American History Reform

Chapter Title: FOLLOWING THE COLOR LINE: Progressive Reform and the Fear of the Black Fighter 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.10

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to I Fight for a Living

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

6 FoLLowIng the coLor LIne

Progressive Reform and the Fear of the Black Fighter

On March 13, 1902, when Louisville lawmakers passed legislation regulating prizefighting, the city joined a host of cities across the nation implementing policies to reform boxing. Claiming that he wanted to “restrict local boxing matches to a certain extent for the benefit of the public to prevent brutality and to prevent accidents,” Harry Brennan, chairman of the Board of Public Safety, eliminated heavyweight bouts from his city.1 With other cities mobiliz- ing against prizefighting, Louisville ranked as a potential location to assume the mythical mantle of “Mecca of Boxing,” and local progressives feared that a heavyweight championship match would seal the city’s fate as the center of the fighting world. In the context of progressive reform and prizefighting, Louisville’s decision to reform boxing, rather than abolish the sport, made sense. Cities that reformed boxing did not want a reputation as open towns. But these cities also understood that a significant number of white citizens enjoyed seeing boxing matches as a way to recoup, build, or maintain man- hood. In most instances, regulation was about pacifying reformers on the one hand and appeasing men concerned about physicality and manhood on the other hand. Brennan, however, did not explain his other decision that day, a develop- ment so severe that it deserved reasoning. Along with eliminating heavy- weights from performing in Louisville, the Board banned black boxers from fighting and working as corner men in the city. Only a handful of credible black fighters—Steve Crosby, Brutus Clay, and Jim Watts—regularly per- formed in Louisville, and of those men, only Watts, a second-tier fighter, received national acclaim.

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 139

To be sure, black fighters challenged white political and social author- ity, especially the presence of Jim Watts. Louisville’s Board of Public Safety realized they could not tame Watts, better known as the “Pendennis Pet,” and if whites could not check the “Pendennis Pet” into docility, how would other blacks react in a city where servile employment was the expectation for black men? Born and raised in Louisville, Watts had worked as a waiter before becoming a professional fighter. While employed at the Pendennis Club, an elite organization for the wealthiest whites in the city, club mem- bers heard that Watts could handle himself, so they put him to the test, and members backed him to fight other local boxers.2 Between 1887 and 1897, Watts carved up the competition, black and white, and never lost a fight in the city on his way to becoming the self-proclaimed colored middleweight champion of the South.3 In 1897, Watts headed to New York to take on the best fighters and earn more money from the wealthier clubs. Although he lost to Joe Walcott, Watts returned with a new swagger that captured whites’ atten- tion. With his newfound riches, he returned “wearing white shoes, striped trousers, a red vest, and a sky-blue coat. He had a large diamond in his shirt front, and was at once the most prominent negro resident in Louisville.” In other words, boxing helped him rise above servile work, and he adorned flashy clothes to signal his freedom. What if other negroes acted like Watts? Equally as worrisome for whites, Watts came back with improved boxing skills. According to a local expert, “All the negroes were afraid to meet him, and he had trouble in matching himself with a good white man.”4 To tame the “Pendennis Pet,” clubs kept trying to find fighters to beat him, especially white men, but very few were up to the task. In May 1897, in his first fight back from the East, local Louisville promoters thought they found the right man in Joe Peterson, the “Terrible Swede.” They were wrong. Watts viciously beat Chicago’s Peterson and knocked him down five times before the police stopped the fight. To make matters worse, in front of five hundred people, the man they called the “Pendennis Pet” laughed as he beat his white opponent. “‘The Terrible Swede’ tried to be terrible in that he rushed at Watts repeat- edly, but as repeatedly found Watts elsewhere, smiling and smirking and delivering left hand punches with sang-froid and considerable force. It was a case of punch, clinch and get away, with the Swede’s face as red as a lobster and Watts smiling like he found money.” On the fight card that night, the other black fighter, Steve Crosby, beat an Italian fighter too. “Africa came out first best last night over at least two representatives of other countries.”5 The following January, promoters put another white fighter in front of him, and Watts knocked down Lucas Siefker several times before the police stopped

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

140 . ch a p t e r 6

that fight. In March 1898, whites finally found a white fighter to defeat Watts when Australian Jim Ryan stopped him in the twentieth round. Ryan would be the only white man to beat Watts in Louisville.6 By 1902, when the Board of Public Safety banned blacks from boxing in the city, Watts had fought in more than one hundred career fights, with the majority of the battles coming in his hometown. Louisville’s decision to ban black boxers stripped Watts of his trade and his ability to earn a living on his own terms. With no local fight prospects, Watts momentarily quit the ring and claimed he was heading to Kalamazoo, Michi- gan, to work as a waiter. When asked if his decision to move had anything to do with the new law, Watts said, “I have recommendations from men at the Pendennis Club, where I worked before entering the ring, and I am go- ing to Kalamazoo and work at my trade. There is more in waiting than there is in the prize ring.”7 But, in reality, it was too hard for a man to transition from a fighter to a waiter. One job required him to physically prove his man- hood, while the other forced his docility around whites. In 1904, Jim Watts moved his family to Sandusky, Ohio, and opened up a sparring academy.8 In Ohio, he found momentary financial success, but like so many second-tier fighters of his generation, he quickly fell out of the spotlight. When Watts resurfaced in 1913—that is to say, a newspaper cared enough about him to discuss his life—he was living in Indianapolis selling coal. He claimed he had squandered more than $200,000 in career earnings, had been in four hundred fights, but also noted he ate three meals a day. According to a local black writer, however, Watts looked “slow and groggy as if a fighter waiting for his knockout blow.”9 In the end, unable to ply his trade in his hometown, his career suffered from the cruel fate of the color line. The brief story about Watts and Louisville is the story of progressive re- form, race, and manhood. Though Louisville was one of a few cities to out- right ban black boxers—Memphis briefly banned black boxers in 1910—dur- ing the Progressive Era, a number of cities and states outside the Deep South eventually barred mixed bouts. Between 1900 and 1908, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Louisville, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Chicago drew the color line.10 After Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship in 1908, the search for white hopes, combined with the hope to reenergize white males, pushed a few states to change their laws to legalize fighting, and even those states, Tennessee and New York, banned interracial matches. In the context of prizefighting, progressivism, and prejudices, lawmakers wanted to protect white superiority. Each black victory in the ring against white opponents—and there were plenty by black men—stripped away at

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 141

the notion of white male social and political authority, a confidence that partly hinged on whites’ racial belief in physical superiority. Whiteness had no value if it could not be proven. Moreover, the move to bar mixed bouts was also a progressive movement against local black communities and the fear of so-called black criminality. As one California paper asked before the Johnson–Jeffries bout in 1910, “If the negro wipes up the earth with Jef- fries will this country belong to the coons? Will we be forced to repeal the 13th, 14th, and other amendments to the constitution for self protection?”11 If whites could not control black men inside the ring, whites worried, they could not control blacks outside the squared circle.

