Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (85 page)

Good luck!

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brains, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

—Dalai Lama

The contents of King Louis XIV’s chamber pot were noted daily and entered in a log book.

Nobody gives much thought nowadays to the idea of African-American athletes competing against Caucasian athletes—it’s an everyday occurrence. But back in the early 1900s, it was unthinkable
.

T
HE GALVESTON GIANT

Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world. He won the title in 1908. He never considered himself an ambassador of his race and never tailored his public behavior to suit the racist social notions of the day. Instead, Johnson played on white America’s fears and prejudices, creating a public persona designed to provoke. He flaunted his wealth with fancy clothes and fast cars and, perhaps most distasteful to the bigoted newspaper sportswriters and editors of that era, he traveled and appeared regularly with white mistresses—two of whom he eventually married.

FIGHT CLUB

John Arthur Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1878. At the age of 13 he began participating in the notorious Battles Royale—contests between three to five fighters, usually black, with the last man standing taking the purse. By the time he turned 16, Johnson had become a full-time professional boxer.

Pugilism at the dawn of the 20th century was a rougher sport than it is today. Boxing gloves, which had been used to reduce injury during training for over 100 years, were only just replacing bare knuckles in sanctioned, professional bouts. There were no set limits for the number of rounds in a fight—bouts went on until one of the contestants could no longer continue. Professional boxers often fought once a week or more for relatively small purses and in unforgiving circumstances.

Black fighters weren’t offered opportunities to fight for world titles—particularly not in the glamorous heavyweight division. The best black boxers traveled the country fighting white contenders in non-title contests, or fighting one another. Two of the best black heavyweights of Johnson’s era, Sam Langford and Joe Jeanette, fought each other 15 times. Johnson fought Jeanette 10 times before winning the title but then never offered Jeanette a title match. They would only fight again in 1945 at the respective ages of 67 and 66 for a war bonds promotion in New York.

To combat the winter blues, chimpanzees at the Warsaw Zoo watch three hours of TV a day.

IN THIS CORNER...

It was in this harsh and undeniably racist atmosphere that Johnson, after nearly 100 fights and four years as “Black Heavyweight Champion of the World,” got his World Heavyweight title shot against reigning champ Tommy Burns. On the eve of the fight, held in Australia, a Sydney newspaper wrote that “citizens who never prayed before are supplicating Providence to give the white man a strong right arm with which to belt the coon into oblivion.”

Burns was paid a record $30,000 for the fight; Johnson, $5,000. Johnson beat Burns decisively; police had to stop the fight in the 14th round for Burns’s safety. American author Jack London, writing in the
New York Herald
, observed that “the battle was between a colossus and a pygmy. Burns was a toy in Johnson’s hands.” London then called upon former champion Jim Jeffries, who’d retired undefeated to a Nevada farm, to avenge the white race. “Emerge from your alfalfa fields,” he wrote, “and remove the golden smile from Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”

The search for the Great White Hope was on.

DEFENDING THE TITLE

Boxing promoters quickly arranged for middleweight champ Stanley Ketchel to be the first of the Great White Hopes. For 11 rounds Johnson toyed with the smaller Ketchel, taunting him with insults and landing blow after blow. In the 12th round, the battered and bleeding Ketchel caught Johnson with a lucky shot that sent him to the canvas. The champion picked himself up and ended the fight with one last punch, knocking Ketchel’s teeth out.

Several other white fighters followed, trying to dethrone Johnson. They all failed. Eventually, the undefeated Jim Jeffries was coaxed into taking up the challenge. White America was convinced that Jeffries was their last best hope for a white champ. The stage was set for one of the most socially explosive bouts in boxing history.

Alexander Graham Bell tried to teach his dog how to talk. (How’d it go? Rough!)

BEFORE THE FIGHT

James J. Jeffries was the only heavyweight champion ever to have retired undefeated. He’d been contentedly raising crops on his farm for six years when London and others convinced him to return to the ring. His fight with Johnson, scheduled for July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada, was one of the most anticipated sporting events of the age.

Promoter Tex Rickard sold a record 40,000 tickets to the contest. Eastern newspapers arranged to keep tabs on the fight via telegraph. Rickard spread rumors of celebrity referees, including H. G. Wells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and hired former (white) champ James J. Corbett to make inflammatory publicity statements like, “Take it from me, the black boy has a yellow streak and Jeff will bring it out when he gets him into that ring.”

The pre-fight hysteria over Jeffries’s hope of “avenging his race” even affected the bookmakers—they made the aging, overweight Jeffries a 10 to 6 betting favorite, prompting Johnson to wire his brother Claude in Chicago to “bet your last copper on me.” The fighters were to receive among the largest purses ever awarded in a prizefight at the time: $60,000 plus a $10,000 advance for Johnson, $40,400 to Jeffries, with an additional $50,000 apiece for the sale of film rights.

Leading up to the fight, Johnson continued to taunt his detractors. At his training camp two miles out of town (which was open to the press), he had two white women with him. The atmosphere surrounding the fight was summed up by playwright Howard Sackler in his 1967 play
The Great White Hope
:

The fight was going to decide in the eyes of the world not just who was the better man, but who was the better race. The fear that underlay this was a nightmare fear, of this smiling black man, the strongest black man in the world, who made no bones about wanting and being able to have white women. That touched something very deep in the American consciousness.

