The Great White Hopes

by Graeme Kent

  The referee was not deceived. Sternly he called the white fighter back to the ring. When the wide-eyed innocent returned, protesting vehemently, the referee disqualified him. A riot broke out in the hall. Chairs were thrown and punches exchanged, while non-belligerents tried to push their way through to the exits. In the end the police had to be called in to restore order.

  By this time Ferguson was probably giving more trouble to his managers than he was to his opponents. Between 1904 and 1912 he is recorded as having at least four different handlers. As soon as one gave up on the wilful fighter, another could soon be found to take on the heavyweight for a percentage of his purses. Among the venal but misguided ten-per-centers associated with Ferguson during this period were Alec McLean, Johnny Mack, Carl Harris and George Little.

  The 1905 fight with Johnson sickened Ferguson of managers and the fight game for the time being. He was only 26 but he had had over fifty hard fights and was going nowhere. Temporarily he abandoned the ring. In 1906 he had only one fight and there were none in 1907. Still he was not ignored in the police reports of local and national newspapers. The Milwaukee Free Press of 4 April 1907 reported, ‘John Alexander Ferguson, known in the ring as “Sandy” Ferguson, challenger of Johnson and Jeffries, has been sentenced to four months in jail in Boston for idleness and disorderly conduct. This is the second term “Sandy” is serving in jail.’

  Between court appearances Ferguson made sporadic attempts to earn a legitimate living. Briefly he returned to Nova Scotia. On one occasion at least he secured the commendation of his skipper when, serving as a deckhand on a mackerel ship putting out of Gloucester, he was reported to be the only crew member who was not fighting drunk when returning from a bout of shore leave.

  Ferguson also revisited prison after he had been found guilty of hitting his wife on the arm with a frying pan. And in 1908 he had two bouts. True to form he selected about the hardest opponents he could find, losing in twelve rounds each to Sam Langford and Joe Jeanette.

  Then, in 1909, as the White Hope campaign got under way, Sandy Ferguson found himself in demand again. By the standards of most white heavyweights he had quite a creditable record. He had dodged no one and had fought the new world champion no fewer than five times. Responding to the rustling of dollar bills, Ferguson made a comeback. In his adopted home city of Boston he knocked out two young White Hopes, Jim Barry and Al Kubiak, and, still on his own turf, found Sam Langford in a charitable enough mood to let him go twelve soporific rounds for a drawn verdict.

  Suddenly, to his surprise, Sandy Ferguson found himself being touted in the newspapers as, along with Jim Flynn, an experienced White Hope. It was too good to last. Ferguson was too unstable to stay and consolidate his position in the States. Instead he went off for a wild old time in Paris, which was welcoming American fighters.

  The Portland Daily Advertiser of 6 May 1909 commented, ‘Another American heavyweight pugilist is on his way to England and France. This time Sandy Ferguson, the big Boston slugger, whose twelve-round bout with Sam Langford in Boston last week was called a draw, is the one in search of fame and coin on the far side of the big pond.’

  In Paris he beat and lost to Joe Jeanette, but he soon succumbed to the multifarious pleasures of the French capital and eschewed training completely. When he returned to the USA, Ferguson was wildly out of condition. This did not prevent him from accepting an offer to fight Jeanette yet again. They met at the Boston Armory Athletic Club. Their fight was a disgraceful one. The two men mauled and pushed and exchanged few clean blows. Jeanette launched the few attacks that did take place, while Ferguson hid behind a wall of crossed gloves. In the seventh round the white man’s manager quit in disgust and stormed out of the arena. In the eleventh round, the Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin reported, ‘Ferguson stalled the entire eleventh round, with the crowd yelling and hooting at his efforts to quit without deliberately lying down.’ At the end of the twelve rounds, to the fury of the crowd, which had rejected the local man because of his lack of fighting spirit, Ferguson was declared the winner. The referee, Jack Sheehan, explained lamely that, while Jeanette had landed the most punches, Ferguson’s blows had been stronger.