BaLtIMore: a whIte Man’S cIty

The Joe Gans–Charles Sieger bout on November 14, 1902, for Gans’s light- weight championship was a vicious, one-sided affair that challenged local reformers’ vision of a white man’s city. “It is doubtful,” the Baltimore Sun re- flected, “if any fighter ever took more punishment and remained on his feet in the history of the prize ring than the New York boy received.” For fifteen rounds, despite taking an insurmountable amount of punishment, Sieger, the overmatched “Italian Game Chicken” who had “features like an Algonquin Indian and the courage of a martyr,” refused to quit.12 The bloodied and bat- tered Sieger hit the canvas six times that night, prompting reformers to lead a fight against prizefighting. But it was not just the beating that pushed reformers to move; it was the unmistakable racial imagery that captured progressives’ attention. A signifi- cant portion of the fans could not shake the fact that “Sieger was severely mauled for 15 rounds by his negro antagonist.” For one man, described as a “gentleman from one of the Southern States” in the press, the “exhausted and bloody condition of the white man” burned an image of racial brutality and betrayal that he could not shake. This type of beating was not supposed to happen to a white man. Upset by the racial role reversal, the southern gentle- man left the fight and told fans sitting near him, “he did not care to see a negro beat a white man, especially when the white man was so clearly the physical inferior of his colored opponent.”13 The highlights of the fight described in the daily press the next day also fueled the flames of white unrest. “Time and again,” the Sun wrote, “the colored boy crossed over that deadly right and landed it full on the point of the jaw . . .” In the tenth round, a straight right to Sieger’s jaw “put the white boy on ‘queer street,’” and in the eleventh round, the “white boy fell like a log,” from a barrage of Gans’s punches.14 But

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

142 . ch a p t e r 6

Gans was not just a “colored boy,” he was a man, the lightweight champion, and a hero in Black Baltimore. Whites feared that the combination of Gans’s championship status, his standing in the black community, and prowess in the ring would have a damaging effect on their ability to control black citizens. One concerned citizen wrote, “What is more disgusting than to see a negro and a white man (poor, degraded wretch) stand up and fight?” This writer also worried that other blacks would wrongly interpret the meaning of mixed bouts, and he argued that interracial fights “certainly has an effect on the boisterous and rough element of negroes.” A police officer who attended the fight, Deputy Marshall Manning, also claimed, “The sight of the negro defeating a white man in the prize ring had a most unwholesome effect upon the rough col- ored element and tended to make that element unruly and disorderly.”15 And the city marshal, Thomas Farnan, recommended to reformers “that permits be refused for boxing contests between white and colored men,” because he believed, “no matter how the contests resulted, they caused race feelings.” He further warned, “no one knows just exactly what might occur at a box- ing contest, when the audience is frequently excited, because of the success or defeat of the contestant each individual favors.”16 In a city that was nearly fifteen percent black, with one of the largest black populations in the nation, something had to be done about mixed bouts.17 The push to ban interracial bouts was an extension of the 1899 “good gov- ernment” movement that linked modern reform with racist protectionism.18 During Baltimore’s 1899 election, Democrats argued that under Republican rule, blacks had received too many political appointments and the so-called black rowdy element had become a physical threat to whites. Race riots the previous year in Wilmington, North Carolina—sometimes known as the Wilmington Racial Massacre of 1898—inspired white Baltimorean politicians to rid themselves of their negro problem. During the height of the Baltimore campaign, a Wilmington newspaper reported, “A distinguished gentleman was in Wilmington on the eve and during the revolution in November. He told us that Baltimore would soon or late have some such experiences as Wilmington was passing through.” The reporter continued, “He thought it inevitable as like causes would produce like results. The race issue in that city has become critical. The race prejudice is getting to the front. . . . It says, however, that there is ‘an ugly negro element in certain sections of the city.’”19 The following year, in Baltimore during the 1899 election, political rallies were filled with signs that read, “This is a White Man’s City,” “The White Man’s Burden,” and “No Coons for Me,” with the latter sign having a picture

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 143

of a rough-looking black man, a clear suggestion to whites that black men had to be stopped.20 At one rally, a speaker linked Good Government with white power, suggesting, “There is another aspect of the question of good government that is too serious and too palpable to be obscured. I refer to the danger of negro domination that is indissolubly connected with a continu- ation of the Maister [Republican Mayor] contingent of the republican party in possession of the city government.”21 And in his speech to Baltimore’s Democratic voters, Governor Fred Brown applauded a ward delegation for carrying a banner that read “This is a White Man’s City,” and he proceeded to tell voters, “It only remains for the white people of the city to see that they are properly registered on Monday next, and that their ballots are cast in favor of good government . . .”22 Backed by Democrats geared toward maintaining white superiority, Theodore Hayes handily won the mayoral election, and right on cue, Democratic leaders in Baltimore worked to strip away black rights. A reformist government that ruled to maintain white power could not have prizefight promoters in the city who undermined the racial remaking of Baltimore. To be sure, some progressives also looked at the Gans–Sieger match as an opportunity to completely get rid of boxing. News of the bloody fight brought reformers out in full force, including a number of clergymen who sent Mayor Hayes letters urging him to ban boxing. Reverend Junius W. Millard, pastor of Eutaw Place Baptist Church, complained, “These so-called boxing contests have been nothing else than prizefights, pure and simple, and their effect has been to brutalize those who have witnessed them and to outrage the sense of public decency on the part of those who oppose them.”23 Ten days later, a delegation of leaders with the Methodist Episcopal Church adopted a resolution calling for the abolishment of boxing. But reformers had a battle on their hands. A sizeable number of Baltimoreans believed the city, especially boys, benefited from boxing. Without boxing, some argued, the youth, and thus white manhood, would suffer.24 But make no mistake about it: Just as the Good Government campaign that brought Mayor Hayes into office linked government reform with ending negro domination, the campaign to clean up Baltimore by banning boxing was intertwined with a need to stop so-called black power. As the move to reform boxing grew, Mayor Hayes had two major issues in front of him: How could he reform boxing while appeasing both white reformers and the supporters of boxing, and how would he deal with the race issue? On the first concern, promoters tried to meet Mayor Hayes half- way, and they pleaded with him to reduce fights from twenty rounds to

