Jeffries was finally persuaded to come down and “say something to the boys.”
“What are you going to do to Johnson?” one man shouted.
“Put him to sleep in three minutes. I want to tell you, my Bowery friends, that I am just as good a man as I ever was, and if I was to enter the ring with this so-called black champion today I think I could lick him with one hand tied behind my back.”
Johnson, who had tried to get Jeffries into the ring for six years without success, was understandably skeptical. The ex-champion was still overweight and undertrained, far from fighting trim, Johnson said; the announcement was probably meant simply to boom Jeffries’ vaudeville tour. “I’m faking and four-flushing am I?” Jeffries countered. “Well that fellow will eat those words when I get him in the ring.”
Johnson was himself badly out of shape—“as fat as a Jap wrestler,” he later admitted—and preoccupied. Clara Kerr had appeared again from out of nowhere, apparently eager for a piece of the big money the newspapers said her former lover was now making. Claiming she really had been his wife, she sued him for $406 she said he owed her. “I don’t know what this woman wants,” Johnson told the press. “Yes, I know her. I was never married to her.”
He paid Kerr rather than battle her in court. The champion continued to spend faster than he earned; his big purses yielded only bigger debts. The Ketchel fight was likely to sell a lot of tickets, but it would not take place until October. To earn some quick money in the meantime, he agreed to a six-round bout on May 19 with Philadelphia Jack O’Brien in O’Brien’s hometown.*
Johnson took considerable pleasure in forcing his white opponent to sign the papers for the fight in the back room of his friend Frank Sutton’s hotel and saloon on Wiley Street in the heart of Pittsburgh’s “colored district.” Making O’Brien come to him was evidence, Johnson thought, of just who was now in charge.
But on fight night at the National Athletic Club in Philadelphia, when he left the dressing room and started toward the ring, about to defend his title for the first time, it was quickly clear to Johnson that since he’d left the United States in pursuit of Tommy Burns, nothing had changed between him and the white sporting public.
Assembled were men of all walks of life. Bankers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen and the so-called common people. In fact, it was a typical gathering of Americans. As soon as I entered the ring I was greeted with a tremendous groan of hisses and cat-calls, intermingled with but a few faint cheers of my admirers. I was there to fight as best I could and although I was credited with being crooked in my dealings, my opponent O’Brien was equally guilty by his own confession. The sole reason therefore to account for the hisses & cat-calls hurled at me was my racial difference. Why should a man who is trying to do what his audience expects him to do & pays him for, be the target of vile abuse, all on account of his color of skin? Doesn’t the brute instinct of man here assert itself? Draw away the veil of civilization & you will find the human race pretty nearly equal. In science we have advanced wonderfully, but morally precious little if at all. We should all cultivate the sense of fair play.
I did not train for that battle because I knew that I could whip 6 O’Briens.
In fact, he couldn’t decisively whip even one of them that night. He seemed slow as well as thick in the middle. (Some suggested he was hungover, too.) O’Brien was so much lighter than Johnson that he was forced to his knees three times when the champion leaned on him, but he also managed to dart in and out of harm’s way, landing jabs and body punches that had little effect but thrilled the hometown crowd and would have scored points with ringside judges if Philadelphia’s no-decision rule had permitted them.
The newspaper consensus was that Johnson was lucky to get away with a draw. Certainly, his lackluster performance impressed no one. JACK JOHNSON WILL NEVER DO, said the May 21 Portland (Maine) Daily Advertiser, COLORED CHAMPION NOT A TARTAR. But he did earn five thousand dollars, and according to the Police Gazette, he went through most of it within forty-eight hours.
As a two-handed spender, the big black champion has John L. Sullivan, Dixon, Gans, Young, Corbett and other pugilistic spend-thrifts tied to a mast. He pulled down $5,000 as his share of the bout with O’Brien, and in two days let $4,800 of it go for two purchases.
Johnson was attracted by a fine special roadster he saw in a Philadelphia garage.
