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

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Roxborough and his partner, Julian Black, an old numbers racketeer, were as attuned to the moneymaking possibilities of their boxer as was Jacobs. They knew that, while Johnston was a roadblock, Jacobs was a conduit. What they had to overcome, however, was the ingrained resistance of white America to recognizing a black man as the best heavyweight in the world. Roxborough needed no history lessons on this subject.

The reason Louis was having trouble making his way to the top of the heavyweight pile was the legacy left by the last black champion, Jack Johnson. Jack gave the White Hope, James J. Jeffries, such a hiding in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, that few present would ever forget it.

Tex Rickard, who promoted Johnson–Jeffries, was anxious to give the bout a hint of respectability, and even asked President Taft to referee. The president said he was busy. Johnson was indisputably the best heavyweight of his time, the champion of the world since he'd ripped the title away from Tommy Burns in Sydney on December 26, 1908. They'd dragged old, white James J. off his alfalfa farm in Ohio, five years into his retirement, to “put down the uppity nigger,” this refugee from the Chitlin’ Circuit, who'd once had to be content to box his black brothers, among them the similarly gifted Sam McVey and Sam Langford, and then had left them far behind too.