With the possibility of world war on the horizon, U.S. officials worried that Japan and Germany were allying with Mexico and courting the support of African Americans in a bid to attack them from the south. Rumors of such an alliance had already been circulating in the black community. In condemning the persistence of virulent white racism in South Carolina, a Defender report warned of a transnational and multiracial coalition against the United States. Its headline declared, “While Government and Southern States Were Making Ways and Means to ‘Keep the Nigger Down' Japan Has Placed Fifty Shiploads of Guns and Munitions of War in Mexico and [President Victoriano] Huerta Now Defies the American Government to Show Her Hand—Japan with Mexico and the Philippines Allied with the Hawaiians Are Planning to Trounce Uncle Sam Soundly.”117
By 1915 rumors of an imminent colored uprising on the U.S.-Mexico border had surfaced. The Plan de San Diego, so named for its suspected origins in a Texas town of the same name, offered a frightening example of what could happen if discontented men of color on both sides of the border united in opposition to their white American oppressors. According to the plan, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans would take over the Texas border region, declare their independence from the United States, and then invade the rest of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Wyoming. The plan also included provisions for the annexation of six more states for the formation of an independent African American republic, along with the repatriation of stolen lands to the Apache Indians. Most disturbingly, it called for the extermination of all white American males above the age of sixteen. A transnational Liberating Army of Races and Peoples, comprised of Mexican-Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Japanese, would execute the plan, fighting under a red and white flag emblazoned with the words “Equality and Independence.”118 Even though the plan's provenance was unknown and its authenticity questionable, its vision of cross-border, multiracial resistance offered a harrowing prediction of what people of color could accomplish if they worked together.
Still, when the United States entered World War I in 1917, it remained dependent on black soldiers to secure the border. There was no guarantee that this gamble would continue to pay off. Alongside the Bolshevik Revolution and the flowering of black radicalism, public displays of black protest in the United States were reaching new heights. U.S. officials also worried that German agents were targeting both Mexicans and African Americans with racially charged anti-American propaganda. In 1918 a confidential government report described a black American soapbox orator in New York City who was advising black soldiers to kill their white officers. The report warned that this idea “once planted might well bear fruit on more than one foreign battlefield.”119
Disaffected after years of persecution, Johnson also seemed to be shifting to a more concrete platform of colored solidarity, and he remained a target of U.S. military intelligence. An informant who claimed to have befriended Johnson reported, “I can positively assert that he has sent money and written articles to aid the Negroes in their struggle in the United States. He makes collections among the Negroes and their sympathizers.” The informant even claimed that Johnson had “tried to go to the Antilles, especially Cuba, to foment a rebellion among the Negroes.” These were exaggerations, although the black heavyweight had become much more deliberate in his critique of white supremacy, adding to white American fears about the various political instabilities in their own backyard. Though not a strict “Socialist,” Johnson called himself a “DEFENDER OF HIS RACE.”120
Amid all this uncertainty Johnson arrived in Mexico City by train on 26 March 1919. Similar to the black troops who tried to navigate the complicated maze of interracial and international relations in the border region, Johnson held an ambiguous position in Mexico. On the one hand, he became a conduit of U.S. commercial culture. Johnson's visit helped to expand the reach of U.S.-style boxing (and its cultural products) from the border towns to cities across the nation. Mexican newspapers began to report on matches in the United States, while U.S. boxers (black and white) streamed into Mexico for exhibitions and fights.121 On the other hand, Johnson emerged as a symbol of anti-Americanism in the eyes of his Mexican supporters. As Mexicans endeavored to define their own way forward in the shadow of their more powerful neighbor to the north, Johnson's racial conflicts with white Americans provided a rallying point for independence and national pride.
