Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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Gibson kept chipping away at the institutionalized racism in the military, like a pesky flyweight jabbing, jabbing, jabbing. His integrity and demeanor won him friends in the right places and, slowly, views moved in the direction of fairness and equality. It was not a tectonic shift, but its subtleties would be felt for longer than any single major eruption. Gibson demonstrated then in the halls of power the mental agility he was to bring to bear in that other bear pit, professional boxing.

It was a curious battle to fight: striving to give his black brothers and sisters the right to go and be blown up for the country that denied them so many basic rights and freedoms. He received one letter from a black soldier at Camp Lee in Virginia that summarized the dilemma: “The prisoner of war gets much better treatment than we do, even when they go to the dispensary or hospital, and it is really a bearing down to our morale as we are supposed to be fighting for democracy. Yet we are treated worse than our enemies are. . . . If something isn't done quick, I am afraid a great disaster will surely come.”