AND THE WINNER...

The once-great Jeffries was humiliated in a 15-round knockout, Johnson making it clear that he was only toying with the exchamp and that he could have ended the fight at any time. The news of Johnson’s victory went out over the telegraph lines and within hours race riots broke out in every southern state, as well as Pennsylvania, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, New York, Illinois, and the District of Columbia. Former president Theodore Roosevelt called for a ban on prizefighting, and Congress hastily passed laws prohibiting the interstate transportation of motion pictures, to prevent films of the fight being shown around the country. Before the dust settled, at least 14 black men had been lynched in the fallout over the fight.

During Prohibition, there were 100,000 illegal drinking establishments in New York City.

THE WHITE SLAVE ACT

After the Jeffries debacle, Johnson continued to plow through his opponents and infuriate his enemies. Black journalists and social critics pressured him to tone down his antagonistic act and become a more acceptable black role model for the white press. But Johnson refused to yield.

Unable to find a match for him in the ring, white authorities arrested Johnson in 1912. The charge: Violation of the Mann Act, which prohibited the transport of women across state lines “for immoral purposes.” Known as the “White Slave Act,” the law had been created to stop interstate prostitution rings. The white woman Johnson was convicted of crossing state lines with was Lucille Cameron, his fiancée. The judge who convicted him was Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who, as Commissioner of baseball, would later work tirelessly to keep black players out of the major leagues.

Rather than face prison, Johnson fled to Europe, where he continued to box, fighting exhibition bouts all across the continent. After three years, he began to tire of the strain and agreed to defend his title against the new Great White Hope, the six-foot, seven-inch Jess Willard. Some writers believe the promoter convinced Johnson that a pardon could be arranged if he took the fight. Whether this is true remains uncertain. What is certain, however, is that no real pardon was ever offered.

ON THE ROPES

The fight was held close to home, but not quite on American shores—in Havana, Cuba, on April 5, 1915. It was a grueling bout, scheduled to last 45 rounds in 100-degree heat. But in the 26th round, Willard knocked out the 37-year-old Johnson.

In later years Johnson claimed to have thrown the fight. As evidence, he pointed to films that show him lying on his back using his arms to shade his eyes from the sun as the referee counts him out. Was Johnson really knocked out, or was he faking? It didn’t matter: he lost the fight, and white America felt redeemed.

How ’boat you? 26% of kids prefer toy boats to rubber duckies in the bath.

FINAL ROUND

Johnson returned to the United States in 1920 and spent a year and a day in Leavenworth Prison, where he served as athletic director. On his release, he returned to the ring, where he earned decent money fighting exhibitions and non-title fights. He also continued his extravagant lifestyle, complete with white wives and fast cars. It was in such a fast car that Jack Johnson met his end in 1946. On his way to New York to watch the second black heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, defend his title against young Billy Conn (who also bore the Great White Hope burden), Johnson crashed his car in North Carolina and died at the age of 68. He is buried in a family plot in Chicago next to his two wives, in an unmarked grave to prevent vandalism.

RANDOM FACTS

•
On April 18, 1922, Jack Johnson received U.S. Patent #1,413,121 for a type of wrench he invented.

•
When Howard Sackler’s play
The Great White Hope
opened in 1967, the actress playing Johnson’s wife received hate mail and death threats over a scene depicting the interracial couple in bed. (James Earl Jones played Jack Johnson.)

•
During World War I, a heavy artillery shell was referred to as a “Jack Johnson.”

•
“The possession of muscular strength and the courage to use it in contests with other men for physical supremacy,” said Johnson, “does not necessarily imply a lack of appreciation for the finer and better things in life.” Johnson
was
a man of refined tastes: he wrote two memoirs, played the cello, acted in plays and in vaudeville, and was romantically linked to exotic figures such as Mae West and German spy Mata Hari.

•
Other celebrities arrested for violating the Mann Act: Charlie Chaplin in 1944 and Chuck Berry in 1962. Chaplin was acquitted. Berry served two years in prison. The act was repealed in 1986.

The ancient Romans thought unibrows were sexy.

Before there was an FBI, Secret Service, or any other national law-enforcement organization, there was the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Founded by Allan Pinkerton in 1850, it existed for 145 years, sleuthing for government and big business, and chasing bank robbers, mobsters, and spies. Here are a few of Pinkerton’s high-profile cases. (For more on Pinkerton, see
page 265
.)

S
AVING PRESIDENT LINCOLN

Background:
Weeks before Lincoln was to be sworn into office, a Pinkerton agent named Timothy Webster learned of a secessionist plot to assassinate the president-elect when he switched trains in Baltimore on the way to his inauguration.

What Happened:
Pinkerton told Lincoln about the plot, and the future president agreed to change his travel plans. At the appointed hour, Lincoln, wearing a soft felt hat and an overcoat on his shoulders to disguise his features, slipped out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, hours ahead of schedule on a secret chartered train. When it left the station, Pinkerton had the telegraph lines cut so no one could warn the plotters that Lincoln was on his way.

Aftermath:
Lincoln made it to Washington without incident, but his political enemies mocked him for sneaking into the capital. “I did not then, nor do I now, believe I would have been assassinated, had I gone through Baltimore as first contemplated,” Lincoln later admitted. “But I thought it wise to run no risk, where no risk was necessary.”