The Boxers and Their Legacy

In class, we watched the documentary, “Unforgivable blackness” which talked about Jack Johnson, who was an African American Boxer from the early ’90s. He operated in a period in time where Segregation didn’t exist, but Black people were still not free. All his career, Jack Johnson was portrayed poorly by all the publications that wrote about him. Artworks such as “The Dinge” and “The Ethiopian” showed him and as an animal. This was indicative of the racist opinions that were held by American society at the time. However, in the face of all this, he became the heavyweight champion of the world. Johnson was a perfect example of someone who opened the eyes of white people around the nation.

Similarly, the documentary, “The Fight” talks about Joe Louis. He was a rising star of the heavyweight division and an African American, which led to obvious comparisons to Jack Johnson. Louis was an adversary with Max Schmeling, a German boxer who challenged Joe Louis. Although Schmeling was a German Nazi and Louis, an African American, through their sport they became great friends. Schmelling even helped pay for Louis’ funeral.

At the time, the United States was an extremely segregated nation. Through the sport of boxing, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis were able to show a divided nation how similar the two races really were. Both these boxers set a precedent for what black people in society were capable of. In goes to show how underappreciated the influence of sport is in American ideology.