Johnson's legendary fame as the former world heavyweight champion, his audacious personality, and his flashy style made him an instant hero with local sports fans, particularly the fashionably dressed and gender-bending young men known as the Fifi.122 A crowd of more than two thousand people gave him a rousing ovation at the train station, complete with bullfight music and the “unanimous cry” of “Viva Johnson.” Even little children greeted him with shouts of “Bravo Jack!”123 A journalist for El Universal declared, “Jack Johnson is now the talk of the day.” With his arrival, everyday conversations came to revolve around “exotic” words like “punch, upper cutt [sic], heavy weight class, pesos de pluma [featherweights], rounds etc. etc.”124
Johnson's first match in Mexico City was against a white American former soldier who fought under the name Captain Bob Roper. Johnson's public training sessions drew many Mexican spectators, helping to initiate them in the pugilistic arts of shadowboxing and bag punching. Some even brought their English phrase books to Johnson's workouts in an effort to converse with him.125 The Johnson-Roper fight took place at the Plaza de Toros on 22 June 1919. In some respects the match embodied Mexico's progress as it marked the shift away from the “backward” Spanish tradition of bullfighting to the more “civilized” U.S. sport of boxing. While the fight proved to be a flagrant physical mismatch, garnering cries of disappointment from the crowd, it also served to educate Mexicans in the basics of modern pugilism. Many of the advertisements and prefight articles in El Universal and El Demócrata had included the Marquess of Queensberry rules for the benefit of local spectators.126
In addition to adopting U.S. sporting culture, some Mexican fans unfortunately seemed to be appropriating white American racism as well. One black American journalist wrote, “Jack played with his opponent [Roper] and the copper colored Mexicans, who are just as predudiced [sic] against dark-skinned colored people as any other race, hooted and jeered the black American, who, as of old, came back strong and aroused their ire.”127 White American newspapers were more than happy to note that Mexicans were giving Johnson a hard time. The government of the Federal District requested that municipal authorities refuse to grant licenses for Johnson's boxing matches. Other reports maintained that Johnson was in trouble with Mexican officials because he failed to honor his contracts. They apparently planned to deport him for his defiance of police authority and disorderly conduct.128
The black American press mostly countered this disparaging news. “Anyone who thinks Jack Johnson…is down and out should take a trip to Mexico City, where the Negro fighter is living like a king in one of the palatial residences of the Mexican capital,” a journalist for the Louisville News charged.129 Johnson's home was reportedly something of a social center. He had managed to ingratiate himself with several generals and high-ranking Mexican authorities, becoming their official boxing instructor. He also had a gym in the house of General Alfred Breceda, a local power broker who owned one of best residences in the capital. The journalist maintained that Johnson “is still looked upon as a champion by the Mexicans, attracts attention on the streets, and has access to all places of business and amusements.” Johnson even befriended President Carranza, who attended his ring exhibitions, and the two shared wide-ranging conversations. Carranza “was greatly interested in world politics and in the future relations between his country and the United States,” Johnson later recalled. “He questioned me concerning my experiences in Europe and drew from me my views on international politics.”130
Johnson's most famous run-ins were with white American expatriates. As he challenged their segregationist se
nsibilities he not only gained Mexican support but also garnered the praise of black Americans back home. His difficulties highlighted the intrinsic connection between both groups' experiences of racial discrimination at the hands of white Americans.
In April 1919 Johnson's troubles in a U.S.-owned restaurant named The House of Tiles provoked a public scandal.131 The restaurant's proprietor, Walter Sanborn, a white American expatriate formerly of Los Angeles, California, refused to serve the black boxer. One Mexican journalist drew a parallel between Sanborn's racist actions and the white American backlash in the wake of Johnson's victory over Jim Jeffries. The journalist maintained that Johnson had become accustomed to eating wherever he liked in Mexico and therefore felt entitled to fight back when Sanborn denied him service. Although Johnson initially left and went to another restaurant, he returned three hours later with three Mexican generals, two colonels, and several more men in tow.
