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

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As the acclaimed American filmmaker Ken Burns said in his 2006 documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson: “Johnson in many ways is an embodiment of the African-American struggle to be truly free in this country—economically, socially, and politically. He absolutely refused to play by the rules set by the white establishment, or even those of the black community. In that sense, he fought for freedom not just as a black man, but as an individual.”

His people even wrote a spiritual about him:

Amazin’ Grace, how sweet it sounds,

Jack Johnson knock Jim Jeffries down.

Jim Jeffries jump up an’ hit Jack on the chin,

An’ then Jack knock him down agin.

The Yankees hold the play,

The white man pulls the trigger,

But it make no difference what the white man say,

The world champion's still a nigger!

And white did not want black ever to have even a chance of being champion again. Some black people agreed. Pastors and kindly old community leaders preached silence. Booker T. Washington, the conservative black intellectual fountainhead of his day, reminded his brothers and sisters, “No one can do so much injury to the Negro race as the Negro himself.” Angry blacks called that just another day of slavery. And number-one black of the day, Jack Johnson, said it loudest and longest.