The Great White Hopes (13 page)

Jeffries, always a solitary, dour man, withdrew further into himself. He took to going off alone, ostensibly on fishing trips. A reporter from the
New York World
came across the ex-champion standing amid the rushing waters of a river in spate, talking morosely to himself. Displaying unexpected consideration and tact, the journalist tiptoed away.

Despite the evidence of their eyes, many reporters tipped Jeffries to win. This was reflected in the bookmakers’ odds. The contest attracted worldwide attention. Special trains to Reno were chartered from most major cities in the USA. About fifty Pullman cars stood in the station, serving as overflow sleeping accommodation for the packed hotels. Those who could not get to Reno flocked to their local telegraph offices to hear blow-by-blow accounts transmitted from the ringside. In Chicago, spectators paid to watch electronic figures on a large screen act out the movements in the ring being relayed by the telegraph operators. The wealthy railway magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt had a telegraph line erected from Reno to his Rhode Island home, allowing his guests to follow the progress of the fight.

In London, the
Daily Telegraph
report of the fight, on 5 July, stated, ‘As early as nine o’clock crowds began gathering in front of newspaper offices in Fleet Street, anxious for news of the fight. An hour later the numbers in one part alone had reached nearly a thousand, and by eleven o’clock three times as many had assembled, spreading across the street, almost from side to side.’

It was much more than a title fight. Many believed that the honour of the white race was at stake. Police authorities in a number of cities cancelled all leave for their officers. Armed deputies patrolled Reno to keep order between the races. Wilson Mizner, who had accompanied Stanley Ketchel to the fight, noted ominously, ‘A vast multitude of Negroes had come to see this fight and it was freely predicted that if Johnson won, all these Negroes would not get safely home.’

On the night before the fight, according to the testimony of his wife, Jeffries spent hours standing shivering in his nightgown at their open bedroom window, saying nothing and staring sightlessly out into the dark. Soon after the fight was over Mrs Jeffries told the
New York Times
that her husband had had to be dissuaded from withdrawing. The only cloud on Johnson’s horizon on the day of the bout was an attempt by a process server to thrust upon him a writ from the estranged George Little.

The usual crowd of ‘sports’ seen at all major contests had arrived for the event. The
New York Morning Telegraph
of 3 July reported on some of the colourful characters present. They included the Two-By-Six Kid, Oregon Jeff and Bull Con Jack. All of them were going through hard times. The reporter commented, ‘Men that to my absolute knowledge could not ask the captain what time the ship left if tickets around the world were a dime a smash seem to have arrived on the scene a little the worse for wear.’

At noon, the gates of the yellow-pine ampitheatre were opened, with fifty off-duty law-enforcement officers frisking spectators for concealed weapons in case an attempt should be made on Johnson’s life. As its members flocked in, the largely white crowd sang such hit songs of the day as ‘All Coons Look Alike to Me’, and one specially written for the contest, the oddly named ‘Jim-a-da-Jeff’:

Who give-a da Jack Jonce one-a little-a-tap?
Who make-a him take a big long nap?
Who wipe-a da Africa off-a da map?
It’s da Jim-a-da-Jeff . . .

The fight took place on a sweltering 4 July, Independence Day and thus a public holiday. At 1.30 in the afternoon both boxers entered the ring. Johnson was wearing a long dressing gown and was sheltered from the broiling sun by an acolyte carrying an umbrella. Jeffries was hustled into the ring accompanied by seven seconds. He wore an old suit over his fighting shorts and had a flat cap on his head to shield his eyes from the sun.

Rickard entered the ring knowing that the promotion was a financial success if not a sell-out. Admission had been paid by 15,760 spectators, and there were almost 700 in on complimentary tickets. The unsold seats were filled when an estimated mob of 1,500 people gatecrashed over the fence. Seats in special boxes cost fifty dollars each, ringside seats went for forty dollars, while standing room in a distant enclosure cost ten dollars. The title bout was the only fight on the bill. Exaggerated accounts circulated of the amounts the two participants were to be paid. In the end, Johnson received $145,600, while Jeffries was paid $192,066.