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

144 . ch a p t e r 6

ten-round contests instead of abolishing the sport. Limiting the number of rounds, they argued, would make the sport seem less brutal and would pre- vent championship matches. Promoters also tried to exert pressure on Mayor Hayes to merely reform mixed bouts, as opposed to banning them outright. Promoters knew that top-notch black fighters, like Gans and Joe Walcott, made the clubs more money when either of the black champions faced white opponents. Unwilling to lose those potential matches, promoters asked the mayor to allow interracial contests featuring top black fighters. Surprisingly, Mayor Hayes initially put forth a reform plan that would ban mixed bouts in preliminary contests, but would allow interracial fights for championship battles. It is possible that Mayor Hayes hoped that a white fighter would de- feat Gans or Walcott in Baltimore as a symbol of white might, but before he moved to reform mixed bouts the mayor had to be convinced that blacks would not become unruly if Gans fought and won. According to one report, “The Mayor was strenuous on the inadvisability of matching the races, as he thought it tended to create disorder among certain elements in the com- munity,” but the mayor “asked for a description of the character of Joe Gans, and was told that Gans is probably the fairest boxer in the ring, and that he is noted for quiet deportment.” In other words, Gans was a “good black,” not a threat like the so-called rowdy element, and he would not embarrass his white opponents or rile up black fans.25 The talk of racial reform in the ring disappointed Gans, who had hoped to fight the rest of his career in Baltimore. In his public defense, Gans cast himself as a model citizen and a humble black man who just wanted an op- portunity to work near his family and friends. A dejected Gans told the Sun, “I have lived in Baltimore all my life, my relatives and friends are here, and, in spite of what may have been said to the contrary, I have found the audiences here generally fair in their treatment of me.” He continued, “I am a taxpayer here; and am, and have always been, a law-abiding citizen. I regard my means of gaining a livelihood as legitimate and honorable as any man’s.” Speaking about the pride he had when he won the championship in May—and defi- nitely making sure he was not gloating as to not upset white men—Gans humbly noted, “One thing which made the winning of the championship sweet to me was the thought that I could show my fellow-townsmen that I was all that my admired credited me with being. I was also proud to bring to this city an honor it had never previously possessed.” Gans also believed the mayor wanted him to lose to a white man in Baltimore: “In regard to the Mayor’s compromise to allow contests between white men and colored champions only,” Gans argued, “I take it to mean he will permit white men

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 145

to meet me until my laurels are snatched from me, and then I will be given no chance to regain them. I ask, is that sportsmanlike? Is it fair play [?] . . . What opportunity does that give to poor colored lads who, like me, are try- ing to climb the pugilistic ladder?”26 Gans closed his remarks by pleading with Mayor Hayes to reconsider his potential ban. But Baltimore could not be a “white man’s city” with a black champion who beat up white men, so instead of legally reforming the sport, Mayor Hayes stopped issuing permits altogether. In his decree, he cited, “I am of the opinion that boxing will do the community no good; that it is fraught with dangerous possibilities, and that the tendency is not uplifting,” and he expressed a “doubt of the ability to have boxing conducted without brutal- ity, gambling or a menace to good order . . .”27 Boxing did not come back to Baltimore until July 1903 when a new mayor, Robert McLane, who also won his job under the banner of “a White Man’s City,” issued his first box- ing permit because he believed boxing’s manly values were good for white Baltimoreans.28 Although promoters banned mixed bouts, between 1904 and 1907, they allowed Gans to fight three white men. He beat them all. To blunt Gans’s victories, white promoters more frequently hosted battle royals meant to demean the black combatants. It is no coincidence that the elimination of mixed bouts and the increase in battle royals occurred simultaneously as the city stripped black rights away.

LoS angeLeS and toM Mccarey’S nIgger cLuB

In January 1901, grumblings from Ohio Governor Gary Nash about banning Cincinnati’s scheduled heavyweight championship match between Jim Jeffries and Gus Ruhlin shook Los Angeles boosters. If reports were true, and Nash banned boxing, Los Angeles fight promoters and boosters would finally have a chance to land Jeffries, their hometown hero. John Brink, the former head of the white middle-class Los Angeles Athletic Club, reasoned, “I look at it this way—if Jeff and Ruhlin can’t come together in Cincinnati the public will want them to get together somewhere else. Why not Southern California?” Brink and several leading businessmen reached out to Jeffries, who said. “I would rather go there than any place I know of. A fellow always has a yearn- ing to show his friends what he can do.”29 For boosters, however, the allure of Jeffries fighting in his hometown went beyond making money and grabbing headlines; this was about race and place. Since the 1870s, Los Angeles boosters had been selling the city as a “white spot,” a safe haven for white migrants, as the mythical last line of defense against political, economic, and racial

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

146 . ch a p t e r 6

challenges to white manhood. This concept, historian Mark Wild suggests, reflected white Angelenos’ anxieties about politics, labor, and race.30 In 1877 for example, city officials changed the name of Calle de los Negros (Angli- cized as “Nigger Alley”) to Los Angeles Street, a move historian Mark Wild suggests “marked the first steps toward constructing the vision of a ‘white’ Los Angeles that would resonate so strongly with [their] descendants.”31 With his bulging muscles, Midwest background, and manly aggression, Jeffries fit nicely into boosters’ plans. The future champ was born in an Ohio log cabin on a 160-acre homestead in 1875, where his father, A. C. Jeffries, had toiled in the fields as a “natural man,” before the family migrated to Los Angeles in 1881.32 Their journey was like many other white midwesterners who were enticed by booster ads promoting racial paradise. According to historian Natalia Molina, “The city was developed as a place for whites . . .” and “by luring mainly white Midwesterners and by racially segregating neigh- borhoods as they began to be settled by immigrants and migrants, the city fathers sent a clear message: social membership in the city would be reserved for whites only.”33 In Los Angeles, Jim’s father purchased one hundred acres of land (ninety-seven acres of fruit trees) several miles from downtown, and he built an exquisite two-storied fourteen-room home where he raised Jim to be a farmer and a preacher.34 The muscular champion was tailor-made for a city that sold itself as a “white spot.” But despite boosters’ persistence to get the Jeffries–Ruhlin fight, the two battled in San Francisco. In fact, the local fighter never fought a championship match in his hometown. With cities in the East and Midwest reforming prizefighting, Los Angeles, which did not restrict fighting—California allowed for municipal control of boxing—had become a popular destination for boxers. In March 1901, after Biddy Bishop, a leading boxing manager on the West Coast, sent a letter to the Los Angeles Times asking about potential fights, the paper bragged, “Los Angeles has been picked out by fighters and their managers as the Mecca for ring contests.” Less than a month later, the Times reported, “the prizefighting proposition in this city is assuming momentous proportions. The managers of the ‘pugs’ generally are looking toward Los Angeles as a prospective Mecca.”35 By 1902, led by the promoter Tom McCarey, who opened his Century Ath- letic Club the previous year, Los Angeles had started to rival San Francisco as the “Mecca of Boxing.” That year, a local writer observed, “As the pugilistic profession around the country awakes to the fact that Los Angeles is now one of the best towns for the sport in the country, there is a steady increase in the number of fighters who are asking for a chance to come here. A year ago, when the sport was not on its present footing, it was hard to persuade