When Johnson and his party sat at a table, Sanborn's staff waited on all of them except the black American. One of the generals confronted Sanborn, arguing that in Mexico, unlike in the United States, there was no difference between blacks and whites. Mexican laws protected everyone equally, Mexicans and foreigners alike. Still, the white American owner remained obstinate. “You are in Mexico, not in the United States!” one of the colonels exclaimed. “Here there are no color differences, here everyone is equal!” The other two generals then drew their pistols, instructing Sanborn that Mexico was “not a white man's country” and that he must serve everyone “regardless of color.”132
A big and boisterous mob gathered outside the restaurant, shouting, “Viva Johnson, viva Mexico!” The police later arrived to keep the peace, and in front of the crowd Johnson declared, “I am a negro, Mr. Sanborn, my skin is black, but I have a whiter heart than you.” The spectators followed his defiant statement with more shouts of “Viva Johnson!” One of the generals then threatened to close Sanborn's restaurant, while another threatened him with physical harm. Even a lawyer in the restaurant raised his cane to strike Sanborn. The American proprietor eventually bowed to Mexican pressure, shook Johnson's hand, and served him ice cream. One report claimed that Sanborn was forced to close his restaurant when Mexican officials revoked his license.133
For Johnson's black American fans, not only did such stories present a perfect opportunity to critique white American racism, but they also provided instructive moments about the potential for transnational racial solidarity. To help explain the difference between Mexico and Jim Crow America, a correspondent for the Chicago Defender described a confrontation between Johnson and a visiting white American named D. H. Moore of the New Orleans chamber of commerce. Moore and his delegation had entered a restaurant in Mexico City just four days after the incident at Sanborn's. Upon seeing Johnson, Moore declared that “no [nigger] could eat with white people in the South where he came from.”134 Johnson apparently overheard the comment and hit Moore with an uppercut. Despite Johnson's violent reaction, Mexican police reportedly refused to arrest him, for he “was in a country where the color of a man's skin” was “no bar to him receiving justice.” As this incident seemed to prove, “in Mexico no man can insult another on account of his color or creed and get away with it.”135
U.S. authorities worried that Johnson was using his platform in Mexico to stir up trouble for Washington on both sides of the border. A State Department official warned the U.S. embassy in Mexico, “It has been reported that Jack Johnson…has been spreading social equality propaganda among the Negroes in Mexico and has been endeavouring to incite colored element in this country.”136 He called upon the embassy to report back on all of Johnson's subversive activities and propaganda. Things back home had already turned violent during the Red Summer of race riots in 1919. Black radicals also increasingly questioned the validity of U.S. intervention in Mexico. A writer for the socialist Messenger wondered why black troops continued to risk their lives protecting the property of “American oil owners, copper mine investors and ranch owners” while the U.S. government did nothing to stop the lynching and burning of black people.137 Black Americans who went against the Mexican people were simply enabling the spread of Jim Crow values. Rather than continuing to fight on behalf of U.S. capital, black Americans could seek out a better life in Mexico.
Johnson became the new figurehead of Mexican settlement. “He is the promoter of one of the largest land corporations in Mexico,” a Defender report boasted. “Through this concern hundreds of men from the southern states are settling here.”138 During a meeting at the Mexican National Sporting Club, Johnson maintained, “Brazil may have its opportunities, but there are far better ones here in this city. I believe this to be the best place in the world for our peo-ple.”139 Advertisements for Johnson's Land Company appeared in the Messenger and other black newspapers:
COLORED PEOPLE
You, who are lynched, tortured, mobbed, persecuted and discriminated against in the boasted ‘Land of Liberty,' the United States,
OWN A HOME IN MEXICO
Where one man is as good as another, and it is not your nationality that counts, but simply you.140
Who better than Johnson to pitch such a scheme? He was the most famous black American exile, pushed out of the United States because he dared to challenge the racial status quo. The advertisements declared, “Rich, fertile land only a few miles from Mexico City…is now on sale for $5.00 an acre and up.” In addition to rich soil, a pleasant climate, and beautiful scenery, Mexico offered African Americans the promise of a prosperous modern life. They could enjoy “practically every advantage obtainable in improved suburban sections of the United States…excellent roads…telephone lines; electric lights; and numerous trolley lines.” “Best of all,” the ads claimed, “there is no ‘race prejudice' in Mexico, and severe punishment is meted out to those who discriminate against a man because of his color or race.”
