The Many Injustices

On 24 May 2018 Donald Trump pardoned Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing Champion of the world. Thanks to the efforts of Hollywood 'boxing' great Rocky Bilbao, errr Sylvester Stallone.

Johnson was convicted and served 10 months in prison, in 1912, for dating a white woman.

In Trump's own words 'some might consider' this sentence to be a racial injustice. This suggest that he doesn't consider the jailing of a black man for merely dating a white woman an injustice.

Johnson's sentencing is not the only injustice that occured at the time. The murder of more than twenty people over one of his victories is another.

In 1908 Johnson defeated Canadian Tommy Burns to become the first Black World Heavyweight boxing champion.

James Jeffries, at that time considered to be the greatest boxer of all time, immediately came out of retirement to fight Johnson. In his own words, "I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a negro." He was dubbed The Great White Hope who would once and for all prove the superiority of white over black.

The fight took place on 4 July 1910. Things didn't go quite as Jeffries imagined. Johnson toyed with him for much of the fight. Then in the penultimate round Jeffries was knocked down. He staggered up. He was immediately knocked out of the ring. A number of people rushed to push him back to his feet and into the ring as if to say, "get back in there and defend our race."

He was immediately knocked down a third time. Jeffries manager then jumped into the ring and stood between the boxers. As the fight was awarded to Johnson the commentator remarked that Jeffries was "the betrayer of his race."

Because of the manager's actions, Johnson's victory was classified a "technical knock out". The spin was that the white man was not actually knocked out by the black man. He had suffered a TKO because of the manager's actions. Please stop laughing.

While the fight was filmed footage was banned from being played on televisions for decades. A ban which seems to still be informally in place.

That night anti-black race riots erupted across much of America. According this article "No one knows how many died in the wake of Johnson-Jeffries fight, but records show between 11 and 26 were killed." To this date no one has been tried for those murders. Perhaps Trump might consider that an injustice. Maybe not.

The American establishment went into overdrive trying to explain away Jeffries loss and diminish Johnson victories. Jeffries was older, he had not been fighting for six years, he was out of shape were some of the justifications peddled at the time.

Mandiita Wepi

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