87. “The Aftermath of the Great Johnson and Jeffries Fight at Reno, Nevada,” Broad Ax, 16 July 1910.
88. All quotations in this paragraph and the next are from “How Scotland Received the Results of the Fight,” Indianapolis Freeman, 6 August 1910. Throughout the 1910s Leo Daniels was a frequent correspondent for the Freeman, providing readers with updates on the state of European race relations. He later became the secretary of a local black political organization called the African Races Association of Glasgow. Jacqueline Jenkinson, “Black Sailors on Red Clydeside: Rioting, Reactionary Trade Unionism and Conflicting Notions of ‘Britishness’ Following the First World War,” Twentieth Century British History 19, no. 1 (2008): 53.
89. John D. Clair, “Praise for Champion Johnson from Far-Off Cuba,” Indianapolis Freeman, 21 May 1910.
90. John D. Clair, “How Cuba Rejoiced Over Jack Johnson's Victory,” Indianapolis Freeman, 6 August 1910.
91. Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 3, 162.
92. “From the Far Off Philippines,” Chicago Defender, 20 August 1912; “$101,000 Purse for the Fight Is Now Up,” Manila Times, 4 July 1910; Gems, Athletic Crusade, 56; Paul Kramer, Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 298.
93. Gems, Athletic Crusade, 50, 53-54.
94. “A través de siete días,” Renacimiento Filipino, 11 July 1910.
95. Quotations in this paragraph and the next are from Pedro Quinto, “El bofeton de Reno,” Renacimiento Filipino, 11 July 1910.
96. “The Physical Strength of Indians,” Abhyudaya, 2 October 1910. Also see Satadru Sen, “Schools, Athletes and Confrontation: The Student Body in Colonial India,” in Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post-Colonial India, ed. Satadru Sen and James H. Mills (London: Anthem, 2004), 70-72. Unless otherwise noted, all Indian quotations are taken from articles compiled in the microfilm collection of Indian Newspaper Reports, c1868-1942 from the British Library, London (Adam Matthew Publications).
97. Arya Prakásh, 10 July 1910; Kesari, 12 July 1910.
98. “The White's Antipathy to the Black and the Colour Line,” Gujaráti Punch, 31 July 1910; Arya Prakásh, 10 July 1910.
99. Arya Prakásh, 10 July 1910; Bhála, 18 July 1910.
100. Indian Spectator, 16 July 1910.
101. “Blacks and Whites,” Hitvarta, 14 July 1910. Also see “Whites v. Blacks,” Daily Hitavadi, 8 July 1910.
102. Bhála, 18 July 1910.
103. Gujaráti, 10 July 1910.
104. “Fistiana: The Great Battle,” Sunday Times, 10 July 1910.
105. “Jeffries-Johnson,” Cape Times, 4 July 1910.
106. “A Letter for Home: Sports, Sales, and Society,” Sunday Times, 10 July 1910.
107. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 210.
108. Quoted in Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 144. Thanks to Andrew Offen-burger for sharing this reference with me.
109. “Transition Stage,” Times of Natal, 9 July 1910. In 1906 the Zulus revolted against British rule in Natal. Unfair practices of colonial taxation had sparked the armed uprising. Sean Redding, “A Blood-Stained Tax: Poll Tax and the Bambatha Rebellion in South Africa,” African Studies Review 43, no. 2 (2000): 29-54.
110. “Native Affairs Department,” Times of Natal, 9 July 1910.
111. James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 112-13; Zine Magubane, “Mines, Minstrels, and Masculinity: Race, Class, Gender, and the Formation of the South African Working Class, 1870-1900,” Journal of Men's Studies 10, no. 3 (2002): 283-84.
112. Campbell, Songs of Zion, 126-27, 139-40.
113. Ibid., 127-28, 131. Also see Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last ‘Darky’: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 146-47.
114. Quoted in Veit Erlmann, “'A Feeling of Prejudice': Orpheus M. Mc-Adoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers in South Africa, 1890-1898,” Journal of South African Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 344.
115. “Demoralisation.”
116. “Bioscope Pictures of the Fight,” Rand Daily Mail, 6 July 1910.
117. “Effects of Reno Fight: A Natal Indian's Views,” Times of Natal, 8 July 1910.
118. “White, Black and Coloured,” Times of Natal, 8 July 1910.