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 147

good men to make the trip without a guarantee, but things have changed.”36 Although McCarey helped put boxing in Los Angeles on the map, his boxing business blunted boosters’ vision of a white Los Angeles. Understanding the interconnection of race, manliness, boxing, and busi- ness, McCarey knew that in a city marketed as a white spot, race sold. To build his business, he brought in the best black talent. The list of notable black fighters that battled in Los Angeles included Hank Griffin, “Denver” Ed Martin, Frank Childs, Sam McVey, Jack Johnson, Young Peter Jackson, Joe Walcott, Billy Woods, and the “Dixie Kid” Aaron Brown. In the first two years of running his business, McCarey rarely put on a main event featuring two white fighters, and he never hosted a fight card that only featured white men—instead, he preferred all-black fights or mixed bouts. Los Angelenos took notice. After McCarey’s first all-black card on June 20, 1902, which con- sisted of three fights highlighted by a Johnson–Griffin match, the Los Angeles Express noted, “Never before has an all-black competition been given by the club. In every previous fistic carnival given by the local club there have been at least one or two white contestants.” The Los Angeles Times called the show a “dark night,” and the Herald told readers, “several months ago Manager Tom McCarey announced an intention of arranging for the Century Club a ‘dark night’ of fistic sport, which would combine with some class a great deal of downright, outright scrapping, and would be of a nature to satisfy the desires of the most ardent followers of ring sports.” The Herald writer ended his observation noting, “by degrees [McCarey] has been working to it until at last a card in which six ebony-hued gladiators will contest is the final out- come.”37 In the main event that night, Johnson and Griffin fought a fast-paced twenty-round draw. Surprisingly, in the fight, Johnson, the counterpuncher, came out aggressive and almost put Griffin out, but with a bloodied nose, in the fourth round Griffin picked up the pace. For the next fifteen rounds, he was the aggressor. He paid for his tactics, however, as Johnson easily coun- tered his punches. In the end, the referee declared the match a draw, because Griffin remained aggressive the whole fight.38 A month after McCarey’s first all-black card, Young Peter Jackson beat the white fighter Mike Donavan in a twenty-round bout. McCarey, who once proclaimed, “I do not think much of the color line proposition,” was one of the few promoters in the nation who openly sup- ported mixed bouts.39 Some suggest his affinity for black fights and mixed bouts was what earned the nickname “Uncle Tom,” and the public, at first, enjoyed these mixed bouts. As the Herald stated, “Two negroes seldom make as satisfactory a mill as a black and a white man, owing to their race sympathy

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

148 . ch a p t e r 6

. . .”40 The only problem; blacks dominated their whites foes. Between June 1901 and June 1903, in main events black fighters went 15–1–2 against their white opponents. The inability of white fighters to live up to their supposed racial capabilities always upset white fans. After a match between Jack Jeffries (Jim’s brother) and Jack Johnson in 1902—the interracial contest was part of the city’s big- gest booster event, La Fiesta—the Los Angeles Times said that “by rights,” Jeffries should have won, because he was “a fine-looking young fellow, with a figure like a Greek god, muscles all glistening over to his seconds.” In front of four thousand fans, however, Johnson hit Jeffries with a right hand to the stomach, “which must have made Jeffries ribs battle,” and then followed that with a right to the jaw that sent Jeffries to the mat with a hard “thud.” The referee counted Jeffries out.41 After Johnson’s victory, the Los Angeles Times reassured whites that Johnson was a “good-natured black animal,” and not a threat to white manhood.42 Between McCarey’s “dark nights” and his interracial contests, whites had grown increasingly worried about boxing in the city. To fully understand this growing white anxiety about black bodies in the ring, however, one must take into account the city’s increasing black population. In the midst of black domination in the ring, Los Angeles experienced a significant racial demo- graphic change that heightened white anxieties about black fistic success.43 The connection between black migration, black muscles, and black vic- tories cannot be separated. Local black leaders also boosted Los Angeles. The land boom and better job opportunities, along with false perceptions that the city was nearly free from racism, enticed black migrants to move to Los Angeles.44 As historian Lonnie G. Bunch III suggests, “The chance for home ownership and the potential for more individual freedom had an even greater appeal to those whose choices were circumscribed by race.”45 During the 1890s, the black population nearly doubled, and in 1900 Los Angeles had the largest black community in California. A decade later, the city held the largest black population west of the Mississippi.46 At the peak of black mi- gration, from February 1903 through March 1903, more than two thousand blacks arrived in the city.47 During that short period, McCarey hosted two colored championship fights, a welterweight championship bout between Joe Walcott and the local black fighter Billy Woods, and three interracial contests. The same day (February 27, 1903) that the Los Angeles Times told their readers about the Johnson–McVey battle, claiming, “They don’t ar- range these coon fights right. The afternoon before the fight they ought to run the fighters through a steam carpet-cleaning machine, and set a pair of

