By Vincent L. Hall
The “Great White Hope” made its film debut in 1970, following its success on Broadway. A film critic described the plot: “A Black champion boxer and his white female companion struggle to survive while the white boxing establishment looks for ways to knock him down.”
James Earl Jones portrayed world heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson, whose power and persona surprised White America in the early 1900s. Johnson presented a double threat to the status quo; he violated laws that forbade him white female companionship, and no one could whip his ass.
The “White establishment” marshaled a search party to promote what was to have been the “Fight of the Century.” In 1910, former undefeated heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries was lured out of retirement.
“I feel obligated to the sporting public at least to make an effort to reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race and demonstrate that a white man is king of them all,” said Jeffries.
Jeffries, who was two inches taller and 22 pounds heavier than Johnson, lost in the 15th round. He landed on his butt three times during the one-hour fight for the first time in his career.
A PBS series, Unforgivable Blackness, reveals that when the white establishment can’t get you in the field of play, they will look for other fields you may have played in.
“Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, whose reign lasted from 1908 to 1915, was also the first African American pop culture icon. He was photographed more than any other Black man of his day and, indeed, more than most white men.
He was written about more as well.
Black people during the early 20th century were hardly the subject of news in the white press unless they were the perpetrators of crime or had been lynched (usually for a crime, real or imaginary). Johnson was different—not only was he written about in Black newspapers, but he was, during his heyday, not infrequently the subject of front pages of white papers.
With public sentiment so strongly against Johnson, the government was encouraged to continue its hunt for a witness against him for a Mann Act violation. (a federal law that criminalizes the transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose.”)
They found one in Belle Schreiber, a white prostitute who had been Johnson’s girlfriend on and off for several years. The case was successfully prosecuted, and Johnson was found guilty in 1913 of violating a decidedly bad law. Despite being found guilty of a fairly minor offense, he was given the maximum penalty of a year and a day in prison.
This quest for a champion was never about the personhood of Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson’s problem was that he was whipping white men by day and whipping white women by night. Boxing was a subplot in the theater of American racism.
Thank God that the Black folks of his day understood that every attempt to put his big brawny black ass on the canvass kept Blacks in their place.
Hopefully, we will be that wise in 2023.
The “status quo” has unleashed a bevy of Great White Hopes in the past few weeks. First, Angel Reese of LSU was labeled “an f***ing idiot” for the same gesture that bought her white counterpart Caitlan Clark a crown.
The “Justins and Jill” went up the Tennessee hill to fetch a pail of justice. Instead, their Republican colleagues used the bucket of water to drown the Jordans while throwing a life raft to Jill.
But don’t get it twisted. The message they sent was corporate and not personal. It was another “Red State” manifesto devaluing Blacks.
Dred Scott is no longer a federal law, but the Red States still adhere to that ruling. “The framers of the Constitution, Justice Taney wrote, believed that Blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
New York DA Alvin Braggs has been reduced to a lawless Negro for charging Trump. Texas Governor Greg Abbott inferred that the jury that found Daniel Perry guilty of murdering a White Black Lives Matter protestor violated the White man’s sacred rights. He will issue a pardon.
But the greatest of the Great White Hope 2.0 is that you won’t stand up and fight them at the ballot box.
They lose a few bouts, but they win when it counts the most.
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, and an award-winning columnist.