“What can this machine do?” asked Johnson.
“Make seventy-five miles an hour,” returned the salesman.
“That’s my speed,” replied Johnson. “You’re on.”
Then the big negro pulled out three $1,000 bills…. He lost no time in getting into it and sped away from the garage, leaving the salesman astounded….
The day before Johnson purchased a big diamond for $1,800 and as he let a number of $20 bills go for less expensive articles the fighter virtually has none of the $5,000 left which he received from Promoter Edwards of the National A.C. on the day of the bout. That’s going some.
He would go some all summer. Fast cars had become his passion. “My mind is constantly on automobiles,” he once said. He loved everything about them: their power and speed, the noise they made, the sensation he caused simply by driving down a country road, the proud black owner of a vehicle that was the envy even of wealthy whites. Above all, he loved the freedom automobiles afforded him to go where he pleased when he pleased with whom he pleased—and at his own pace. There were fewer than half a million cars in the United States in 1909; by year’s end, Jack Johnson would own five of them.
He drove his new Chalmers Detroit Runabout to New York, then telephoned Belle Schreiber to join him at Barron Wilkins’ Little Savoy, where he introduced her for the first time as his wife. She traveled with him on an automobile trip through New England. In Boston he was fined for speeding, the first of scores of traffic arrests he would amass over the next thirty-five years, some made because he really was driving too fast and some simply because he was driving a car some policeman thought only a white man should own.
At the automobile racetrack at Readville, Massachusetts, on June 17, a friend of Johnson’s—“an actress,” Belle Schreiber remembered—snapped a picture of the two of them in Johnson’s car that caused a stir when it later appeared in a Boston paper with the caption “Jack Johnson and his pretty white wife.” One witness recalled that Mrs. Johnson had been “very much painted.”
Broke again, in June Johnson fought another Pennsylvania six-rounder—in Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens this time, against Antonio Rossilano, a stocky Italian American who fought as Tony Ross. Ross was felled for a count of nine in the first round, and in the last deliberately fell to escape a Johnson right hand, but he was still standing at the bell. Johnson again seemed listless.
He and Belle then returned to the Midwest, where they divided their time between George Little’s home on the southern edge of the vice district, and a rented cottage at Cedar Point, Indiana, a tawdry summer resort twenty-five miles from Chicago favored by residents of the Levee. His trainer, Barney Furey, and Yank Kenny, a sparring partner, went to Cedar Point with him so he could do a little desultory training, but mostly Johnson just enjoyed himself with friends. George Little came along, too, with Lillian St. Clair, who, like Belle Schreiber, had worked for the Everleigh sisters and now sometimes traveled as “Mrs. Little.” Roy Jones, the Negro proprietor of a Dearborn Street café, was in residence, as well, with his white companion Victoria Shaw, one of the district’s best-known madams; so were an indeterminate number of what one newspaper called “Chicago girls,” including three of the other women who had left the Everleigh Club with Belle Schreiber after Johnson came to call: Virginia Bond, “Jew Bertha” Morrison, and Bessie Wallace. Late one evening, Johnson and another summer visitor named Moriaraty decided to race their cars. Several women got in with Moriaraty. The champion’s forty-horsepower car was in the lead when something caused him to put on the brakes. His rival slammed into him from behind. One of Moriaraty’s passenger
s was seriously hurt. Johnson’s car was smashed; he was covered with blood but suffered no permanent injury.
A couple of weeks later, driving through Woodstock, Ontario, on his way back from an exhibition in Toronto, he was fined fifty-five dollars for leaving the scene of another accident. In Windsor two days later, he was arrested for speeding and fined again. “It’s getting so they just take me now on sight,” Johnson said as he forked over thirty-five dollars from a fat bankroll. “No matter what speed I may be making they just gather me in and fine me. It is far more expensive to me than traveling over railroads, but I enjoy it. And they can fine me till they’re as black as I am for all I care.” When a reporter told him he’d heard a rumor that he’d hit a child in Woodstock, Johnson laughed it off; the only Canadian child he ever ran over, he said, was Tommy Burns.
