July 4, 1910: Johnson vs. Jeffries

July 4, 1910: A fight is held for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It would be years before sportswriter A.J. Liebling labeled boxing "the sweet science." There was nothing sweet about the proceedings here, and the fight itself would be the least ugly thing about them.

On December 26, 1908, at Sydney Stadium in Sydney, Australia, Jack Johnson, a 30-year-old black man from Texas, known as the Galveston Giant, knocked out Canadian fighter Tommy Burns to become the 1st black man to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World. (Johnson wasn't really a giant: He was 6 feet even, but a solid 200 pounds at his peak fighting condition.)

It was what we would now call a technical knockout: It was stopped after the 14th round, because Burns, considerably lighter and possibly ill with the flu, was totally outmatched.

Ironically, Burns might well be totally forgotten today had he won the fight. After all, who remembers who he beat for the title? (It was Marvin Hart.)

This "conquest of the white man," and his flamboyant lifestyle, made Johnson the most hated man in America. Even many black people hated him, for making them look bad. He didn't care: He was still going to be Jack Johnson.

So America's white establishment looked for a "Great White Hope" who could beat Johnson. Four times in 1909, a fighter was put up against Johnson:

* Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, the Light Heavyweight Champion, fought him in his hometown of Miami. I mean, Philadelphia. (Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.) It was a draw, but O'Brien didn't want a rematch.

* Tony Ross fought him in Pittsburgh, and Johnson beat him.

* Al Kaufman fought him in San Francisco, and Johnson beat him.

* Stanley Ketchel, the Middleweight Champion, a vicious fighter known as the Michigan Assassin, made a deal with Johnson, the same deal that O'Brien had made with him: They would fight to a draw, and thus split the proceeds from the film rights. It was a good plan. Except Ketchel got greedy, for the title and the money, and knocked Johnson down. All that did was make Johnson mad, and he not only knocked Ketchel out, he knocked out a bunch of his teeth. The film of the fight is clear enough to see Johnson brushing Ketchel's teeth out of his glove.

Now, the search for a Great White Hope became truly intense. Novelist Jack London, tapping into the racism of the time, had a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and used it to address Jim Jeffries, who had been Heavyweight Champion from 1899 to 1904, and retired undefeated to an alfalfa farm outside Los Angeles. London wrote, "Jeff, it's up to you."

Boxing promoter George "Tex" Rickard promised him $75,000 -- about $2.2 million in 2022 money -- regardless of the result. It took Rickard a while to find a location willing to host the fight, and Reno, Nevada set it up for the 4th of July, 1910. A ring was built in an open field, and a temporary stadium was built around it.

Johnson was willing to fight Jeffries. Having waited so long for his shot at the title, he knew he had no right to duck anybody. And he was sure he would win -- if the fight was on the level. So he told Rickard that the referee had to be someone that both fighters could trust.

Rickard wrote to the President of the United States, William Howard Taft. Before becoming the heaviest President ever, 355 pounds, Taft had been a catcher at Yale. And, on April 14 of that year, he had become the 1st President to throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day of the baseball season. So he was a known sports fan. But he turned the opportunity down, partly because it would be poor form for the President to do such a thing, and partly due to practical reasons: It would have meant a 4-day train ride from Washington, and another 4 days back.

Dr. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was in Reno, interested in seeing the fight. Rickard asked him to officiate. Before either fighter could consider whether he was trustworthy, Conan Doyle turned Rickard down as well. So Rickard decided that only one man could be trusted by both Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries: Himself. He can be seen on the film, as the 3rd man in the ring, wearing a hat, a straw boater in the popular style of the time.

Jeffries had gotten fat in his retirement. He went on a crash diet and exercise program, and actually got back down to his usual fighting weight. But losing so much weight so soon weakened him. And it was the middle of the desert in western Nevada. Jeffries was used to California heat, but not this kind of heat, and the South Texas native Johnson was used to it. And Johnson was in peak physical condition.

So the fight was a mismatch. It was scheduled for a maximum of 45 rounds, which sounds brutal for the modern era, where the norm became 15, and eventually 12 by the 1980s. Jeffries hung on for 12 rounds, but in the 13th, Johnson did what (it was said -- the records may be wrong) no other fighter had ever done: He knocked Jeffries down. Jeffries got up. He shouldn't have, because Johnson knocked him out in the 15th.

Former Heavyweight Champions John L. Sullivan (reigned 1882-92) and Jim Corbett (1892-97) were in attendance. Both were asked to report on the fight for newspapers. Both men's reports were typically racist for the time. And yet, both men admitted that Johnson was the better fighter. Jeffries himself admitted that, on his best day, he never could have beaten Johnson -- and this was far from his best day.