From the opening bell, Jeffries never had a chance. He was cut to ribbons by the jeering, ever-smiling champion. Jeffries, like Burns before him, went forward bravely, but he was meeting a wellconditioned Johnson at the top of his form. For the first twelve rounds, Johnson handled his opponent like a baby, pushing him back in the clinches and cutting his face with sharp hooks and jabs.

In the fifth round Johnson started chatting to the spectators at ringside, a sure sign that he knew that he had nothing to beat. From the first round Corbett had been shouting obscenities at the black fighter in a vain effort to distract him. Johnson merely smiled. On one occasion he bundled the hapless and dazed Jeffries to the ropes above the white-faced Corbett. ‘Where do you want me to put him, Mr Corbett?’ he enquired with a gold-toothed smile. Corbett swore again. Johnson ripped a right into Jeffries’s body that made the ex-champion groan. ‘How about that one, Jim?’ Johnson asked, gazing down enquiringly at Corbett. He returned his attention to the helpless Jeffries. ‘Come on, now, Mr Jeff, let’s see what you’ve got,’ he invited, whipping his blood-soaked glove into the other man’s face.

When the bell went for the start of the fifteenth round Jeffries had to be helped out of his stool by his depressed seconds. He staggered towards the waiting Johnson, who knocked him to the canvas with a right hand. Jeffries slid under the ropes but groggily pulled himself back to his feet. Johnson floored him again. Jeffries got up at the count of nine. The crowd was howling for Rickard to stop the fight in order to protect the white fighter from the humiliation of a knockout. The referee hesitated. Johnson grinned and moved in. Jeffries swayed, his hands at his sides, eyes blank and head lolling helplessly. A right hand exploded on his mouth and the white man went down for the third time.

He got up again but it was all over. Rickard stopped the bout, led the rubber-legged Jeffries back to his corner and returned to hoist the champion’s hand in a sign of victory. Johnson, probably tongue-in-cheek, offered to give his gloves as souvenirs to Jeffries and Corbett, but was hustled away out of danger by Sig Hart.

In his syndicated newspaper column Rex Beach summed up the views of the white spectators at the bout: ‘Today we saw a tragedy. A tremendous, crushing anticlimax has happened and we are dazed.’ The headline of the
San Francisco Chronicle
of 5 July summed it all up: ‘Johnson Wins Easily in Fifteenth Round’. Graceless as ever, Jack London commented sourly that faster, better fights could be seen every day of the year in many of the smaller clubs in the land. In his ghosted column John L. Sullivan called it a poor, one-sided fight but conceded that Johnson had fought fairly. The
Los Angeles Times
warned its few black readers grimly, ‘Do not point your nose too high. Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly.’

Nevertheless, when news of the result got out there were the longfeared race riots. On 6 July the
New York Times
announced:

Deaths from Fight Riots
In these cities fatalities resulted from fights
Occasioned by the Johnson victory at Reno:

There were other disturbances in Ohio, California and Pennsylvania. Many black people were assaulted and eventually it was estimated that some fourteen had been lynched, shot or knifed as a direct result of the big fight. In Pittsburgh, blacks ejected whites from streetcars. In Norfolk, Virginia, sailors from the naval base battled with blacks in the streets, and marines had to be called out to restore order. Future trumpet great Louis Armstrong recalled that as a 10-year-old boy he had to flee through the streets of New Orleans in order to escape a white mob which had just heard the result of the title fight.

Congress itself sought to prevent audiences witnessing the humiliation of a white fighter at the hands of a black by hastily passing a bill forbidding films of the fight to be transported from one state to another. A half-hearted attempt to get round this stipulation by placing chairs and a film projector on the United States side of the border and a gigantic screen on the Canadian side came to nothing.

The victory made Johnson rich, at least temporarily, but it finished him in the USA. He confined himself to repeating what everyone already knew, that he was the best heavyweight boxer in the world, and made no attempt to become a spokesman for his race, although black journalists and civic leaders urged him to take on this responsibility. Nevertheless, his confrontational, flamboyant personality made him a marked man. He was regarded by the white establishment, especially after the post-Reno riots, as a threat to good order throughout the land.