That year, an interviewer would ask him what would happen if something went wrong with his automobile while he was racing along the road. His answer was as close as he ever came to explaining the way he lived his life:
“If” and “suppose”—two small words, but nobody has ever been able to explain them…. One man falls out of bed and is killed. Another falls from a fifty-foot scaffold and lives. One man gets shot in the leg and is killed. Another gets a bullet in his brain and lives…. I always take a chance on my pleasures.
By the time Jim Jeffries began a weeklong engagement at the Wonderland Amusement Park in Minneapolis in mid-July, he had been on tour for seven months, and most people who had paid to see him in action had been awed by his size and speed, his strength, and his apparent skill. But George A. Barton, a young Minnesota sportswriter hired to referee the evening sparring sessions between Jeffries and Sam Berger, privately drew a different conclusion:
In all these appearances, Berger feigned grogginess when Jeff nailed him on the side of the head with punches which I was positive lacked power. I had also noted while dining with Jeffries and Berger … that Jeff indulged in a generous shot of whiskey before eating. When he ate in a public dining room, the whiskey was served in a cup so that guests at nearby tables would think the former champion was having beef consommé instead of liquor.
Still, plans for the big fight were going forward, and when Jeffries held a final press conference in New York before sailing for Europe on August 4, he seemed his old, confident self. “Someone asked Jeff if he were sore at Johnson,” reported the Chicago American.
Jeff has an interesting way of looking at you, wide-eyed and silent, when he is studying out the answer to a question. Just looks at you, you know. And the questioner shrivels and dries up under the long contemplation. “Well,” he finally decided. “I’m not going to say, ‘I’m pleased to meet you’ when we get in the ring.”
Everyone has read of Jeff’s magnificent condition but it still comes as rather a surprise to see what a big whale of a man he has become, now that he has rid himself of that pantry. Lots of other people weigh 280 pounds—mostly cutlets. But Jeff weighs that mostly in bone and muscle right now. His wrists are as thick and hairy as a government mule’s leg. His eyes are clear and bright, and his skin smooth as he moves around like a dancing master. And in the best possible humor. He laughs and talks like a big, good-natured boy until he gets down to a discussion of Jacques Johnson, Esq., the large colored gent…. He doesn’t laugh then. He doesn’t grit his teeth or roll his eyes, or do any terrifying stunts…. His face just hardens slowly.
“That nigger can never lick me,” he said as dispassionately as though he were discussing the chances of fussing between two strangers.
“Did you ever see him fight? Well, I have—two or three times. He stands flat-footed as a washerwoman. Let me tell you no man on earth who stands flat-footed can ever lick me. They’ve got to get up on their toes to do that. The man who stands flat-footed in the ring is licked before he ties on a glove, if the other man is anything near his equal.”
Now, that may sound like boasting. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. It was given as the calm and well-considered statement of a man who has made pugilism a business, and in that business has made a success. Jeffries seemed to weigh himself and Johnson in his mental balance and to find Johnson very much wanting. He paused and thought for a moment before he continued.
“Then, Johnson has only one punch,” said he. “That is it.” He illustrated by a slight movement of his hand. His big hand didn’t travel half a dozen inches, but it made the idea clear. “I have 400 punches and every one of them better than his best. I can hit anywhere from anywhere. Short or long range, from the hip or the shoulder or anywhere else. I have two hands. He has one. I can send ’em in from away off, or pound ’em in with two inches play. Johnson can’t.”*
A week later, with Jeffries and his wife at sea, Johnson and George Little met with Sam Berger in the offices of the New York American to sign articles for the fight. Reporters were invited in to watch. Everyone expected Little to do most of the talking: boxers, especially black boxers, were not expected to do their own negotiating. But Little confined his remarks to an occasional whispered aside. Johnson was clearly in charge. When Berger told him he should leave business matters to the white man, Johnson shot back that since he was going do the fighting, he would attend to business matters as well. He wouldn’t be dictated to by anyone; after all, he was the heavyweight champion of the world.