  The news of Ferguson’s ‘victory’, when it was announced in the newspapers, enhanced his reputation as a White Hope. There was talk of matching him yet again with Jack Johnson, should he repeat his win over Joe Jeanette. For his part, the furious Jeanette was insisting on another shot at the white man. Boston would have nothing to do with yet another meeting between the two heavyweights, but they were matched to fight again in New York.

  The return bout was another shocker. Ferguson had done no training for the bout, while Jeanette was determined to avenge the so-called defeat in their last encounter. The white fighter knew that he had no chance against an untrammelled Joe Jeanette, and gave a disgraceful exhibition.

  The New York correspondent of Boxing was scathing in his condemnation of the way in which Ferguson froze when he saw Jeanette advancing on him with a dreadful anticipatory gleam in his eye, and accused the white fighter of having done most of his training in barrooms. ‘Ferguson aspires to the championship title, but by his showing he is more fit for the occupation of cow-puncher between decks. I was told before the fight that Sandy had trained for the contest, but I could guess in two attempts just what the surroundings of his training quarters were, and the elbow-work must have been severe. “Red-hair” got cold feet in the fifth round, but his seconds forced him to continue. The merciful end came in the eighth.’

  It was the finish of Ferguson as a White Hope. He fought on, but now he was just a trial horse, cannon fodder for better-managed white heavyweights. He was beaten by Jim Barry, Porky Flynn, Tom Kennedy and even by the elderly Tony Ross. Of this last bout, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reported, ‘Sandy Ferguson, the Boston heavyweight who has frequently been accused of possessing a yellow streak, quit cold in the fifth round.’ After this Ferguson tried to redeem himself by writing a plaintive letter to the sports editor of the Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin of 12 March 1910:

  Just a few lines to let you know that I am on deck again. You can’t keep a squirrel off his perch. Some people with a lot of regard for Mr Sam Langford and Mr Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion, have been circulating reports in this neck of the woods that I am all through with the fighting game.

  Reason – both are afraid of me and would like to see me out of the way. Johnson I knocked cold in Chelsea, but he was in right and got the decision. Did he ever desire a meeting with me since? Not on his natural!

  Rich, isn’t it? I am enclosing a doctor’s certificate to prove that there is nothing to the reports.

  Hoping that you will help me to be right with the public, and thanking you in advance, I am sincerely yours,

  Sandy

  Of his last twelve bouts Ferguson lost ten, drew one and won only one. His penultimate fight, against Battling Levinsky over twelve rounds in Boston, was a stinker. Driven to distraction by Levinsky’s nullifying tactics, Ferguson bit his opponent so hard on the shoulder that Levinsky had to have stitches inserted in the wound after he had won on points. Ferguson was suspended for life. The ban was later reduced to one of six months. It was immaterial. After one more losing fight Ferguson retired. In 1919 he was shot and killed in a barroom brawl. He was 40 years old.

  The trouble with all the leading White Hopes up to 1913 was that, with the exception of Luther McCarty, none of them could string together enough successes to be considered a legitimate challenger for Jack Johnson. They kept defeating one another. Bombardier Wells defeated Tom Kennedy but lost to Al Palzer and Gunboat Smith. Palzer beat Wells, Kennedy and Fulton, but was knocked out by Luther McCarty. Porky Flynn knocked out Fred McKay and was decked in turn by Stanley Ketchel and Fred Fulton. Andre Anderson defeated Al Palzer and Boer Rodel but lost to Tom Cowler and Homer Smith. Carl Morris beat Fred Fulton and Battling Levinsky and was beaten in turn by Luther McCarty, Jim Flynn and Gunboat Smith. Smith defeated Billy Well
s and lost to Tony Ross and Jack Geyer. Jim Coffey defeated Jim Flynn and Al Reich and was knocked out in the first round by Soldier Kearns. Gunboat Smith defeated Frank Moran, Carl Morris and Arthur Pelkey but lost to Jim Coffey and the extremely faded Tony Ross.

  So the carousel went round for three or four years, with no White Hope stepping up as the logical leading contender. In the meantime the public was eager for a title fight.