Johnson's land venture, coupled with rising black protest in the Southwest and black migration to Mexico, was alarming enough to catch the attention of the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Investigation in 1919. They closely followed the military intelligence reports of Captain W. M. Hanson of the Texas Rangers. “Over the entire south…particularly Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas[,] there are spread secret societies of Negroes for the purpose of aggressive action against the whites,” Hanson warned in one missive. Spurred on by Johnson's defiant stance, returning African American soldiers were “fostering this society” and procuring arms “in great numbers.”141 In another report Hanson stated, “Twenty [negroes] were counted at the theatre in Mexico City one night. They are publicly in favor of riots in the United States and are conferring with many Carrancista generals in Mexico City, with a view, supposedly, of assisting the Carrancistas in case of trouble with the United States.”142 He cautioned, “It is an open secret in Mexico City that Carranza is working with labor organizations through [Samuel] Gompers and others, and with the protestant churches…to further propaganda in the United States.” Moreover, moving pictures featuring a well-dressed Johnson stating that he was a member of Mexico City's best clubs had been shown in San Antonio, fanning the flames of local black discontent.143
Although not involved in any subversive political plot, the poet Langston Hughes was part of this larger movement of black Americans south of the border. Right around the time that U.S. officials were tracking Johnson, the teenaged Hughes traveled to Mexico to visit his father. Langston recalled that his father had gone to Cuba and then to Mexico, “where a colored man could get ahead and make money quicker.” Unable to gain admittance to the bar in the U.S. South, James Hughes had become a lawyer in Mexico. South of the border James's brown skin was actually advantageous, since the locals preferred him over the gringos. His color not only saved him from having to flee during the revolution but also helped him to land the job of general manager at a U.S.-owned electric light company. He wanted his son to become an engineer in order to cash in on Mexico's mining industry. Langs
ton, however, had other plans.144
Although some black Americans like James Hughes were most concerned with getting their own piece of the Mexican pie, others sought to build alliances with Mexican radicals. In August 1919 an informant spotted Johnson in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, accompanied by the Carrancista generals Juan Perez and Manuel Mijares, who were believed to be supporting the black heavyweight with funds.145 Johnson still appeared to be fostering anti-American solidarity between blacks and Mexicans. A U.S. spy in Mexico's Socialist Party reported that Johnson had given a speech to a crowd in front of Nuevo Laredo's Vega Hotel in which he “said that when and if the gringos invaded Mexico, American blacks would stand alongside their Mexican brothers.”146 Charles H. Boynton, executive director of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico, warned the Department of Justice, “Some time ago Johnson gave an exhibition in Nuevo-Laredo and about 20 negroes from different parts of the United States were there to meet him.”147 Boynton suspected that Carranza was using Johnson to spread propaganda to black communities in the United States. He also believed that several African American musicians were involved. To calm Boynton's fears, John Suter of the Department of Justice assured him that Johnson was “receiving appropriate attention” from Washington officials.148
Johnson's subversive influence even seemed poised to spread beyond Mexico and its citizens. In February 1920 a U.S. official in Panama wrote to the attorney general warning of Johnson's possible visit to the Isthmus of Panama, the site of the strategic canal.149 That same month, when Johnson headed north to Tijuana, a group of Yaqui Indians hijacked his train in Sonora. However, they stopped after discovering the black heavyweight was on board. “I was surprised to find that they did know who I was,” Johnson recollected. “Leaders of the band were profuse in their apologies for molesting the train,” and the black American fugitive “mingled freely with the Yaquis” until they allowed the train to depart.150 No wonder U.S. officials worried about Johnson's growing celebrity across Latin America.
Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner Page 31