“How did you ever get the title?” Berger asked with a sneer.
“By whipping Tommy Burns,” answered the black fellow. “Jeffries gave the title to Hart, and Burns whipped Hart, then I took it away from him…. That’s how I got it.”
“That’s a lie,” said Berger. “Jeffries never gave the title to anyone. He still is champion. Why, Hart got the decision over you and that should have eliminated you entirely.”
“Everybody knows how I was robbed of that decision,” said Johnson. “Sam, you ought to be ashamed of yourself as a man to even bring that fight into argument. Besides, you know that Jeffries lost his claim to the championship when he refused to fight me.”
To which Berger replied: “But you were not even considered in the championship class then…. Why, [lightweight] Battling Nelson might as well claim the heavyweight championship if he should challenge Jeffries and Jeff refuses to fight.”
Johnson then said that he had fought his way up to his present place in the fighting world, and that he did not propose to allow Jeffries to have everything his own way.
“Did you ever whip a man like Fitzsimmons, or Sharkey, or Corbett, or Ruhlin, or any of the others from whom Jeffries won and then go back and do the same thing over again?” asked Berger. “You’ve been fighting men like Burns [and] Hart …”
“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Johnson. “I’ll bet you $1,000 that I am the recognized champion and we’ll go down the street and ask the first hundred men we meet who is the heavyweight champion of the world, and the majority opinion will rule.”
Berger did not take the bet, and the two men got down to business. They finally agreed that Johnson and Jeffries would fight “a certain number of rounds”—anywhere from twenty to one hundred—before the club that offered them the best “inducements.”
The give-and-take between the white manager and the black champion had been remarkably evenhanded, wrote Edward Smith, the veteran referee and sporting editor of the Chicago American.
There was skill on both sides, Berger perhaps being the keener in placing his thrusts, this trait being accentuated by the fact that Johnson did not speak so quickly or so often as the man with the pale skin. But what the colored man said was much to the point and pithy…. He really was the surprise of the meeting and several of the sports writers who were present and never got this close, first-hand view of the champion with his dander up were astonished at his wit and brightness.*
Back in Chicago on Saturday evening, August 14, Booker T. Washington was scheduled to speak at Quinn Chapel. It was the friendliest possible territory for him: the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the city, Quinn
Chapel was a bulwark of middle-class black gradualism and, the Baltimore Afro-American reported, every pew was filled with well-dressed black men and women eager to hear him exhort “the men of his race to be clean and strong.” As the pastor finished his fulsome introduction and Washington stepped into the pulpit to begin his address, someone spotted the heavyweight champion seated at the back. “Cries of ‘Jack Johnson’ were heard from all parts of the room until a delegation was sent to escort him to a front seat,” the Afro-American continued. “He marched down the aisle amid a storm of applause, bowed to the orator from Tuskegee and was recognized with a smile, but declined to take a seat on the platform.” The two men, the paper said, were the “intellectual and physical giants of the race” and “more than two thousand Negroes cheered them until they were tired.” Washington’s smile was broad but forced; he was not accustomed to sharing the spotlight with anyone else, especially someone like Jack Johnson, whose showy style of living he had tried without success to change. After Washington finished his remarks, the pastor called for the collection plate to be passed to help relieve the church’s debt. Washington put fifteen dollars into the plate. The champion came up with ten.
In September, Johnson returned to California, the scene of his first important victories. George Little came with him on the train. So did Hattie McClay, now back in his good graces and traveling as Mrs. Johnson. But soon after he and she had settled into their rooms above Webb’s saloon in the black section of Oakland, he sent money to Belle Schreiber asking her to come west as well. She rented a room at the Athens Hotel as “Mrs. Jack Leslie,” and over the next few weeks Johnson moved back and forth between the two women as the mood suited.
Unforgivable Blackness Page 21