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 149

men pounding them a while with meat cleavers. A little thing like twenty rounds of punching can’t worry a coon like McVey much. He could stand up for twenty rounds lashed to a post and let the other man take an ax,” the paper also printed a headline reading, “Nearly a Thousand Negro Colonists,” for an article about a huge influx of black southern migrants.48 Less than a month later, on March 20, in an article entitled “Negroes are Coming,” the Herald warned readers, “Southern California is about to become the Mecca for thousands of negroes.” An executive for the Southern Pacific Railroad said, “Colored people of the south think that Southern California is a land flowing with milk and honey.” Noting the “Negroes are Coming,” however, might as well have been an article about black boxers. In March, Herald readers also read the headlines, “Joe Walcott Will Come,” and “Missis- sippi in Town.” “Mississippi,” born John Willis, was “a stocky built little fellow with thin legs and a torso something like a miniature of Jack Johnson’s,” who came to the city to fight the white fighter Kid McFadden on March 18. On March 19, the papers told of the conquests of the black fighters. The Missis- sippi–McFadden fight lasted eight rounds, with Mississippi dominating the majority of the fight. Commenting on Mississippi, a local white writer said, “Mississippi is nothing but bone and muscle, and knows how to handle his fists to good advantage.” During the eight rounds, he repeatedly hit McFadden with quick straight rights that McFadden had no answers for. In the eighth round, he knocked him down twice before McFadden’s trainers threw in the sponge. It took several minutes before they carried him out of the ring, and the white fighter claimed he would never fight again.49 In the main event of the evening, the local black fighter Hank Griffin beat his white opponent Soldier Tom Wilson “in a jig time.”50 The next day, in an article entitled “The Negroes are Coming,” the Herald warned their readers about the seemingly unstoppable black migration. With an unstoppable influx of black migrants, combined with unbeatable black fighters, McCarey’s strategy of relying on interracial fights generated a lot of white backlash. The first printed complaint that McCarey ran a “nigger club” came a week after his 1903 La Fiesta fight card in which McCarey pro- moted three interracial contests. The main event of that May 5 card featured a battle of racial supremacy between Sam McVey and Kid Carter. In fact, McCarey relied on Carter, who had a reputation for beating black men— he knocked out Joe Walcott two years prior—to deal with the racial threat black fighters posed. Carter was “a rushing whirlwind fighter of the kind few colored men like to meet, for he seems only maddened by punishment, and blows apparently only sting him into renewed effort.” “Beating the gentry of

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

150 . ch a p t e r 6

the dingy skins has always been one of the Kid’s strongest cards” the Herald bragged.51 McVey, however, quickly ended all notions of white superiority in the ring, when the “black terror” “lifted fierce uppercuts and repeatedly drove in short jolts to the body with either hand, and they all hurt.”52 The Herald’s writer could not help but notice the racial significance of the La Fiesta card. “Tuesday night certainly was a great occasion for the black men, for all three of them won their bouts from the light-colored gentry. There are many places in the country where a colored man cannot get a square deal in the ring, but in Los Angeles they all look alike when they climb through the ropes.”53 When given an equal opportunity to compete, black men dominated white men. On June 9, 1903, McCarey’s interracial fights finally pushed the limits of white tolerance in Los Angeles. The fights between Jack Woods (black) and “Young” Balmer (white) and Billy Woods (black) and Neil Foley (white) whipped the crowd into a racial frenzy. In the Jack Woods–Balmer contest, Woods gave his opponent a severe beating, and knocked out his two front teeth. After the loss, Balmer stood on the ropes and complained to the crowd, “a white man never gets a square deal against a ‘nigger’ here.” White fans agreed and threw money at Balmer. In the next fight, the excitable crowd witnessed Billy Woods completely outclass Foley, until the referee disquali- fied Woods for fouling. Afterward, the Times argued, “As a matter of fact, there have not been any white fighters in this city for months who could earn a decision over the darkies, as results will show.”54 Therein lay the problem: McCarey kept sending in white fighters to get whipped by black men. Prior to the match, Woods was a local phenomenon in good standing with white fans. In an era in which muscularity meant manliness and supe- riority, Woods’s perfect body caught the attention of white men. One article noted, “Men always like to look on the form of a perfect specimen of their kind and to those who understand physical development the accompany- ing photograph of Woods’ torso will be worth looking at. His back is about as near perfect as it could be.” While another article assured, “Woods is not yet 21, has not a vice in the world and is the possessor of a magnificent body which he has so far preserved in perfect shape. He does not drink; nor does he smoke, and his clean habits may be the way of winning him a fortune tonight.” Woods was a “clean limber young fellow about the color of a new English saddle; muscular in physique (such a model as might have been chosen by a Greek sculptor); with the speed of lighting and the strength of Hercules—Billy Woods.”55 Whites even attributed Woods’s aggression in the ring to his Irish American roots and not his blackness. According to McCarey,

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 151

Woods’ father was “a big six-foot two fighting Irishman,” and McCarey sug- gested he would bet “much on that breed any time.”56 If Woods were white, he would have been the perfect white man. But he was black, and that was a problem. For white Los Angelenos, Woods’s victory highlighted the problem of the black body as a challenge to white authority. Leading up to the contest, the Herald ran a cartoon sketch of Woods training that caricaturized the light- skinned fighter as a dark Sambo. The fight with Foley, according to the Los Angeles Times, brought out the innate animal instincts of the negro. Foley did not stand a fair chance. The paper explained, “The white man is a boxer, but the negro is a savage, ferocious, hardened, fierce, little brute—trained to fight to hurt men.” The writer continued, “No words can describe the terrible fury of his fighting. It is like the sudden loosing of a caged, hungry wild beast torn away from some mountain fastness. He did not seem to strike, but to tear his man to the ground like a hound.” To witness the fight was a “sickening thing,” because “Foley was so slender and so pale and he looked so afraid as he stood against the lithe, crouched black body.”57 After beating Foley in four rounds, “A negro crassed [sic] with lust for blood, lost all control of himself, and leaped on his white antagonist with the fury of a wild beast, throttling him around the throat with one of his great black arms.” Four thousand fans started to scream like “enraged animals” and then started to run into the ring like “maddened cattle,” and one young man yelled, “Kill the nigger.”58 After- ward, the Herald noted the racial pulse of the city: “While there are plenty of men who will say that a white man who will box with a colored man ‘ought to be licked on general principles,’ still, the fact has been brought home to McCarey with telling force that Los Angeles audiences do not like to see a white man defeated by a man of color.”59 With white manhood at risk, the city council decided to save Los Angeles by forcing McCarey to ban inter- racial fights. For progressives, eliminating interracial boxing matches was also part of a larger city cleanup movement making Los Angeles the ideal “white spot.” Over the past year, reformers had passed the initiative, referendum, and recall and banned gambling and prostitution.60 These middle-class whites who op- posed mixed bouts focused on building the good community. Commenting on the idea of the good community, historian Robert Fogelson wrote, “The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century metropolis, as the newcomers in Los Angeles perceived it, was the receptacle for all European evils and the source of all American sins.” For these migrants, the city “contradicted their long-cherished notions about the proper environment and compelled them