119. “The Kaffir House Boy,” Sunday Times, 10 July 1910. Also see “Nothing to Joke About,” Transvaal Critic, 20 October 1911; “White Servants for Black,” Transvaal Critic, 24 December 1908.
120. Martin H. Wilmot, “The Prize Fight,” Rand Daily Mail, 14 July 1910.
121. “The Kaffir House Boy.”
122. Magubane, “Of Mines, Minstrels, and Masculinity,” 279-80; Zine Magubane, “The Boundaries of Blackness: African American Culture and the Making of a Black Public Sphere in Colonial South Africa,” in Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings, ed. Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann (New York: Routledge, 2009), 227.
123. Gradeley, “Jim Jeffries—The Outdoor Man.” White colonials in India also defended white Americans' repressive response to the fight and its moving picture. See “The Fight Films.”
124. Yorick Gradeley, “The Great Fight—And After,” Health & Strength, 16 July 1910.
125. Ibid.
126. Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 124-25, 12933, 214-16, 226.
127. Quotations in this paragraph are taken from “Is the Black Man Our Brother?” Health & Strength, 30 July 1910.
128. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1911) was a famed black British composer, while Charles Peace (1832-79) was a notorious English murderer and thief.
129. “'Health & Strength' Debating Club: The Black Man in Natal,” Health & Strength, 29 October 1910.
130. “'Health & Strength' Debating Club: What South Africans Think of the Blacks,” Health & Strength, 3 December 1910.
131. Streible, Fight Pictures, 235-37; “Observations by Our Man about Town,” Moving Picture World, 6 August 1910; “Show Fight Films in Chicago,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 5 August 1910; “Will Show Fight Films on River,” Washington Post, 10 September 1910.
132. “Les Films interdits,” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 13 July 1910. Although the French press had paid close attention to the violent aftermath of the interracial fight, no editorials or protests emerged in opposition to the moving picture.
133. “Le Film du match Jeffries-Johnson,” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 16 November 1910; “Le Film Jeffries-Johnson,” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 11 January 1911.
134. Streible, Fight Pictures, 237; F. H. Lucas, “Parisian News and Notes,” Boxing, 20 August 1910; R. Rufenacht, “La Boxe à l'étranger—en Allemagne, à Berlin: Le film Jeffries-Johnson,” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 8 February 1911; “Berlin Sees Fight Films,” New York Times, 17 September 1911; “Berlin to See Fight Films,” New York Times, 16 December 1911.
135. George M. Johnson, “The Recent Big Fight as London Papers See It,” Indianapolis Freeman, 6 August 1910.
136. Times quoted in ibid.
CHAPTER 3. JACK JOHNSON VERSUS JOHN BULL
The second epigraph on p. 101 is from “Johnson-Wells Match: Action by Earl's Court Freeholders,” Times, 25 September 1911.
1. Sylvester Russell, “Jack Johnson in London,” Chicago Defender, 17 June 1911.
2. Johnson's insistence on traveling first class had caused much consternation in the white American dailies. See “Johnson Departs with Glad Rags,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 5 June 1911; “Johnson in Liner Knockout,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 6 June 1911; “Champion Sails Fi
rst-Class,” Washington Post, 6 June 1911; “Gems Light His Cabin,” Washington Post, 8 June 1911. His defiance on the high seas also became legendary among black Americans, inspiring “The Titanic,” a popular song by the blues artist Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) that gave a fictional account of Johnson being turned away from the infamous ship of the same name.
3. Russell, “Jack Johnson in London.”
4. “The ‘Fight,’” Daily Chronicle, 28 September 1911. In a reversal of the usual trend in compensation, £6,000 (approximately $30,000) would go to the African American Johnson and only £2,000 (around $10,000) to the Englishman Wells—win, lose, or draw.
5. Bernard Porter, The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-1995, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1996), 84-101, 234-35.
6. “Stop the Fight,” Daily Chronicle, 20 September 1911.
7. Times quoted in George M. Johnson, “The Recent Big Fight as London Papers See It,” Indianapolis Freeman, 6 August 1910.
8. On the importance of the U.S. “negro problem” in shaping British discussions of race and democracy, see Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 49-74.
9. “Johnson-Wells Fight: Heated Controversy, Strong Pulpit Denunciations,” Daily Telegraph, 18 September 1911.
10. Jeffrey Green, “Boxing and the ‘Colour Question’ in Edwardian Britain: The ‘White Problem’ of 1911,” International Journal of the History of Sport 5, no. 1 (1988): 119.
