The magistrate was not impressed when Johnson’s lawyer argued that Pinder must have fallen downstairs, that he would have been injured far more severely had the champion actually struck him, that the whole thing was part of a plot to keep the Jeffries fight from taking place. Johnson was ordered to put up fifteen hundred dollars in bail and agree to return to face trial in a few weeks.
Pinder hired Abe Levy, one of Manhattan’s ablest ambulance chasers, to lodge a twenty-thousand-dollar suit for damages. But when the case finally reached general sessions court, Johnson’s accuser failed to appear. So did the two women who had been with him. The judge was convinced that Johnson’s wealth and his willingness to give up some of it to get out of trouble had had something to do with their absence, a conviction reinforced by a newspaper story that quoted the champion as having offered to bet a reporter a thousand dollars the case would never come to trial. The judge issued a bench warrant for Pinder and his female companions and jailed Johnson, who spent five hours locked up with a convicted burglar before the woman who managed the Little Savoy could get to court with five thousand dollars to bail him out.
Johnson moved on. Etta Duryea joined him for the Follies of the Day tour—weeklong engagements at Toronto, Montreal, Buffalo, and Detroit, where it took Gerard three days to find a hotel willing to accommodate the couple. While they were in Detroit, George Little told Johnson he’d found Belle Schreiber working at Madam Rowland’s sporting house on Rush Street. The champion “came and got me out of there,” Belle remembered. “I did not complain about my treatment there—it was just as good there as any other place I was at.” But she allowed him to pay off the madam, rent a room for her in another hotel, and visit her there daily without Etta’s knowledge. They were back on good terms.
That week would set the style for Johnson’s travels for months to come. He and Etta registered on the road as husband and wife and spent each night together, but with help from Sig Hart, arrangements were made for other women to be available to the champion as well, registered at other hotels and rooming houses, and subject to visits by Johnson during daylight hours. Etta was to be kept in the dark. The other women were ordered to stay away from her.
It didn’t always work. Johnson was supposed to get a week off at the end of his Detroit engagement, and hoped to go home for a rest before heading out again. But he found that Gerard, without consulting him, had “loaned” him to another producer for a grueling week of one-nighters in Michigan; worse, Gerard was to collect $2,500 for the extra week and pocket the difference between that sum and Johnson’s normal fee of $1,300. The champion chose to go along, at least for the time being, but he thought it best to send both women away before he set forth; the logistics of arranging separate overnight quarters for each of them seven nights in a row was too much even for him. Both wanted to go to Chicago: Etta to his mother’s to wait until she could rejoin him on the road, and Belle to find herself a rooming house and resume her profession until he sent for her again. Johnson took Etta to the station himself and asked Gerard to make sure Belle got on the same train without being seen. Gerard did his best, but once on board, Etta spotted Belle, the two women confronted each other, and there was a shouting match that could be heard all over the depot.
Johnson endured the week of Michigan tank towns without further incident, but when he reached the Star Theater in Milwaukee at the end of it, and was sure Gerard had been paid his $2,500, he cornered the impresario in the manager’s office and threatened to kill him if he didn’t hand over all but $250 of it. No one was going to exploit Jack Johnson if he could help it. Gerard, “seeing my life in danger,” handed him the money, then filed suit for breach of contract.
Etta rejoined Johnson for two final weeks in Minneapolis and St. Paul. There was trouble there, too. On the last day of the engagement, the taxi in which he and she were riding to the railroad station broke down in front of a saloon. Word spread that the champion and a white woman were inside, and a crowd of what the Police Gazette called “deckhands, wharf wallopers, timber jacks, mill hogs and bar flies” swarmed out to surround the cab, jeering, cursing, threatening to lynch them both. A policeman had to escort them to the depot.
Ever since Johnson’s return from Australia, white sportswriters like C. E. Van Loan had routinely scolded him for his behavior.
Johnson has become reckless and foolish. If he ever knew his place he has forgotten it. An ordinary day-laboring negro charged with some of the offenses he committed would have spent a long time in jail.