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

152 . ch a p t e r 6

to retreat to outskirts uncontaminated by urban vices and conducive to rural virtues.”61 These newcomers “believed that likeminded persons, joined in voluntary associations and settled in residential suburbs, could prevent ‘the blight of demoralizing metropolitanism’ from spreading over Los Angeles.” When discussing the city’s decision to ban mixed bouts, the Times observed, “The City Fathers do not believe that exhibitions which arouse the animal instincts to such a pitch are a good thing for the city.”62 The city council dis- cussed “the disgusting, nauseating features of the slugging match between the black fighter Woods and the misguided representative of white humanity . . .”63 The Council also suggested that if McCarey did not take care of this racial problem, then they would abolish boxing. To protect his business, McCarey promised he would only promote fights between “men of the same color,” and he assured fans that he had found a suitable white pugilist. One of the white fighters he banked on was Aurelio Herrera, a terrific lightweight Mexican American fighter from Bakersfield, California. Though clearly seen as nonwhite, Spanish-speaking Mexicans in Los Angeles could represent the city’s whitewashed past when whites needed a cleaner image of their racial reality. Although reformers and city boosters believed boxing morally corrupted the city, they tolerated the sport as long as McCarey banned interracial fights. He relegated his club to the downtown business district but, in October 1903, referee Harry Stuart and local businessmen decided to break McCa- rey’s monopoly and erect their own club. The proposed club, with eight- thousand-person capacity and west of downtown on Third Street, irritated white residents. This would bring more black fighters into racially restricted white spaces.64 Immediately, reformers in the local Crown Hill Improvement Association “declared that the minds of little children would be poisoned, that women would be afraid to pass through the tunnel for fear of meeting the class of characters that hang about prize fight headquarters and that property values would depreciate if the plan of the promoters was carried out.”65 Their grassroots campaign prevented the completion of the new pa- vilion, and their victory sparked other reformers to join a movement to rid Los Angeles of boxing. Their test case was the upcoming Jack Johnson–Sam McVey battle, a rematch for the colored championship on October 28, 1903. With the biggest fight in city history a week away, a fight many argued would lead to the victor fighting Jim Jeffries in Los Angeles and surely make Los Angeles the most important fight city in the world, the city council moved to ban boxing. One article suggested, “There is no reason to doubt that the prevalence of thugs and crooks of all sort with which this city is constantly

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 153

cursed is due in no small degree to the reputation Los Angeles has gained as a ‘wide-open town’ for fistic encounters.” Three days before the fight, the city attorney drafted a bill to ban boxing, including an emergency clause to stop the upcoming contest.66 But too many businesses stood to lose money if the city banned the fight, so Mayor Snyder allowed the affair to proceed.67 As of November 1903, however, boxing was temporarily banned in Los Angeles. That ruling did not last long, however, because white men needed their fix. In May 1904, a local judge overruled the law because the state of California permitted boxing.68 Buoyed by the judge’s decision, McCarey started to re- build his business and, once again, he leveraged top black talent. McCarey’s continuous insistence on using black fighters demonstrated a great paradox with white thought and black bodies in the ring: In short, whites simultaneously desired and detested black bodies. McCarey’s first choice for a fight, a match between middleweights Billy Woods and Young Peter Jackson, made whites cringe, and the hue and cry that McCarey wanted another “nigger club” started again, but, months later, when McCarey signed Johnson and “Denver” Ed Martin for a championship bout, white fans cel- ebrated.69 The Los Angeles Times could not help but notice the great white paradox: “McCarey in putting on this battle of the black heavyweights is deferring to a frequently expressed wish of the boxing public, which seems to be one of the most fickle quantities that can possibly be conceived.” “Not long since,” the writer continued, “the hammer brigade shouted their heads off about too many coon fights in this city, but now most of the same fellows wish to see this big pair in action again.”70 The following year, however, when McCarey built his new arena in the downtown district—church leaders signed a long-term lease with Hazard’s Pavilion ensuring McCarey could no longer hosts matches there—McCarey temporarily banned black boxers from working in Los Angeles. In 1906, a writer argued, “McCarey has put up the bars against colored men in his club, not that the ebony-hued fighters are in disrepute with the local manager, but McCarey does not consider them a card calculated to please his audi- ence.” In 1907 when discussing a potential interracial match between Jimmy Tremble (white) and Kid Lewis (black), the Herald claimed the match was “improbable” because “the question of negro and white fighters meeting each other in the local arena is one that always receives a negative answer from the audience.”71 But by the end of 1907, McCarey was at it again. He brought Sam Langford and Jim Berry together for the city’s first mixed bout in four years. Like Baltimore promoters had done when they brought back boxing, McCarey started to use battle royals to attract white fans and blunt the blows

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

154 . ch a p t e r 6

the black boxers brought to white egos. As one report observed, “The battle royal that will be the second number on the card fills a long felt want. The fans have been asking for this for a long time.”72 This was a racial bargain, because mixed bouts had to come with battle royals.

FroM hope to deSpaIr: Jack JohnSon and the natIonaL proBLeM oF race and Manhood

As noted by numerous scholars, the search for a “great white hope”—and the anxieties in white manly confidence Johnson’s championship created— also broadened the popularity of the sport as white men looked to boxing to reclaim their physical and racial superiority.73 In this developing racial order, states that had previously banned boxing, like Tennessee and New York, eventually passed laws giving life back to the sport in hopes of raising a new crop of white men prepared to maintain the mantle of whiteness. But the national search for a white hope and the simultaneous celebration of white bodies did not defeat the problem Johnson and other black pugilists presented; only progressive lawmakers could do that. After Johnson won the championship, Tennessee lawmakers re-legalized boxing and permitted eight-round matches in licensed clubs. In Memphis, the leading fight scene in the state, clubs took advantage of this new law and started hosting weekly fights. Promoters rounded up the best local black and white talent, and held interracial events that featured all-white bouts and all-black bouts, but they never hosted mixed bouts, which had been banned since the 1890s. The southern black fighters included meal-ticket men like “Kid Congo,” “Hock Bones,” and Louisville’s “Kid Phillips.” In October 1909, observing the increase in black fighters, the Commercial Appeal noted, “The darker brethren have so far seemed to nearer satisfy the appetite of the fans for real fighting . . .”74 In other words, in this southern city, these smaller black fighters, with minstrel-like mocking monikers, did not challenge white superiority. In fact, whites enjoyed seeing men like “Kid Congo,” and “Hock Bones,” slug each other in fast-paced eight-round bouts. Before one “Hock Bones” bout, one report noted, “Hock is in perfect condition, and threatens to knock Coleman’s head off.” Reportedly, Hock Bones told the white writer, “I’se going to try to kill the nigger. He told everybody there was no fight- ers in Memphis. When I gets through with him he won’t want to fight here again.”75 This was white voyeurism. They could mock these no-named black meal-ticket men.

