Rare Jack Johnson Boxing Letter Headlines Upcoming Auction
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throwing his historic title fight in Havana to Jess Willard months earlier. The
five-page document is now revered as one of the greatest treasures in boxing
history, and it is going to go before the auctioneer’s gavel.
Geppi’s
Memorabilia Roadshow will auction the prized communication from one of the
sport’s absolute true legends in an event scheduled for Fall 2005.
The
letter, which is attracting interest around the world, was dictated by Johnson
to his wife, who typed it for him. He included his own handwritten notations in
his own frank and seemingly heart-felt account of throwing the fight.
The letter was sold to The Ring Magazine founder Nat Fleischer
and later acquired by Stanley Weston. It is being presented as part of a
collection of more than 1,000 incredible items, which will form the most
significant auction of boxing memorabilia in history. Most of the collection
comes from the collection of Weston (1919-2002), and his daughter, Toby Weston
Cone, who worked with her father for over 20 years documenting it.
The
26-round bout, which surprised many when it left the usually dominant Johnson on
the canvas, was the subject of documentarian Ken Burns’ Unforgivable
Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson on PBS in January 2005. Burns
was also the filmmaker behind the acclaimed mini-series Baseball, The
Civil War and Jazz.
Johnson’s celebrated and controversial
career and life, to which this letter is a vital link, was also the subject of
the Broadway play and film The Great White Hope.
He’s one of those
historical figures whose story is so quintessentially engraved in the desperate
distance between America’s promise and reality’s hard, cold edge that if he
didn’t exist literature would have to create him.
In 1908 he beat Tommy
Burns for the championship. He beat Jim Jeffries, the former champ recruited out
of retirement for the sole purpose of defeating him. His victories, his
lifestyle and his pure dominance – and the fact that he was black – enraged much
of the country, setting off race riots and eventually pitting him against the
government. He was the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the boxing
world.
Born in Galveston, Texas in 1878, Johnson was only a teenager
when he began his boxing career. He quickly rose through the ranks with win
after win, dominating opponents of all races and positioning himself for a shot
at the heavyweight title. There was a catch, though. Only whites could contend
for the Heavyweight Champion of the World.
He tried to challenge the
champion, James J. Jeffries, who was widely thought to be the greatest
heavyweight in history, but Jeffries refused to fight a black boxer. He instead
chose to retire undefeated. Jeffries retirement allowed Tommy Burns to ascend to
the championship.
After beating others, Burns consented to fight
Johnson. Johnson beat him. Jeffries was recruited out of retirement as the
“Great White Hope,” someone to defeat Johnson and put right the natural order of
things. It didn’t happen that way. In their 1910 bout, Johnson knocked him out
in the fifteenth round.
Racial upheaval followed. Interstate
transportation of boxing films was banned for fear that it would stir up trouble
when other blacks saw images of Johnson beating whites. His own relationships
with a series of white women, many of them prostitutes or former prostitutes,
antagonized his critics.
“He wouldn’t let anybody define him,” actor
James Earl Jones said in Unforgivable Blackness. Jones portrayed Johnson
successfully both on Broadway play and in the film version of The Great White
Hope.
“He was a self-defined man. And this issue of his being black
was not that relevant to him. But the issue of his being free was very
relevant,” he said.
Despite his critics, Johnson married Etta Duryea, a
white woman. He reportedly drank heavily and abused her, and she allegedly was
predisposed to depression to begin with. She killed herself in 1912. Johnson
again married a white woman, Lucille Cameron, who had been a prostitute, just
three months later.
The Mann Act, which outlawed the transportation of
women in interstate or foreign commerce “for the purpose of prostitution,
debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose,” had been passed by Congress in
1910, and it became the vehicle through which the government ratcheted up its
pursuit of the perceived troublemaker Johnson.
Through the testimony of
one of the former prostitutes, Belle Schreiber, Johnson was convicted of
violating the Mann Act in 1913. He fled the country. Then came the critical
fight in Cuba, the subject of the letter. He lost his title to Jess Willard in
Cuba and then spent time traveling in Europe.
In 1920, Johnson returned
to the U.S., surrendered to authorities and served his time in prison. Upon his
release, he boxed professionally until 1928, and then fought in exhibition
matches until 1945. Out of 114 fights, he won 80 (45 of them by knockouts). He
was never again given a shot at the heavyweight title.