Every sporting man in the country hopes that Johnson’s penchant for getting himself pinched will not interfere with the big fight. It took a long time to get a white man—the only white man who has a chance to beat the black champion—out of his comfortable retirement, and having got Jeff hooked in, it would be a shame if anything should happen to call the whole thing off indefinitely.
Please be good, Johnson!
After July Fourth you can go as far as you like—get 10 years if you like—but at the present time three or four months in the Bastille would be fatal.
Some black papers had now begun to censure him, too. In the Indianapolis Freeman, closely allied with Booker T. Washington, a columnist who called himself “Uncle Rad Kees” compared Johnson unfavorably to his most celebrated predecessor among Negro heavyweights and charged him with doing damage to the cause of black progress.
No one ever heard of Peter Jackson creating any unusual scenes in barrooms, cafes or on public highways, neither have I ever heard of or seen any one who ever knew of his being present during such a scene. Why was it not his luck to be the colored heavyweight champion? He was surely worthy. The world knows he was willing and anxious; and Corbett, Sullivan, Fitzsimmons, and all the other big attractions of that time knew Jackson was fully capable. But no. The fact of the matter … is that Mr. Peter Jackson was too much of a gentleman. He didn’t believe in the underhand methods as adopted today, and the brazen, uncouth, notoriety attached thereto….
Johnson has shown no particular liking for the colored race…. The cold hand of the law is reaching out for Mr. Johnson … and it looks to take the leading role in his future conduct. Why shouldn’t it, when the lives, liberty and happiness of over nine million Negroes are being antagonized and jeopardized by his folly. If you don’t believe it, holler “hurray for Jack Johnson” in the hearing of any group of white men, and see how much trouble you will have….
That Jackson Johnson is a big, strong, burly, rough darkey, I’ll admit, and being champion of the world he may feel that he has a perfect right to run over, beat up, ignore and otherwise make life miserable for others, but he should not forget that Samson ruled the world with all his strength, but his love for a woman got him killed.
Johnson would not be lectured by anyone, black or white. How and with whom he chose to live his life was his own business and no one else’s. Back home in Chicago on March 31, he celebrated his thirty-second birthday with an all-day “barn dance” in the training quarters he’d built behind his mother’s house. Taxis came and went, dropping off guests, and at some point that afternoon, he and Sig Hart were inspired to drive to Michigan Avenue and see how fast two of his racing cars could go. Johnson affixed a big hand-lettered sign to the hood of his, reading, PLEASE DON’T PINCH ME TODAY. I AM NOT SPEEDING. BELIEVE ME. It didn’t work. A foot patrolman named Flynn arrested both drivers. Johnson protested that they had not been speeding; that Flynn had long been out to get him. He refused to allow the officer to get into his car for the ride to the police station. Flynn summoned a patrol wagon. A crowd gathered. “Stand back, Mr. White Officer,” Johnson said, “and let the colored people have a look at me.”
Automobiles had become part of his persona. Not only did he buy the latest, fastest models, but he made sure they were unmistakably his by having them painted blue and cream or brilliant red. When in Chicago, he sometimes parked them on the sidewalk for added conspicuousness.*
He once told a traffic judge that his c
onstant speeding was done simply for “advertising” purposes. The court was not impressed on that occasion, but a familiar tale told about him in black neighborhoods all over the country in those days suggests that his love of speed did help spread the word about Jack Johnson. The story went that Johnson was roaring down the main street of a little town in Georgia—or Virginia, or Texas, or anywhere below the Mason-Dixon Line—when a redneck policeman pulled him over.
“What’s the matter, officer,” Johnson asked.
“Boy, you’re going way too fast. I’ve got to fine you.”
“How much?”
“Fifty dollars.”
Johnson reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of hundreds, and handed one to the sheriff.
“What are you doing?” the lawman said. “I can’t make change.”
“Keep the change, officer. ’Cause I’m coming back just as fast as I went through.”†
In early April, Jim Jeffries began serious training at Rowardennan, California, deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. He was still short of breath, still had a lot of weight to lose, and seemed even more unhappy with his admirers than usual. “He growls and snarls and grumbles like an old grizzly when strangers come around,” one wrote. “He has a bear’s aversion to being disturbed—particularly when he eats. He doesn’t like to mingle much with the other animals.”