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 155

But soon, the Phoenix Club started bringing in popular black fighters with national reputations, including Jeff Clark “the Joplin Ghost,” the “Di- xie Kid,” “Battling” Jim Johnson, and Sam Langford.76 Their migration and domination created a problem. The successful performance of “Dixie Kid” in fall of 1909, in combination with the national white anxiety created by Jack Johnson—Johnson beat Stanley Ketchel while “Dixie Kid” was in Memphis— opened the door for a potential interracial match featuring “Dixie Kid” and an unnamed white fighter. In the middle of a Good Government mayoral political campaign led by eventual winner Edward Crump that linked reform and racism with a quest for white power, why would promoters try to host a mixed bout?77 Was this about proving white authority in the age of Jack Johnson, or simply a move to make money preying on white fans’ need to see white primal authority? As quickly as that interracial door opened, however, the Phoenix Club closed that potential racial problem. The “Phoenix Club management, although admitting that the match proposed with the white man would be a feature bout from purely a pugilistic standpoint, makes the announcement that bouts in the Phoenix arena in the future will be ‘all white’ or ‘all yellow’ or ‘all black’ or ‘black versus yellow,’ gingerbread, chocolate, copper-colored or taints in any shade.”78 Instead of hosting mixed bouts, Memphis clubs increasingly relied on all- black fight cards. By November 29, 1909, the Phoenix Club put on their first all-black fight card, which was headline by a fight between the “Dixie Kid” and a Philly fighter named Bert Whirlwind, “a coon,” according to one local writer. It was an easy knockout for Dixie, who left the “Philadelphia coon” with his head dangling over the edge of the ropes after a knockout. Despite the exciting matches, the white fans noticed that white fighters were miss- ing. “An all-black card was offered by the Phoenix for the first time. Manager Carroll says he is finding it hard to get white boys on in prelims, but fact is the white end of the audience would be tickled to see some white fights.”79 The clubs, however, did not listen to the white complaints. The increase in black fighters in Memphis upset white fighters, fans, the press, and the newly elected Mayor Crump. In January, after Langford beat “Dixie Kid,” promoter Tommy White, who ran the Memphis Athletic Club, announced he would no longer allow black men to fight in main event con- tests. “Darkest Africa will be presented in secondary pugilist considerations offered . . . but the ambitious Jacksons, Sam Langfords, George Dixons or Joe Jeannettes of the future will be forced to tune the little fiddle while white boxers fill the limelight in feature bouts,” reasoned the Commercial Appeal.80

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

156 . ch a p t e r 6

“Mack,” the city’s leading sportswriter, who wrote for the Memphis Scripter, admitted, “Peculiar as it may seem, the biggest houses at the Phoenix have been drawn by negro fights,” and claimed “the patronage was always about three whites to one coon,” and that “white bouts have never drawn” compa- rable crowds in Memphis. The writer argued for “more white prelims,” and “Mack” also predicted “more white bouts” in place of black bouts “would make a hit with the fight crowd.”81 Just days later, city lawmakers led by Mayor Crump discussed passing a law that stated only white men could fight in main events. According to reports, “‘Too much color’ has been conspicuous in past bouts is the whispered rumor, the report being current that Mayor Crump may soon ask promoters to confine their feature bouts to whites,” because “so much limelight for the African colony is said to be distasteful to the members of the new commission.”82 Mayor Crump denied these charges. By the end of January 1910, however, the Commercial Appeal observed that the clubs had been listening to the racially charged complaints, and the “Memphis A.C. members, comprising bankers, millionaires and others, have gradually placed more white and less black in the color scheme for the preliminary sport.” The paper further noted, “there may be a dark dab or so in tonight’s proceedings, but the Caucasian race will predominate, and there are many good members of it waiting around for matches that will be given preference.”83 Make no mistake about it: Demoting black men was a deliberate move to deter any notion of black superiority in Memphis. Pushing white fighters to the top billing in main events highlighted white masculinity by commercializing their manliness and virility as first-rate fighters as their bodies were juxta- posed against the second-rate black fighters like the diminutive Kid Congo or Hock Bones on the undercard. This seemed to work for a few months. Johnson’s victory over Jeffries on July 4, 1910, however, forced Mayor Crump to further evaluate the problem Johnson and black fighters posed to white Memphians. Before the Johnson–Jeffries fight, whites in Memphis were convinced they had a sure thing in Jeffries. City officials, from the mayor to the police department, all openly pulled for Jeffries. Police Chief W. C. Davis claimed, “I am disgusted with that sort of sport, especially where a white man fights a negro. I hope, however, that Jeffries will win.” Captain John M. Couch added, “I think Jeff will win, but have little sympathy with a white man who will fight a negro. However, this fight was forced on Jeffries to wrench the championship of the world from the black.” Detective Will Smiddy held out for a murder, exclaiming “I hope Jeff will kill that nigger, and I believe he can do it if he wants to.”84 But things did not go as planned. To assuage local white fears, one editorial warned, “Let no fool negro get biggity because of the result of the fight at Reno yesterday.”85