11. “Johnson-Wells Fight: Heated Controversy, Strong Pulpit Denunciations.”
12. “Jack Johnson's Ruse,” New York Times, 27 August 1911.
13. “Afro-American Cullings,” Savannah Tribune, 17 June 1911; “Afro-American Cullings,” Cleveland Gazette, 17 June 1911. Both newspapers reprinted this article from the New York Amsterdam News.
14. Booker T. Washington, “Atlanta Compromise Speech,” 1895.
15. Later published as a book, this series of articles was ghostwritten by white sociologist Robert E. Park, who had accompanied Washington on his European tour. Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912).
16. Ibid., 34-35.
17. “Afro-American Cullings,” Savannah Tribune. Washington's remarks fell in line with contemporary discourses about the supposedly superior living conditions of colonial subjects versus those of Europe's working-class population. European politicians often used this rhetoric to convince their national governments to develop more programs for their own poverty-stricken citizens. For example, John Burns, the first working-class man to rise to the British Cabinet, made similar comparisons between the slums of London and the west coast of Africa. Washington, Man Farthest Down, 361-62.
18. Washington, Man Farthest Down, 81.
19. “Doings of the Race,” Cleveland Gazette, 1 July 1911.
20. Russell, “Jack Johnson in London.” Also see “A Splendid Testimonial,” Cleveland Gazette, 7 October 1911; “Doings of the Race.” Reportedly, nine African American soldiers had also participated in the coronation parade.
21. On Johnson's vaudeville success see “Jack Has Music Hall Engagements Galore,” Indianapolis Freeman, 2 September 1911; “Johnson Is a Big Hit,” Washington Post, 9 July 1911. On the Universal Races Congress see “For a Better Understanding between Races,” Baltimore Afro-American, 24 June 1911; “The First Universal Races Congress,” Indianapolis Freeman, 2 December 1911; “Race Prejudice Being Fought by Educators,” Cleveland Gazette, 26 August 1911; “Universal Races Congress,” Cleveland Gazette, 9 September 1911.
22. “Johnson Jabs Uncle Sam,” Washington Post, 19 July 1911. For the original article see “Johnson Interviewed: His Views about America,” Dublin Evening Herald, 5 July 1911.
23. “La Caricature à l'étranger: ‘Johnson Will Be Some Noise at Coronation with Those Loud Clothes,’” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 31 May 1911.
24. “Mr. Johnson, Anglomaniac,” Washington Post, 20 July 1911.
25. “Jim Jeffries Is Home Again,” Washington Post, 12 July 1911. Jeffries had visited England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
26. “Mr. Johnson, Anglomaniac.”
27. “From Germany,” Cleveland Gazette, 9 September 1911.
28. “American and Foreign Negroes Honored in Europe,” Chicago Defender, 29 July 1911.
29. Savannah Tribune, 10 June 1911.
30. Quoted in Lester A. Walton, “In the World of Sport: Search for a ‘White Hope,’” New York Age, 21 September 1911.
31. “White Hopes,” Baltimore Afro-American, 30 September 1911; “Search for White Hope Abandoned,” Indianapolis Freeman, 1 July 1911.
32. Edgar Wallace, “From Fogopolis,” Sunday Times, 18 October 1911.
33. “Will the Championship Change Colour?” Boxing, 9 September 1911.
34. “What the Two Men Think,” Health & Strength, 7 October 1911.
35. “The Bombardier's Future,” Boxing, 26 November 1910; “The Editor's Ideas,” Boxing, 29 July 1911; “Is Wells Reckless?” Boxing, 22 July 1911; “Johnson to Fight Bombadier [sic] Wells in September,” Indianapolis Freeman, 12 August 1911.
36. Oswald Frederick Snelling, White Hope: The Story of the Jack Johnson Era (London: Pendulum Publications, 1947), 16-17.
37. See “The Search for a White Champion,” Official Tournament Program, 19 October 1910, Box 2, Sports, John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, England.
38. Most scholars have tracked Anglo-American rapprochement through foreign policy. Paul Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and United States Empires, 1880-1910,” Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (2002): 1315-53; Stuart Anderson, Race and Rapprochement: Anglo-Saxonism and Anglo-American Relations, 18951904 (East Brunswick, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1981).