To keep his spirits up, Jeffries surrounded himself with familiar faces from his glory days: Johnson’s onetime mentor, Joe Choynski; former wrestling champion Martin “Farmer” Burns; and Bob Armstrong, a once-formidable black heavyweight who signed on to spar with Jeffries after he and Johnson quarreled over back wages he claimed the champion owed him. Two show business veterans were on hand, too: Walter Kelly, who played a drawling Virginia judge onstage, and Eddie Leonard, a longtime blackface minstrel. Their after-dinner performances, built around jokes about watermelon eating and chicken stealing, could be counted on to keep up the proper anti-Johnson atmosphere.
But the most prominent personality at Rowardennan besides Jeffries himself was Jim Corbett, hired to help Jeffries train, deal with the newspapermen he distrusted, and fuel the racial fires that Rickard and Gleason hoped would sell tickets. This last task came naturally to Corbett. “I dislike Johnson not so much because he is a negro,” he told one reporter, “but simply because I think he is one of those fresh negroes that not alone thinks he is as good as a white man but is better.”*
Sportswriters professed to be thrilled at the progress Jeffries was making. LOOKS AS FORMIDABLE AS IN CHAMPIONSHIP DAYS, said the Baltimore American. CALIFORNIAN GOES AT PUNCHING BAG WITH A VIM THAT THREATENED TO WRECK APPARATUS—ONLY A TRACE OF FAST FADING PAUNCH. Before long, the Police Gazette was reporting that “everyone” said Jeffries was now “in condition; that he is fast on his feet, that he still packs the punch, and that his eye is as good as it ever was.”
Some boxing insiders were less sanguine: the former lightweight champion Jack McAuliffe worried aloud that Jeffries was not really being challenged by his veteran sparring partners, because he already knew every move they made; if he didn’t begin working out with younger men, he wouldn’t be able to “regain his judgment of distance.” Billy Delaney, Jeffries’ former manager and longtime trainer, who had fallen out with the ex-champion when he failed to fight Bill Squires and was now eager to help Johnson defeat him, went further. Jeffries had no chance against the younger man, he said; besides, he was scared of Johnson and always had been: “The mention of Johnson’s name sends cold shivers up and down Mr. Jeffries’s spine. He never wanted any of Johnson’s game. When I was with Jeffries merely mentioning the black man’s name was like casting a pail of cold water in Jeffries’s face.” Some of Jeffries’ followers saw such talk as something like treason to the race.
On Friday April 29, a promising young boxer named Tommy McCarthy died in San Francisco from injuries received in a fight with the British featherweight Owen Moran. The tragedy couldn’t have come at a worse time for Tex Rickard. A nationwide campaign against the Johnson–Jeffries contest was already under way. Prizefighting continued to be a symbol of everything Progressive reformers deplored. It was brutal, they said, a vestige of primitive times. It was alien to small-town America; big-city immigrants dominated it, inside the ring and out. It encouraged gambling, flourished among those who frequented saloons and brothels and pool halls. And the fact that this fight would pit black against white only made matters worse. McCarthy’s death now added to the furor. Bay Area ministers called for the fight to be stopped.
Johnson, Etta, and their party arrived in San Francisco the day after McCarthy’s death and once again took over the Seal Rock House, where the champion had prepared for his bout with Stanley Ketchel. George Little and Lillian St. Clair had a room. So did Mr. and Mrs. Sig Hart; Johnson’s sparring partners, Marty Cutler and the black journeyman George “Kid” Cotton; his trainer, Barney Furey; and his friend Frank Sutton, the Pittsburgh hotelier whom Johnson had asked to oversee the kitchens.
White reporters marveled at the luxury in which the black champion was living. JOHNSON QUARTERED LIKE A FUSSY KING, said the Milwaukee Free Press on June 6. John H. Washington, Jr., the nephew of Booker T. Washington, was taken aback, too. He was sent to see Johnson by his uncle’s secretary, Emmett Jay Scott, who planned to come all the way from Tuskegee to attend the fight, provided Johnson would give him a free ticket. “When I sent my card up,” the younger Washington reported to Scott, “his wife’s maid returned and escorted me to his lovely appointed room.” He shook hands with Etta, whom he called Johnson’s white “two-thirds-of-a-better-half,” and waited while the champion, seated in an oversized morris chair, was having his massage. “It was not long before he growled, ‘Hurry up’ and you should have seen his butler step.” Johnson assured Washington that Scott would have a good seat for the fight if he came to California.
