “holding their own,” “skill,” and “may the best man win” spoke to the language of labor and meritocracy and sug- gested black men had what it took to succeed in the market economy. Writ- ing about black advancement, Professor P. H. Murray, the editor of the black newspaper the St. Louis Advance, declared “by redundant vital force and intellectual vigor individuals of the race have reached the topmost round in various lines of skill and learning—from Peter Jackson to Frederick Douglass, from George Dixon to Clement Morgan. . . . Courage, music, art, oratory, science, invention and genius have each woven a garland for some Negro’s brow.”83 Taken from this perspective, the ring represented a rejection of rac- ism and whites’ characterization of the inferior black worker. If given a fair opportunity, the black press reasoned, then the black worker would succeed. To be sure, the celebration of leading fighters of this era mirrored the adu- lation of leading black jockeys. Outside Peter Jackson and George Dixon, the most celebrated black athlete at the time was Isaac Murphy. Murphy was the most successful in terms of winning races and earning money, and his named graced the black press more than any other black jockey in history. Like fighters, Murphy and other leading jockeys earned the ink in the black press, because “they represented more than material wealth.” As historian

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Katherine Mooney contends, “Murphy did not just have money. He had poise, and he had unmistakable style both in and out of the saddle. And those qualities drew the attention and adulation of black audiences just as surely as his wealth or success.”84 Moreover, Mooney makes the point that these jockeys came from southern poverty and their success gave hope to those poor black boys and men from similar positions who dreamed of making it out. In Murphy, Mooney mentions, blacks saw “with rigorous training, tal- ent, and luck, [Murphy] had made himself a symbol of unshakable dignity and inspiring possibility.”85 The major difference between the pugilist and the jockey, however, is the fact that the fighter, despite racism, got to keep fight- ing, while Jim Crow eventually knocked out the jockey, leaving the fighter as the leading black athletic figure. By the turn of the century, the black middle class used prizefighters as a teaching tool to motivate the black working class, and black champions be- came race heroes because of their dogged determination defeating discrimi- nation. Celebrating Dixon’s prowess, in 1900, a writer for the Colored Ameri- can argued, “There is no sentiment involved when white men do business. . . . Why was Dixon followed, admired, feted and given a man’s consideration? It was a matter of business, pure and simple.” The writer continued, Dixon “had something—prowess—that somebody wanted. Somebody could benefit themselves by dealing with him and they came to him. When the Negro can put up the best fight, build the best steamship, make the best wagon, raise the best cotton and corn, turn out the best butter, write the best book, design the best house, perform necessary service in a better and quicker manner than any other class—in a word, when the Negro proves that he can and will survive and compete with the best—his hour of recognition will come.” Once blacks proved they were the best workers, he added, “Money will come with it. Other privileges now denied will follow in its wake.” The author con- cluded, “The Caucasian race owes us nothing but fair play. We must make our own opportunities and improve them.”86 After Gans beat Bat Nelson in an epic forty-two-round battle in 1906, one black newspaperman reasoned, “Gans has won his laurels from knowing how to ‘deliver the goods’ and not by tricks or favor, and is placed among the worthy of his race.”87 Observing the same fight, a writer for the Broad Ax asserted that, “The one great lesson to be drawn from this memorable prize fight is simply this, that if fifty or one hundred Afro-Americans would have the courage to stand up, face to face, and fight those who are opposed to the advancement of the race along civil and political lines, the same as Gans fought Nelson, they would revolution- ize the public sentiment of the world.”88

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In many ways, the black prizefighter and the celebration of his feats em- bodied Booker T. Washington’s racial uplift strategy in which he urged blacks to move beyond the oppressive color line, work hard, succeed at their pro- fession, and save money to convince whites that black deserved civil rights. Washington, and by extension the newspapers he controlled, even found time to celebrate the occasional prizefighter. In October 1907, for example, Wash- ington’s Colored American Magazine praised Gans for his victory over Jimmy Burns (white) in Los Angeles and claimed Gans “won a great victory for the race” and also suggested, “success in any line of commendable endeavor in the same manner helps to lighten the burden resting upon our entire people.” The magazine added, “The sporting world, in connection with its treatment of Joe Gans has taught a useful and practical lesson to the American people. The sporting world has treated Joe Gans with more fairness in helping him win this victory than the religious, educational, philanthropic and political forces have ever shown a member of our race.” The writer ended his hopeful message saying, “All these forces could learn a lesson in fair play from the sporting world in this instance.”89 In fact, during the peak of Gans’s career, Washington used Gans’s success and popularity as a model for black workers to follow. Washington once told a black congregation in Philadelphia to “learn a lesson from Joe Gans,” and reminded them of the fighter’s fearless attitude toward the color line. After Gans beat Bat Nelson, Washington remarked, “Nervous people ran to Gans and asked him if he wasn’t afraid of the color line but to all inquiries he only answered, ‘Put every dollar on me.’ And he won he had faith him- self.” Washington finished his assessment encouraging the audience: “If he had only moaned about his downtrodden race, and gone around with the same old whine, the same old backache, the same old tale of woe and hard luck, would he have won or would he have been supported?” Washington answered his own question: “One exhibition of accomplishment will do the race more good than all the indignation meetings you can hold from now to doomsday.”90 Confidence, success, and merit, according to Washington, would allow blacks to prove their usefulness to whites. In this same line of uplift thought, Washington also praised Jack Johnson and linked the champion to a black economic uplift strategy. During a 1909 speech in New York, Washington told a black audience, “Success is what counts. Success, despite race or color, will make the man on top respect you. What the world wants is success. Hold up your successes; don’t herald your gloom.” He then asked the audience, “You remember when a certain mem- ber of your race went to Australia to do a job; warnings were sounded that

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the color line would be drawn. The question was hurled at him: ‘Aren’t you afraid in that white man’s country?’” Washington answered his own ques- tion, “Now, suppose he had gone to Australia crestfallen, saying that he was a negro and much oppressed, would he have won? It is a Godsend that he did win. It shows to the negro race what determination will do.”91 Washing- ton took this train of thought further and equated Johnson’s championship to black economic pursuits. “The time has come when a negro must get a commercial, business and economic footing, and get it in this generation or fail in ever getting it. Commerce, the dollar, draws no color line. The man who produces what somebody else wants will get the trade.” Washington was not alone in this line of thinking that linked Johnson’s success to black determination. One writer noted Johnson “set an example of persistence and courage in going to Australia for the title, that every other Negro should resolve to follow. Pursue your object to the end of the world, if necessary, in order to accomplish it.”92 In this era, however, Washington’s political rival, W.E.B. Du Bois, did not entertain the thought that the prizefighter could represent or serve as an ex- ample of racial leadership and advancement. These fighters did not belong to the “talented tenth.” In this line of respectable thinking about leadership, however, Du Bois advocated for physical education in black schools as a way to teach the importance of health and discipline derived from athletics. In 1897, for example, Du Bois urged black southern colleges to train black students in athletics to build up their bodies and develop the complete man of brawn and brain. He also added, “There does not stand today upon God’s earth a race more capable in muscle, in intellect, in morals, than the Ameri- can Negro.”93 Although the prizefighter displayed the necessary discipline to have a fit body, his professionalism—Du Bois was a proponent of amateur athletics—and his connection to the sporting culture were problematic. But overall, by the turn of the century, despite the brutality in the sport, as long as fighters behaved as respectable black men outside the ring, for Washington, Du Bois, and other black leaders, sports made sense. There were winners and losers with well-trained disciplined bodies, and the winners worked the hardest despite discrimination. But what happened when the black boxer did not meet the expectations of respectability?

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