Overt efforts were made to bring him to heel. The following year Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia introduced a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriages. In the immediate aftermath of the Jeffries fight at least two southern white ministers advocated from the pulpit that Jack Johnson should be lynched.

The day after the fight, James J. Jeffries was interviewed by reporters as he boarded a train with his wife Frieda to return to the farm. ‘I guess it’s all my own fault,’ he said. ‘I was getting along nicely and peacefully on my alfalfa farm, but when they started calling for me, and mentioning me as the white man’s hope, I guess my pride got the better of my good judgment.’ In reply to a question from one of the writers he shook his great bruised and battered head. ‘I don’t think I could have beaten Jack Johnson at my best. I don’t think I could have beaten him in a thousand years,’ he said.

The newspapers describing the fight were universally condemnatory, even in faraway Great Britain. The
Daily Telegraph
snapped, ‘The days of the ring are over. Whatever glories it once possessed have vanished. The Reno encounter was deplorable, not only because it was disgusting but because it aggravates the coloured problem.’ The London
Daily News
sniffed, ‘The only hopeful light about the affair is the growth of the American resolve that this shall be the last.’ Even the stately
Times
delivered its own rather muddleheaded reproof: ‘If the old-fashioned, straight-forward fighting had prevailed at Reno, Jeffries would never have been knocked out.’

One significant side effect of the Reno bout was the withdrawal of James W. Coffroth as a major player in the White Hopes stakes. The promoter of the Ketchel–Johnson title fight and many other championship contests was virtually legislated out of the fight game in 1910 when the State of California, alarmed by the direction the sport was taking, banned prizefighting. Deprived of his power base, Sunny Jim abandoned promotion, apart from one brief return in the First World War. Instead he redirected his considerable energies to the profitable organisation of horse racing.

6

‘HIS CHIN BEGINS AT HIS KNEES!’

I
n the first decade of the twentieth century, sport was becoming an increasingly important adjunct to daily life in Great Britain. Its profile was raised even higher when the 1908 Olympics were held in London. The Games formed part of the Franco-British Trade Exhibition and were held at the newly constructed White City stadium, capable of housing 70,000 spectators.

From the start the Games were wreathed in controversy. The British newspapers, offended by the self-confidence displayed by some of the visitors, launched a virulent anti-American campaign. The Americans sought to prevent Tom Longboat, a Native American representing Canada, from running in the distance events, claiming that he was a professional. The Swedish wrestlers walked out of the Greco-Roman wrestling. In the final of the shot-put the English representative, James Barratt, had to withdraw when an American rival dropped the shot on his ankle. The American tug-of-war team withdrew from their match against the City of Liverpool Police, representing Britain, because the policemen were wearing boots.

The most hotly disputed event was the final of the 400 metres. Officials claimed that the three American finalists had impeded the British entry, Lieutenant Wyndham Halswelle. The judges therefore broke the tape before the leading American could breast it, and insisted that the race be rerun. The Americans refused to compete again, so Halswelle ran the final on his own.

The officials were in the news again in the marathon. This started from the royal lawn at Windsor Castle, so that Queen Mary could witness it. Subsequent marathons were run over the distance from Windsor Castle to the White City stadium, 26 miles, 385 yards. A shepherd from Capri, Dorando Pietri, entered the stadium ahead of the other runners, but collapsed from exhaustion before he could reach the finish. Officials helped him over the line but the shepherd was disqualified for not completing the course unaided.

The gold medallist at the London Olympics who attracted the most attention among the fight fraternity was the boxing heavyweight champion, an East End police constable called Albert Oldman. Managers offered him blandishments and contracts. The canny Oldman refused both. Instead he parlayed his fighting reputation into a job as a sergeant in the Ceylon police force, where he remained for years in untroubled tropical bliss. Some wondered at the policeman’s apparent lack of fistic ambition, until it was pointed out by realists that Oldman’s path to Olympic gold had consisted of knocking out his initial opponent in the opening round, securing byes due to withdrawals through injuries in the next two heats, and then in the final knocking out his second, extremely exhausted adversary almost with the first punch he threw.