With those words, the interview was closed and we three, with Mr. Little, who had just entered the room, left, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Little going in their “red devil” down the beach. I thought they meant to set this world on fire. He and his wife and their retinue of servants occupy all of that Seal Rock Hotel, and it is magnificent, too. I saw it all, from the pavilion, where he trains, the bar, even his small garage, to his suite. But, he ruined himself when he married in the other world.
Etta was not Johnson’s problem at the moment. George Little was. In public, he and the champion still seemed close allies. They were both present for a publicity photograph at the Metropolitan Bank, where Tex Rickard posted thirty thousand dollars in two-dollar gold pieces. “Better take a good look at that gold,” Johnson told Sam Berger, “for that’s all you folks are going to see of it.” And when the two camps couldn’t seem to agree on a referee, it was Little who proposed that Tex Rickard do the job himself, even though he’d never so much as stepped inside a ring. Little reasoned that, like Hugh McIntosh before him, Rickard was likely to be evenhanded because he “couldn’t afford to do anything wrong”; he had “an interest in the pictures, if he made a mistake the pictures wouldn’t be worth a dime, but if he was on the level, they’d be worth half a million.” Both sides agreed.
But behind the scenes, Johnson and Little were growing apart. Each would offer his own version of what happened between them at Seal Rock. Both cannot have been telling the truth.
Johnson’s story was that Little’s unreasonably suspicious nature had undermined their relationship. The trouble began, he said, in the private railroad car that carried his party west from Chicago. He and Little and Sig Hart had played poker for high stakes, he said, and when Little lost fifteen hundred dollars, he accused Hart of conspiring with Johnson to cheat him and promised to get even with them both. He then became deeply jealous of Hart, seething when Johnson took him and not Little for rides in his automobile, convinced that Hart was trying to displace him as Johnson’s manager. When the two men collided at third base during a baseball game in camp, Johnson had to pull his manager off the smaller man.
Little then insisted that Hart had to go. “I told Little that if anyone went, it would be he and not [Hart],” Johnson recalled. “This was like throwing kerosene on a blaze. Little became vicious.”
Events growing out of an undisclosed injury to the champion further fueled Little’s unease. Shortly after arriving in San Francisco, Johnson slipped and fell on the stone steps of the building in which Tex Rickard had his office, twisting his back so badly that he was unable to start serious training for two weeks—thereby offering more ammunition to those already convinced that he had no intention of making a serious fight against Jeffries.* Rickard came to call several times while Johnson was recovering, concerned about the rumors and wanting to do all he could to reassure the public that the fight was on the up-and-up. “These talks,” according to Johnson, “into which Little was not invited, made him insanely jealous and he became more and more bitter. He pretended to believe that the talks between Rickard and myself concerned some crooked plan.”
For his part, Little would later claim that Johnson had all along been conspiring with Rickard and others to have him throw the fight—and cut Little out of the profits. He had Johnson followed by “gumshoes,” he said, fearing that he would lose the thousands of dollars he’d already bet on the champion. When Little finally asked his fighter point-blank if the fix was in, Johnson just smiled. Little took that as a signal to get some big money down on Jeffries.
Johnson never denied that pressure had been put on him to give up his crown, but he said it had come from Little himself; that his manager offered him ten thousand dollars to lie down in the eighth round. “Don’t you see, Jack?” Little was supposed to have said. “The pictures will be worth $100,000 more if Jeffries wins—get wise.” At first, Johnson said, he thought Little was “just feeling me out,” but when he repeated the offer, the champion responded with anger. “See here, George, there isn’t enough money in the world for me to throw this fight.” He was sure he could beat Jeffries “on the best day he ever saw,” had fought too long and too hard to give his title away. Besides, all his friends and family were betting on him. How could he let them down?
Unforgivable Blackness Page 25