  In 1912, after two years out of the ring, during which he had been living high on the hog, Jack Johnson suddenly agreed to defend his title again. He was to meet everyone’s opponent, Fireman Jim Flynn. The attention on the up-and-coming White Hopes wavered as fight fans wondered what the veteran could do.

  In the three years that had elapsed since his one-round knockout at the hands of Sam Langford, Flynn had been trudging round the fight circuit, from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, New York, Toronto and Denver, among other venues, as usual refusing to meet no one in the process. Since his manhandling by Langford, Flynn had notched up another twenty contests. He had won eleven of them and lost only one, a second knockout at the hands of Langford. All the rest had been no-decision bouts. His most recent notable contest was a ruthless demolition of the novice Carl Morris in 1911.

  Jack Curley promoted the Johnson–Flynn bout to get in on the White Hope quest. The problem was that the parsimonious Curley was trying to launch a White Hope championship challenge without a real White Hope. Fireman Jim Flynn came cheap. A lifetime of fighting for peanuts had dulled his acquisitive instinct. He was prepared to go in with Johnson for a second time in return for a pittance. This meant that Curley could afford to meet Johnson’s financial demands and put on the fight.

  As a safeguard to ensure Flynn’s cooperation, Curley also became his manager. As a result, the promoter thought he saw a lucrative chance to avoid the long drawn-out process of finding and training his own white heavyweight. Flynn came ready-made, if slightly chipped at the edges. Johnson was only too ready to have an easy fight, and signed up with surprisingly little fuss.

  Strangely enough, fight reporters did not rise to the bait. Few of the newspapers heralding the contest referred to Flynn as a White Hope. Perhaps he was too familiar and battle-scarred to justify the epithet. Or perhaps it was just too obvious that he had no chance. Concomitant with being a White Hope came the assumption that the hopeful had to have a faint chance of victory against Johnson.

  Flynn did his best to talk up the fight, but no one was paying much attention. At a press conference before the fight the Fireman went through the motions, saying that he was boxing for the honour of whites and that he had given promoter Curley permission to shoot him if he failed to defeat the champion. Johnson also did what he could to promote the bout, but as he admitted years later in his memoirs, it was difficult to find anything complimentary to say about the extremely limited challenger. ‘If he had any championship timber in him,’ wrote Johnson in lordly fashion in his autobiography, ‘I was as eager to find it out as any.’

  Curley did his best to publicise the match. Frantically he tried to make Flynn appear to have at least some sort of chance. The promoter was an ingenious man. During the lead-up to the second Gotch–Hackenschmidt wrestling match, which Curley was promoting, the Russian Lion had injured his knee so badly that he could not do any roadwork. In order to fool reporters Curley scoured the streets of Chicago until he found a 21-stone lookalike for the wrestler, and made him go for training runs through dimly lit streets at night.

  Flynn, a realist at 33 years old, did so little training for his big chance that his trainer, former middleweight champion Tommy Ryan, abandoned him in disgust, because his charge was overweight and was doing nothing about it except bullying a few untalented sparring partners.

  Johnson knew as well as anyone that he would be able to stroll through the fight for the mere $30,000 he had been guaranteed in his title defence. The champion’s main problem lay in dealing with the hate mail which descended upon him in shoals as he was going through his perfunctory preparations for the bout. One message, purporting to come from the Ku Klux Klan, informed Johnson that, if he did not lie down in the ring to his challenger, he would be lynched.

  Apart from the revolver that was fired into the air during the first round, about the only exciting thing that happened during the fight was announcer Tommy Cannon’s vain hope, expressed in the introductions, that as the occasion was being graced by the presence of several hundred ladies, the gentlemen present would moderate their language.

  Flynn’s game plan, which would explain his neglect of training, was to try to break as many rules as possible in an effort to disconcert the unbothered champion. For nine rounds he tried to butt Johnson into submission, ignoring the plaintive pleas and warnings of the referee. Unfortunately, Flynn was considerably shorter than his opponent and had to leap off the ground with both feet in order to reach the champion’s chin, allowing Johnson to take evasive action. Eventually tiring of this tactic, Johnson knocked the Fireman down with a right uppercut. A police captain hovering outside the ring stumbled in through the ropes to stop the fight. Flynn had lasted two rounds longer in his 1907 fight with Johnson.

