The First Black Boxing Champions

This volume presents fifteen chapters of biography of African American and black champions and challengers of the early prize ring. They range from Tom Molineaux, a slave who won freedom and fame in the ring in the early 1800s; to Joe Gans, the first African American world champion; to the flamboyant Jack Johnson, deemed such a threat to white society that film of his defeat of former champion and “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries was banned across much of the country. Photographs, period drawings, cartoons, and fight posters enhance the biographies. Round-by-round coverage of select historic fights is included, as is a foreword by Hall-of-Fame boxing announcer Al Bernstein.

"Biography of Canadian-born, Boston-raised boxer George Dixon (1870-1908), the first Black world champion of any sport and the first Black world boxing champion in any division"--

Many people came to Goldfield, Nevada, America's last gold-rush town, to seek their fortune. However, on a searing summer day in September 1906, they came not to strike it rich but to watch what would become the longest boxing match of the twentieth century—between Joe Gans, the first African American boxing champion, and "Battling" Nelson, a vicious and dirty brawler. It was a match billed as the battle of the races. In The Longest Fight, the longtime Washington Post sports correspondent William Gildea tells the story of this epic match, which would stretch to forty-two rounds and last two hours and forty-eight minutes. A new rail line brought spectators from around the country, dozens of reporters came to file blow-by-blow accounts, and an entrepreneurial crew's film of the fight, shown in theaters shortly afterward, endures to this day. The Longest Fight also recounts something much greater—the longer battle that Gans fought against prejudice as the premier black athlete of his time. It is a portrait of life in black America at the turn of the twentieth century, of what it was like to be the first black athlete to successfully cross the nation's gaping racial divide. Gans was smart, witty, trim, and handsome—with one-punch knockout power and groundbreaking defensive skills—and his courage despite discrimination prefigured the strife faced by many of America's finest athletes, including Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali. Inside the ring and out, Gans took the first steps for the African American athletes who would follow, and yet his role in history was largely forgotten until now. The Longest Fight is a reminder of the damage caused by the bigotry that long outlived Gans, and the strength, courage, and will of those who fought to rise above.

Joe Gans captured the world lightweight title in 1902, becoming the first black American world title holder in any sport. Gans was a master strategist and tactician, and one of the earliest practitioners of “scientific” boxing. As a black champion reigning during the Jim Crow era, he endured physical assaults, a stolen title, bankruptcy, and numerous attempts to destroy his reputation. Four short years after successfully defending his title in the 42-round “Greatest Fight of the Century,” Joe Gans was dead of tuberculosis. This biography features original round-by-round ringside telegraph reports of his most famous and controversial fights, a complete fight history, photographs, and early newspaper drawings and cartoons.

This is the story of the lineage of Boxing's World Heavyweight Championship from 1882-1915 and how it explains a cultural attitude toward race and identity in that era. The first true national and international sports celebrities were boxers in the late 1800s. Soon after the abolishment of slavery in the United States the first World Champions of the sport were crowned. As the Champion of the World these boxing heavyweights were held on a pedestal of athletic dominance, and in the eyes of some white Americans, and many of those in the boxing community, these champions had to be white, anything else would challenge the belief of white Anglo-saxon superiority that many white Americans were clinging to at the time. It is the story of the symbol of the World Champion during that period and what it meant in society. It's also a story about a bunch of tough, bad-ass guys from over a hundred years ago that used to beat each other up.

First published in 1927, Jack Johnson’s autobiography, Jack Johnson: In the Ring and Out, remains the key source for information about his life. As he himself states in it: “I am astounded when I realize that there are few men in any period of the world’s history, who have led a more varied or intense existence than I [have].” Jack Johnson, who became the first black heavyweight boxing champion in the world in 1908, was the preeminent American sports personality of his era, a man whose success in the ring spurred a worldwide search, tinged with bigotry, for a “Great White Hope” to defeat him. Handsome, successful, and personable, Johnson was known as much for his exploits outside of the ring as for his boxing skills. He married three white women in a time when such interracial unions resulted in denunciations of him from the floor of the United States Congress. He made big money, spent it lavishly, and lived grandly. And in doing so he gained admirers and detractors all over the world and became, quite simply, one of the best known men of the early twentieth century.

Jess Willard, the "Pottawatomie Giant," won the heavyweight title in 1915 with his defeat of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion. At 6 feet, 6 inches and 240 pounds, Willard was considered unbeatable in his day. He nonetheless lost to Jack Dempsey in 1919 in one of the most brutally one-sided contests in fistic history. Willard later made an initially successful comeback but was defeated by Luis Firpo in 1923 and retired from the ring. He died in 1968, largely forgotten by the boxing public. Featuring photographs from the Willard family archives, this first full-length biography provides a detailed portrait of one of America's boxing greats.

George Dixon was the finest boxer of his generation and arguably among the finest boxers ever. His accomplishments in the ring were extraordinary: the first black boxing champion, the first Canadian boxing champion, the first boxing champion of multiple weight classes, and the first boxing champion to lose regain his title. He defended his title more than any other champion - then or since - and he reportedly fought in an unprecedented 800 bouts. Making these achievements more astonishing was the context within which these achievements were earned: George Dixon publically fought and beat hundreds of white boxers in an age when black men were routinely lynched for simply being black.Boxing historian and Ring Magazine founder Nat Fleischer once said of Dixon, "For his ounces and inches, there never was a lad his equal. Even in the light of the achievements of John L. Sullivan [the first heavyweight champion in boxing, the critics of his days referred to 'Little Chocolate' [George Dixon as the greatest fighter of all time. I doubt there ever was a pugilist who was as popular during his entire career."Simply put, said Fleischer, "He had everything."Sam Austin, the larger-than-life sports editor at America's first tabloid newspaper, the Police Gazette, described George Dixon as "The Fighter Without a Flaw." Said Austin, "The fact cannot be disputed that the greatest fistic fighter, big or little, that the world has ever known is George Dixon."Still, despite his extraordinary accomplishments, effusive adulation, and spectacular riches, George Dixon died a beggar, in the alcoholic ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital - homeless, forgotten, and alone. And yet, ironically, while George Dixon was being forgotten, his story was becoming a familiar archetype - the tale of a young black man who uses his fists and wits to fight his way against unrelenting challenges to become Champion of the World. He becomes famous, rich, and loved by all. But then he overreaches. He lives the life of the "sport" - he gambles, carouses, and drinks - until he stays in the ring one fight too many.And he loses it all.But George Dixon's story is singularly different. George Dixon followed no one. And for this reason, his story - his triumphs and tragedies as well as his rise and fall - transcends cliché.So who was George Dixon? And what motivated this genuinely modest man, born in Africville, Nova Scotia, to achieve what no other black man had achieved before him? What strength of character earned him, against all odds, true greatness? And what failure of character, in the end, took that greatness away? Before Mohammad Ali and Joe Louis, before Sugar Ray Robinson and Jack Johnson, before Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, before all the great black boxing champions of every age and every weight class, there was George Dixon.He was the first.He was the greatest.And this is his story.