39. Yorick Gradeley, “The Great Fight—And After,” Health & Strength, 16 July 1910.
40. Frank Morely, “The Search for a White Champion,” Boxing, 13 August 1910.
41. “Big London Pavilion for Important Fights,” Los Angeles Times, 21 July 1911; “Papke to Fight Sullivan,” New York Times, 5 June 1911.
42. The first match of the series occurred at King's Hall on 15 September 1910. “The Search for a White Champion,” Boxing, 17 September 1910.
43. “Boxers and Wrestlers,” New York Times, 24 January 1911.
44. Snelling, White Hope, 76.
45. “Un Espoir blanc,” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 6 September 1911; “E. Henry, l'espoir blanc du Professeur Cuny,” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 11 October 1911.
46. “Race Riot at Pittsburgh,” Globe, 5 July 1910. Although the article claims that blacks “invaded” the Russian Quarter, this seems unlikely since most of the riots stemmed from white attacks on black Americans.
47. Other white American hopes included the German-Americans Al Kaufmann, Al Palzer, and Gunboat Smith (Edward Eckblad), the Italian-American journeyman Tony Ross (Antonio Rossilano), and the Irish-Americans Jim Barry, Sandy Ferguson, and Frank Moran. Snelling, White Hope, 32, 38, 46.
48. Frank Morely, “Where Is the Man to Beat Johnson?” Boxing, 30 July 1910.
49. “Boxing Clubs Plan for a Busy Week,” New York Times, 22 May 1911; “Few White Hopes Show Up,” New York Times, 11 August 1911; “Fireman Jim Flynn Whips Carl Morris,” New York Times, 16 September 1911; “White Hopes Fizzle at Century Club,” New York Times, 5 August 1911.
50. Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (New York: Free Press, 1983), 81-84, 131-37; Geoffrey Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Knopf, 2004), 16065, 281-83.
51. Trevor Wignall, Story of Boxing (New York: Brentano's, 1924), 257.
52. “Johnson to Do Barn Storming,” Los Angeles Times, 16 July 1911; “Johnson-Bo
mbadier [sic] Wells Fight Sure to Take Place,” Indianapolis Freeman, 19 August 1911.
53. “In a Pugilistic Trust,” Washington Post, 24 July 1911.
54. “Johnson to Do Barn Storming.”
55. “Johnson-Wells Fight Picture Rights Important,” Indianapolis Freeman, 16 September 1911.
56. “Home Rush from Paris,” New York Times, 3 September 1911.
57. “The Black ‘King’ of the Pugilists,” Daily Chronicle, 21 September 1911.
58. “Mons. Jaques [sic] D'Arthur Johnson,” Boxing World and Athletic Chronicle, 28 September 1911.
59. On Johnson's resistance to training, obsession with clothes, and decadent eating habits, see “Jack Johnson, in Splendid Condition, Commences His Preparation for Bombardier Wells,” Boxing, 2 September 1911; “Jack Johnson's Sudden Alarm,” Boxing, 16 September 1911; “A Few Incidents of Johnson's Serious Preparation in Paris,” Boxing, 16 September 1911.
60. “La Caricature à l'étranger: ‘Boxing One of Most Popular Sports in France Just Now,’” La Boxe et les boxeurs, 7 June 1911.
61. Chester Mann, F. B. Meyer: Preacher, Teacher, Man of God (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), 20, 149-58.
62. Rev. F. B. Meyer, “The Dishonour of Manhood,” Health & Strength, 4 April 1908.
63. “Johnson-Wells Match: An Appeal from the Pulpit,” Times, 16 September 1911. The National Free Church Council was a breakaway association of English churches that did not conform to Anglican doctrines. They used the Wells-Johnson protest to help raise their profile on the national scene.
64. “Johnson-Wells Match: Negotiations Broken Off,” Times, 22 September 1911.
65. “Johnson-Wells Match: An Appeal from the Pulpit.”
66. “Johnson-Wells Fight: Bishop of London's Protest,” Daily Telegraph, 21 September 1911.
67. “Johnson-Wells Match: Mr. Churchill's Decision,” Times, 26 September 1911.
68. Archbishop of Canterbury to Home Secretary Winston Churchill, 16 September 1911, “ENTERTAINMENTS: Boxing. Conditions under which contests are illegal. Law Officers' Opinion. 1911,” Home Office Records 45/10487/110912, National Archives, London, England. HO (Home Office Records) and BNA (British National Archives) will be used in subsequent notes.
Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner Page 39