  So poorly was Flynn regarded by fight fans that less than 5,000 people turned up at an arena intended for 17,000. Receipts for the tournament amounted to $35,000. Once Johnson and his opponent had been paid off, Jack Curley was left with a significant loss.

  A week after the Flynn fight, Johnson opened the Café de Champion, a Chicago nightclub festooned with portraits of the champion. Its sheer flamboyance further annoyed his detractors. There was a great scandal when, one night in their bedroom over the café, Johnson’s wife took a revolver belonging to her husband and fatally shot herself.

  Johnson continued to be his own man, stating simply, ‘I am not a slave . . . I have the right to choose who my mate shall be without the dictate of any man.’ It was all too much for the white establishment, and the authorities closed in on the champion.

  Johnson had been much seen in the company of his white secretary Lucille Cameron. He was arrested, after Cameron’s affronted mother laid evidence against Johnson, and charged under the newly instituted Mann White Slavery Act of taking her across the state line ‘for immoral purposes’. The Act stated that any man who crossed a state line with a woman not his wife and had sex with her was committing a criminal offence. Johnson and Cameron had occasionally travelled together from Pittsburgh to Chicago.

  In November 1912, Johnson was first brought before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a former bicycle racer and the proprietor of a roller-skating rink before he took up law as a profession. Later he became the Commissioner of Baseball in the USA. Landis presided over the federal grand jury, which charged Johnson in a second trial with violating the Mann Act with Belle Schreiber, one of the champion’s former mistresses. The Johnson trial was a useful means of obtaining publicity for the judge. Eventually the champion was allowed out on bail.

  Johnson married Lucille Cameron but could not shake off the hounds baying at his heels because of his affair with Schreiber. Evidence given at the court hearing in May 1913, before Judge George Carpenter, dealt mainly with the white women in his life. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Released on bail, Johnson fled the country with his wife, and was not to return to the USA for seven years.

  The year in which Johnson fled to Europe, 1913, was a busy time in the USA. Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as president; the outstanding Native American athlete Jim Thorpe was stripped of the gold medals he had won at the 1912 Olympics because several years before he had earned a few dollars playing semi-professional baseball; the Brooklyn Dodgers opened their new state-of-the-art stadium at Ebbets Field; while an unknown English comedian called Charlie Chaplin joined the famed Keystone film studio. The fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg was celebrated with a grand parade of the now-aged veterans of both armies. Citizens were taking to the roads in ever-increasing numbers: almost half a million
automobiles were produced in the USA in 1913. A grimmer statistic in a nation still divided by race was that 211 lynchings, almost all of them of black men, took place in the same year.

  Johnson might have gone, but he still held the title, and there was no let-up in the search for a White Hope to challenge him. And because the feared champion was safely on the other side of the Atlantic, managers could issue empty challenges to him to their hearts’ content, building up huge gates for the elimination contests in which the white heavyweights took part.

  Writing in the Ring in 1930, Billy McCarney, one of the leading managers of the time, described the widespread interest in the search for a white challenger. ‘It was back in the period between 1910 and 1915 that every overgrown small town lad who thought he had any ability was signed by big and small time managers, placed in the hands of trainers, with the dethroning of Jack Johnson as the chief objective.’

  The Flynn bout had shown that the public would not pay to see Jack Johnson in action against any old plug-ugly. The crowds wanted to see the champion in with an unsullied and attractive white newcomer who would be in with a chance against the black man.

  As it happened, there was one on the horizon.

  8

  THE COWBOY FROM DRIFTWOOD CREEK

  By 1913, Al Palzer and Luther McCarty had emerged from the pack as the two most likely prospects among the first White Hopes.

  The organisation of boxing in the USA was still haphazard. In many areas, like New York State, public bouts were still banned. Wily promoters got round this by forming private clubs, at which bouts were allowed. These were very popular, especially if the showmen could persuade their members that they were watching embryonic White Hopes in action. For those big men who could actually run up a winning streak of bouts, there were large purses to be fought for.