by Graeme Kent
However, when a proposal was put forward to match Siki against the British heavyweight champion in London in the same year, the Home Office stepped in and forbade the bout from taking place. The Sporting Chronicle of 10 November 1922 passed on the official government line, saying that white men should not fight coloured boxers because their temperaments were incompatible, and that under the prevailing conditions in the British Empire it was against the national interest for whites to fight blacks in case passions should be aroused.
Ironically, in 1923 Siki then fought a six-round exhibition contest in Quebec with the ex-champion Jack Johnson, who was in the throes of an unsuccessful comeback. By this time Johnson himself was on the chitlin’ circuit and was finally taking on other black boxers for peanuts. Battling Siki made his home in New York, neglected his training and in 1925 was murdered in a street brawl.
It was not until 1934, when a sensational young black amateur heavyweight called Joe Louis Barrow, whose ring name was Joe Louis, turned professional, that the thoughts of the white establishment began to turn to the prospect of a black fighter challenging for the world title.
Louis was carefully handled by an all-black team. His managers were John Roxborough and Julian Black, while he was trained by the former lightweight Jack Blackburn. At first the latter refused to coach Louis, saying that it would be a waste of time even trying to bring a black heavyweight along. Blackburn had sparred with Jack Johnson in his heyday and had not enjoyed the experience. He believed that the champion’s behaviour had ruined the chances of any other black heavyweight being given an opportunity. It was not until Blackburn was offered $35 a week that he joined the entourage.
Louis’s first professional bouts were so sensational that even white promoters began to take an interest in him. Veteran Jimmy Johnston, who briefly had taken over promoting boxing at Madison Square Garden after the death of Tex Rickard, contacted Louis’s managers and offered to get him fights in New York, as long as Louis realised that as a black boxer he would occasionally have to lose bouts to order.
John Roxborough refused the offer. The manager believed that Louis’s fighting record would take him into the big time, as long as the heavyweight’s behaviour allayed the fears of white spectators. To that end, Roxborough concentrated on building up Louis’s reputation as quiet, introverted and non-threatening, except in the ring. As a public-relations exercise he even issued a list of rules, which he claimed Joe Louis would adhere to at all times. His fighter would never: have his picture taken with white women; enter a nightclub alone; participate in soft or fixed fights; denigrate or gloat over an opponent. But he would always remain impassive before the cameras; live and box in a clean manner.
Joe Louis’s backers also took good care to keep him away from Jack Johnson and the emotional luggage that the former champion brought with him. The self-absorbed Johnson had never been regarded as a leader of the advance of black rights, even at the peak of his fame, and years later when he tried to approach Louis at the latter’s training camp the former champion was turned away.
Roxborough’s careful guidance worked. Louis won fight after fight, with only one loss on the way to his championship bid. On 22 June 1937, Joe Louis won the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World by knocking out the holder James J. Braddock in eight rounds in Chicago. He retained the crown for thirteen years, until his defeat by another black fighter, Ezzard Charles, on 27 September 1950.
Joe Louis’s long reign as champion was untroubled by scandal. The uncontroversial black fighter’s shy, deadpan disposition and willingness to fight all challengers won the hearts of boxing followers everywhere and paved the way for the many black heavyweight champions who followed him. Before Louis, there had only been one black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. Since his retirement from the ring, almost thirty black heavyweights have won one version or another of the world heavyweight title, and no other White Hope campaign has ever been launched.
In Great Britain matters took longer to adjust. It was not until 1947 that the British Boxing Board of Control withdrew its colour ban, following a statement by the colonial secretary of the then Socialist government, representing the views of a country in which black and white citizens had fought side by side throughout the Second World War, that he regarded the bar as completely unjustified.
In the following year Dick Turpin, the son of a father from British Guiana (now Guyana) and an English mother, who had served in the war in the British Army, won the British middleweight title by outpointing Vince Hawkins over fifteen rounds at the Aston Villa football ground. For the rest of the century he was followed by dozens of British-born black fighters who went on to win British and in some cases world championships.
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Court Transcript
State of Minnesota, County of Otter Tail, District Court Seventh Judicial District, the State of Minnesota vs Henry Palzer, 26 July, 1917, at the town of Gorman.