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 157

After Johnson’s victory, Mayor Crump used white public anxiety to elimi- nate potential challenges to white male authority and maintain a depressed black working caste. He wanted pickers, not pugilists, and he banned black boxers from fighting in Memphis. Days after the fight, Mayor Crump stated, “Labor is needed on the cotton plantations badly. Negroes may make an honest living there.”86 While most states in the South allowed black men to fight other black men—Memphis would bring back black fighters—they all banned interracial contests. States in the North soon followed the South’s lead. As Johnson’s manliness and championship status became too much to bear, other states, including New York, which had legalized fighting in 1911 in hopes of making money from white hopes, banned Johnson from fight- ing in their state as a move to preserve white power. In 1913, New York took their discrimination against Johnson one step further, and banned all mixed bouts for the “preservation of peace.”87 The state’s move to bar the likes of Joe Jeannette and Sam Langford—Johnson had fled America—rested on preserving white manhood and making money from white hopes. When the state legalized fighting in 1911, they gave the boxing commission all of the power to dictate who fought in their state, and the law also awarded the state boxing commission 5 percent off all gate receipts. While the most lucrative fights were interracial battles that pitted black fighters against white ones, those fights could only take place if the white fighters had credibility. The boxing commission quickly learned that when a white boxer lost to a black fighter, the white man lost his prestige and thus earning power for the club and the state. One sportswriter reasoned he “discovered why it was that the New York state boxing commission refused to let Sam Langford, Joe Jean- nette and other battlers of color swap punches with some of the ‘white hope’ persons who infest this locality.” In 1913, the boxing commission made $38,871 from the net receipts of $775,506, and “a large portion of this money came through the staging of alleged fights between ‘white hopes.’” But if Langford or Jeannette fought a white hope, the writer reasoned, “there wouldn’t be any ‘white hopes’ left to pit against each other in a very short period and the commission’s rakeoff would hardly supply the members with cigar money.”88 Unfortunately, the color line suppressed black fighters’ wages by forcing them to fight the same black foes. When New York banned mixed bouts, Langford lost a $10,000 opportunity to fight the White Hope “Gunboat” Smith. Instead of fighting “Gunboat” Smith, Langford fought Joe Jeannette for the ninth time and considerably less money. Langford’s lawyer asked, “Why should he be deprived of earning his livelihood as a boxer in the State of New York, where boxing is legal?”89 He received no answer from the state.

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

158 . ch a p t e r 6

In 1914, Langford also lost money when Wisconsin banned black fighters in order to stop a fight between Langford and Sam McVey. McVey, who had grown accustomed to the big-money fights abroad, linked the color line and loss of his wages to his civil rights. On McVey’s behalf, his manager George Lawrence argued “the boxing commission of Milwaukee has gone to a greater extreme, where it positively prohibits two colored men from boxing at a club, which is an illegal act and means that the boxing commission has overruled the Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”90 Lawrence also sought an injunction to overturn New York’s ban on mixed bouts. He did not win. Like Langford and McVey, New York’s decision to eliminate “mixed bouts” also hurt Jeannette’s pockets. During the previous two years, Jeannette had defeated white hopes Al Kubiack, Tony Ross, “Porky” Flynn, Joseph Smith, and Jeff Madden. Realizing the financial losses the color line cost Jeannette, a sportswriter remarked, “Since the Boxing Commission placed a ban on mixed bouts, Joe Jeannette, the formidable Hoboken negro, has been practi- cally out of employment.”91 To momentarily supplement his income, Jeannette ventured down South to fight other black men.92 In Memphis in 1913—appar- ently Mayor Crump lifted his ban against black boxers—Jeannette battled Jeff Clarke, but the local referee declared the match a fake, and withheld the fight purse despite the fact Jeannette dominated the match. On the undercard of that fight, white fans were treated to a battle royal featuring five black youth fighters. “All Black” and “Blacker Than” were the last two standing.93 Using the battle royal as a preliminary contest for a fight featuring a skilled black heavyweight like Jeannette—a potential replacement for Johnson’s title— helped blunt any potential anxieties whites might have had about Jeannette’s presence. For Jeannette, however, the discrimination was just another reason to quit the ring. When discussing his 1916 retirement, Jeannette said, “The color line left my field somewhat limited. Langford and McVey were the only opponents I could hope to meet and these I have met so often that the public could scarcely take seriously that kind of competition.”94 In 1914, for example, Jeannette fought “Battling” Jim Johnson in three separate ten-round bouts that resulted in three no-decisions. After their third contest, one paper asked, “do you suppose that two boxers like battling Jim Johnson and Joe Jeannette could get away with seven ten-round draw fights in those good old days? . . . There would have been some result between this pair of dusky warriors, or they would have been thrown out of the ring.” Another sportswriter added, “The firm of Joe Jeannette and Battling Jim Johnson has been dissolved. The two black mastodons fought . . . at the Stadium club in New York the other

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

f ol l o w ing t he col or l ine · 159

night, and the bout was so unsatisfactory that a majority of the spectators left before the ninth round started.” The author closed his remarks noting that the “corporation of Battling Jim Johnson and Sam Langford is now in the field.”95 The restrictive laws ended black domination. In January 1915, two years after lawmakers had run Johnson out of America, and three months before Jess Willard defeated Johnson in Havana, Cuba, a New York Tribune writer noticed a racial change in the boxing ring. “The day of the negro boxer is swiftly passing,” he observed, “and unless a new crop is developed in the next few years a high grade negro pugilist will be as rare as a good white heavyweight is to-day.” He argued that the great black fighters, Johnson, Jeannette, Langford, and McVey were getting old and concluded “the num- ber of bouts between negroes, in fact, the recurrent bouts, they might be called, are due in no small measure to the feeling against so-called ‘mixed bouts” throughout the country. They must fight amongst themselves or quit the ring.”96 Was this a racial hope, or a racial reality? As the black journal- ist Lucien H. White concluded, the Tribune’s remarks “embodied the hopes and desires of the white man.” White argued that New York’s decision to ban mixed bouts “saved white pugilists from the ignominy of being defeated by a Negro.” And he claimed, “The action of the New York Commission found an echoing response in other states, and in one or the other, means were found to put a stop to mixed bouts in most of the states which give legal protec- tion to pugilistic exhibitions.” What happened if a black man failed to get a chance to fight? White concluded, “He must necessarily turn his hand to some other pursuit, for the law of life is inexorable and a man must eat to live. To eat he must work.”97 After Willard defeated Johnson and immediately drew the color line, Joe Jeannette momentarily gave up all hope of fighting for a living. Jeannette said, “Willard has drawn the color line . . . I should have liked to make one more fight, but feel it would be unfair to the public to ask for a match with any of the present crop of hopes. With no one to box my fighting days are over, so I intend to devote all my time to business.”98 In 1919, Baltimore’s Young Jackson complained, Johnson was “the bird that killed the black fighter. His actions in and out of the ring drove the colored fighter to work. Put him back so far in the minds of ring followers that it will be a long, long time—if ever—that they will again be given the matches they once had little trouble in getting.” He closed his diatribe: “Yes, sir, we have nobody to blame but Jack Johnson.”99 If he could not work in the ring, then he had to go back to a life of drudgery.

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

This content downloaded from ������������132.174.252.179 on Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:42:02 UTC������������

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms