Joe Gans

by Colleen Aycock

  16

  A Dream Deferred,

  a Dream Realized

  In March of 1914, the play Granny Maumee by Ridgely Torrence opened at the Lyceum Theater in New York with a white cast from the Washington Square Players. It received great reviews. In 1917 it played again at Madison Square Garden Theater with a cast from the Colored Players, and the play was met with mild applause by the New York Times critic who preferred the original cast, commenting that it wasn’t technically necessary to have black roles played by a black cast. The drama opens in an old cabin with a blind and withered black great-grandmother discussing her son’s gift to her—a bed. Under her white hair, her face bears the horrible scars she received from the flames set by a brutal gang of white thugs.

  GRANNY: W’en my Sam wuz er babe we laid on cotton sack. We didn’ have no baid, an’ w’en he little shaveh he say, “Mammy, I goin’ git you nice baid w’en I git er man.” An’ sho’ nuff, w’en he grow up he took’n do hit, an’ he mek pu’chus in de attehnoon an ’de baid come nex’ day. But at midnight betwix’ dee tuk’n bu’nt ’im.

  PEARL (her nineteen-year-old granddaughter): Now, Granny—

  GRANNY: In de black dahk dee come on ’im, de bloodyhanded mens, an’ wheah dee cotch ’im dah dee bu’nt ’im, de right man settin’ de wrong man afieh at de i’un hitchin’ pos.’

  PEARL: [Going to her.] Granny Maumee, don’t leave yo’self go that away.

  This poignant scene dramatized the conflict between white Americans who feared that blacks might infringe upon their opportunities and black Americans who wanted to make something better of their lives. How could fear of a dream for a better life in a land of promise result in such brutality? Americans have lived and died with such high regard for the flame of desire for opportunity on an equal playing field that it has shaped a national character by encouraging the underdog to reach for his dream. Yet at one time in the dark recesses of history, the torch was used in a ruthless attempt to extinguish that dream. The question that remains may never be fully answered: how could this happen?

  This was the historical context in which one young fighter dreamed of a better life in a land of opportunity, a man fighting his way to the top in the white rings at the turn of the century. No doubt Gans’ mother shared an anguish and fear similar to that of Granny Maumee every time her son stepped over the rope line and into the prize ring. Like Sam in the play, Gans’ goal, and his fear, swelled from the wellsprings of a basic need: to provide for his mother.

  It would take another decade before the black singer or the poet would come with the truth, but the great contest had begun. It would continue with Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali. One can only imagine what life would had been like if Joe Gans had lived a longer life. Jack Johnson stirred fear and prejudice in white America. But Joe Gans, through a combination of persistence and talent, overcame the racist times. Gans had a universal “every-man” appeal that eventually brought about his acceptance by white society. The Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1907, edition carried the headline “Study in Pathos is Face of Joe Gans.” An article read, “Joe Gans, the negro prize-fight champion now training at Baldwin’s Ranch, is the most genuinely interesting character in the sporting world. There is something appealing about him. To the sporting world he is merely “de champ,” a God and an idol and a dog tomorrow—if he should be licked tomorrow. But to real people, there is a curious and wistful interest surrounding him.”1 The subtitle to the headline read: “Sadness and Humility Written Large in the Features of Noted Negro Fist Expert.” While the white establishment at the time felt more comfortable with a ‘humble’ negro, it is the ‘sadness’ that is so telling in this article. Harry C. Carr observed something in Gans’ face, unlike anything that appeared before: “He is not in the least like a prizefighter. As a general thing a prize fighter is an excessively offensive person, whether he be a Jimmy Britt and attempt an intellectual pose, or a ‘rough-neck’ like Tommy Burns, and affect a valet and cane. Gans is a meek, humble mulatto with the saddest face the writer has ever seen. It is a puzzling and remarkable face.”2

  While this description of the prizefighter recalls the offensive plantation stereotypes that carried over into the age after the Civil War—stereotypes which his readers characterized as a race of either merry half-wits or sad-eyed melancholics—Carr describes Gans’ face as exhibiting a puzzling look of inquiry. He clarifies:

  The tragedy and pathos of his race and not its merriment are written in the deep eyes of Gans. His puzzled look is not the fretful peevishness of stupidity; it is the look of one who sees and wonders why. It is as if he were asking why it should be his destiny to beat men’s faces with padded gloves.... It is the face of a general or a war eagle; not of a brawler. Gans fights because he knows how to destroy, not because he is a fighter. Many people have seen Gans bitterly insulted, without resentment on his part. Bat Nelson fights because he is a pugnacious little boy and he would just as soon fight on a sidewalk. Gans could not easily be drawn into a quarrel. Down in the bottom of his heart Gans hates prize fighting. He may not know it, but he does. This in spite of the fact that he is, without doubt, the greatest expert the world has ever known in the use of the human fist.3

  That Gans, a black man, could be seen or compared to a general or a war eagle, the greatest symbol of American fighting strength, is almost unbelievable reportage during the Jim Crow era. It took courage to recognize this and even more to write about it. Carr sees through the stereotypes of the age. He paints Gans not as a “colored” fighter, but as a human being, a sensitive, thinking man, and the sportswriter elevates him to the status of a great leader of men.

  In practical terms, knowing as we do now that Gans was suffering from the white plague, we can only speculate what Gans had to deal with. Was he trying to reconcile his life with the grim reaper? Did he have some reason to feel that he could not sustain his championship form? That he was more than ever fighting in the shadow of death?

  In the play The Rider of Dreams by the same author, Ridgely Torrence, Lucy Sparrow is a washerwoman, like Gans’ mother; and Madison, her husband, has a dream, to make her a good living in a white man’s world.

  MADISON: Las’ night an’ day befo’ yistiddy night an’ night befo’ dat. I wuz layin’ groanin’, “O Lawd, how long,” an’ I heah a voice say, “Git up an’ come a-runnin’.” Looks up an’ sees a fine w’ite saddle hoss. Hoss say,

  “Ride me right an’ I’ll guide you right.”

  On I gits an’ off he goes, slick as a rancid transom car. Comes to high hill lookin’ down on de sun an’ moon. Hoss stop an’ say,

  “Brung you heah to give you noos De worl’ is youahn to pick an’ choose.”

  . . .

  Dat what de hoss say to me in my true dream ev’y night dis week an’ I’m a-goin’ to bide by hit twell de las’ er pea time. ‘Cause I’m er true dreameh an’ my mammy she wuz befo’ me.

  LUCY: What come of de hoss in de dream, Madison?

  MADISON: Dat’s all. Hoss went up in smoke an’ I come down in bed.

  LUCY: Hoss went up in smoke! No, hit went down in smoke an’ fiah.

  This metaphor of a dream gone up in smoke is an apt portrayal of the spirit-crushing shenanigans that took place in America as blacks attempted to make the transition from bondage to meaningful citizenship. The accusations of “yellowstreak” and others against black fighters can be explained as basic reactionary backlash at someone who defies the existing power structure. But while the desire for social equality would be a dream deferred for several decades, Joe Gans achieved in his lifetime the amazing accomplishment of world recognition as a champion athlete. The quiet courage displayed by Gans in doing this cannot be overstated.

  Boxing and Race in the Literary World

  Charles Dana was the first to write about the negro domination of the fistic world, stirring the simmering pot of fear in a previously white dominated sport, a sport familiar to everyone where supremacy could be challenged and wa
s unequivocally defined. In 1895, the publisher of the New York Sun wrote an editorial on the subject where he called public attention to the menace confronting the Caucasian race and warned the white pugilists to be on their guard or there would soon be no white man at the head of any division in boxing. “We are in the midst of a growing menace,” said Mr. Dana. “The black man is rapidly forging to the front ranks in athletics, especially in the field of fisticuffs. We are in the midst of a black rise against white supremacy. Just at present we are safe from the humiliation of having a black world’s champion, but we had a pretty narrow escape. What almost happened a few months ago, may happen sooner than we anticipate unless the white man perks up and follows the narrow path in his training. Less than a year ago, Peter Jackson could have whipped the world—Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Choynski, Joe Goddard, Frank P. Slavin, Peter Maher or Charley Mitchell, but today he is a human wreck and thus the white race is saved from having at the head of pugilism a Negro.”4 If black fighters could prove their supremacy in ring records, the only thing left for white writers to attack was their character or their endurance. Joe Gans would become that pugilistic lightning rod for the new century. He would refute the charge of the “yellowstreak” and prove his endurance.

  In 1938 Nat Fleischer, who received his journalism training from the New York editor Charles Dana, appears at best condescending towards blacks, and it would not be a stretch to find racism in his words. In the least, Fleischer exhibits a casual acceptance and a condoning attitude with regard to racial inequality. Of the great pioneer boxer and trainer Bill Richmond, Fleischer points out how strange and bizarre it was that a white patron had decided to “educate the negro.”5 Molineaux, Peter Jackson, George Dixon, and other great black fighters are portrayed as hopelessly debauched in Fleischer’s famous Black Dynamite.

  Another famed journalist at the turn of the century was Jack London, known best for his novel Call of the Wild. When covering the Johnson-Jeffries match in 1910, he says of Jack Johnson, “But the question of the yellowstreak is not answered for all time. Just as Johnson has never been extended, so has he never shown the yellowstreak.”6 London was, of course, a great novelist and respected boxing scribe. But for all of his verbose prose, London would not get to first base if he were writing for a fair and discerning audience. He offers no justification for the assumptions upon which he pontificates. If Jack Johnson had never shown “the yellowstreak,” then why did London devote so much ink to it, concluding his report by asking, suggestively, who will “remove that smile and silence that golden repartee?”7

  In a fit of cleverness, London later writes, “The man of iron, grim with determination, sat down in his corner. And the carefree Negro smiled and smiled.”8 He uses this expression several times in discussing Johnson, an obvious literary allusion to the villain from Hamlet who “can smile and smile, and yet be a villain.”

  From 1890 through the early part of the early 20th century, the ridiculous myth of the “yellowstreak” was espoused by white fight writers, most of whom had never stepped into the ring. In fact, boxers like Joe Gans, Sam Langford, and Sugar Ray Robinson all fought well over 100 often brutal fights against the toughest opposition, while the most vocal fighters promoting the yellowstreak myth typically fought a few bouts and then rested on their laurels. Who proved their courage and durability?

  The insistence by white fighters to “draw the color line” had its origins in a strange set of emotional and psychological fears. Part of the Southern code of honor was respect for the white woman, and laws were instituted to protect that respect. In many Southern states, for a black man to flirt with a white woman or touch her were grounds for assault. Miscegenation, where a black man impregnated a white woman, was abhorred more than death. The expression “to suffer a fate worse than death” probably did not arise from the mere physical act of sex, but from the fear that the victim would become pregnant with the child of the rapist. Hangings of blacks for rape were quite common in the Jim Crow south. Mandingo and other movies in recent history portray not a black rapist, but rather a white seductress, playing her black lover against her neglectful white husband, who of course had his own black mistress keeping him busy. The impregnation of a black woman by a white man was quite common in the time of slavery, and the offspring were often sold as slaves. But what about the offspring of the white rapist? What would become of mother and child? Consider the ending of Granny Maumee. When her sight is returned in the final scene of the play, Maumee realizes she is holding in her frail arms her great grandson, who is part white. The play is a poignant reminder of race relationships in a country that proved to be unable to come to terms with its own inhumanities by 1914. Unfortunately, for the next fifty years, the situation would become worse, not better for all.

  This drawing in the San Francisco Examiner accompanied the story of the Atlanta Race Riot in the wake of Gans’ victory at Goldfield in September 1906. The article begins, “Periodically, the whole country is horrified by news of the lynching, by hanging, shooting or burning at the stake, of negroes found guilty of attacking white women. In spite of these examples of swift retribution, often made so terror-inspiring by torture in the flames, these crimes of degraded blacks against women of the white race seem to be increasing.... The Ku Klux Klan—that ghostly organization ... saved the whites of the South from being mongrelized.”

  The “mixing of the races in the prize ring,” at the time, as John L. Sullivan put it, was but one step away from miscegenation. Gans’ win in September of 1906 against his white challenger coincided with the trumped up charges of rape of white women by black men in Atlanta. The “Fight of the Century” was only weeks before the Atlanta Riot in which 10,000 angry whites searched the city for any black faces, killing 25 people and injuring 100.

  The great paradox of the color line was that boxing, the very sport where mixing was most feared, came to lead the way toward integration not only in sport but in society as well. If a black man is the best man in the one contest where physical and mental prowess and superiority can be definitively established, how could it be logical not to grant equality elsewhere? Many social commentators of Gans’ day held the firm belief that he had done more for blacks than Booker T. Washington or any of the other theorizers of the turn of the century.

  Boxing is the most egalitarian and individualistic of sports. No one blocks for you, you don’t have to worry about your team members coming through with the big play. It is one person alone with his skills versus those of an opponent. When all the chips were counted at the end of the day a great champion could not feel as such if he had avoided the best contenders. In the third Rocky movie, the aging fighter is crushed to learn that his manager has skillfully protected him against the challenges of Clubber Lang, who had brutally mowed down the best heavyweight contenders, because he had no doubt that Rocky would be destroyed by the fearsome challenger.

  It was as if his manhood had been compromised. Rocky, as any noble champion would, immediately demanded to fight the best contender. Thus has it often occurred with a great champion. Joe Louis demanded a rematch with Schmeling even though the German was the most dangerous contender. Boxers showed the way toward equality. It did not flow so much from the pens of academics as it was begot on the pride of the gladiators. When Joe Gans paved the way for black sports champions, he also paved the way for social equality.

  The desperation of American blacks and their longing for heroes in the first half of the twentieth century is perhaps no better demonstrated than when the first victim of Georgia’s gas chamber cried out plaintively, in his dying words, “Save me, Joe Louis!” No politician, but rather a boxer, was the hope for salvation.

  Before Joe Gans’ reign as lightweight champion, no American-born black had ever held a world boxing title. There were no rich black football, baseball, or basketball stars with million-dollar endorsement deals, no mass electronic media to spread fame over the airways. Gans made his name and fame through sheer perseverance.

  Ga
ns must have known that he had, as Nat Fleischer put it, “the death germs in him” before the year 1906 had closed. Accounts of his personal life indicate that he had already taken to sleeping more and having a doctor visit him frequently. One can only surmise what drove him to continue fighting. Unlike the vociferous Ali, who let the world know in no uncertain terms his view of his own destiny, Gans left little in the way of a verbal testament for posterity.

  It was common practice for top boxers of Gans’ day to write a small piece for the newspaper after a big fight. After his second fight with Jimmy Britt in 1907, Gans wrote: “There isn’t much for me to say about the fight. My work in the ring is my statement. I don’t think that any sane man inside the gates had any doubt that I would win from Britt without any trouble, even if the bout had gone on. He didn’t put up as good a fight against me as Kid Herman did in Nevada on last New Year’s Day. I’ve no doubt that he tried and that he did his best, but I wasn’t hurt at all. I am in perfect condition and, with a little let up in my training, I will be just right for Memsic in Los Angeles later in the month. I feel sorry for Britt, but if the fight hadn’t been stopped just where it was he would have been punished pretty badly and would have been beaten by the knock-out route, as sure as I am from Baltimore.”9 Gans was an articulate, accomplished black man with a ring record that left little to attack.