Without the Internet, television, or even radio, it was the telegraph that spread word of the fight around the nation. Black people launched great celebrations. White people, humiliated and angry, accepting Jeffries' defeat as their own loss, launched attacks on black people, and there were riots in New York, Philadelphia, Johnson's adopted hometown of Chicago, and many other cities. At least 20 deaths are attributable to these riots.

On October 15, 1910, 3 months after the Johnson-Jeffries fight, Ketchel was shot and killed in Springfield, Missouri, by the husband of the woman he was seeing. He was only 24 years old.

In 1912, Johnson was arrested for violating the Mann Act, which forbade "transporting women across State lines for immoral purposes." The woman in question was Lucille Cameron. Contrary to what is often reported, Cameron was not already Johnson's wife, which would have made the charge impossible to prove in court -- not that an all-white jury would have cared. But she refused to cooperate, and soon married Johnson.

In 1913, Johnson was arrested on the Mann Act again. This time, in a Chicago courtroom presided over by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, later to become the 1st Commissioner of Baseball and the perpetuator of the sport's "color line," Johnson was convicted by an all-white jury, and sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

He skipped bail, and escaped first to Canada, then to France. Having only defended his title once since the Jeffries fight, he could now only do so abroad. On December 19, 1913, in Paris, in the 1st-ever Heavyweight Championship fight between 2 black men, he may have recognized the significance, and held back a little, as he fought Battling Jim Johnson (no relation) to a rather lackluster draw. In 1914, he defeated Frank Moran in Paris. In early 1915, he knocked Jack Murray out in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Finally, it all caught up with him. Jess Willard, a 6-foot-6 Kansan, became the latest "Great White Hope." On April 5, 1915, at Oriental Park, a horse racing track in Havana, Cuba, in a fight scheduled for 45 rounds, and held in heat even worse than in Reno 4 years earlier, perhaps he finally got tired of being Jack Johnson, and threw the fight. Or maybe, at 37, the oldest Heavyweight Champion ever (and he would remain so until Jersey Joe Walcott in 1951), he just wasn't in shape anymore. Willard knocked him out in the 26th round.

Jack and Lucille Johnson continued to live abroad. Finally, on July 20, 1920, Jack crossed the border from Mexico to America, and surrendered to federal agents. He was taken to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas (with some irony, in Willard's home State), and began serving his sentence. He was released early, on July 9, 1921.

Lucille was the 3rd of what turned out to be 4 wives for Jack Johnson. Only the 1st was black. On June 10, 1946, he was driving on U.S. Route 1 near Franklinton, North Carolina, when he crashed into a telegraph pole, and died. He was 68 years old.

His last wife, Irene Pineau, said of him, "I loved him because of his courage. He faced the world unafraid. There wasn't anybody or anything he feared."

Rickard's status as boxing's greatest promoter grew, until, when the 2nd Madison Square Garden was closed in 1925, he could afford to build the 3rd, what later became known as "the Old Garden." He planned to build 6 copies around the country, but only finished 1, which became known as the Boston Garden, before he died in 1929.

Jeffries went back to his farm, never fought again, and lived until 1953. Burns lasted until 1955. Willard successfully defended his title once, and was destroyed by Jack Dempsey in his 2nd defense. He died in 1968.

That same year, Howard Sackler's play The Great White Hope made its Broadway premiere. James Earl Jones became a star playing Jack Jefferson, a barely-disguised version of Johnson, right down to the shaved head. Jane Alexander played the character's white wife, both enjoying her husband's fame and struggling with its downside.

They reprised their roles in the 1970 film version, which seems to suggest that Johnson lost the title simply because his fight with the U.S. government had taken his fighting spirit away from him -- if not coming right out and saying he threw the Willard fight.

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July 4, 1910 was a Monday. Gloria Stuart, an actress who peaked in the 1930s, was restored to prominence in the 1997 film Titanic, and lived to be 100, was born on this day.

Baseball was the only sport at the time that was both professional and with enough stature to be called "major league," and was the only one of what would become known as North America's "Big Four" sports in season, anyway. Being a major holiday, baseball teams tried to make as much money from gate receipts as they could, so many of them scheduled doubleheaders:

* The New York Highlanders, who would become the Yankees in 1913, split with the Philadelphia Athletics, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. New York won the opener, 7-3. Ray Fisher outpitched Jimmy Dygert. The A's won the nightcap, 8-1. Jack Coombs outpitched Russ Ford (no relation to Whitey).

This being the so-called Dead Ball Era, a time when most ballparks had distant fences to left field and center field (though sometimes short ones to right field), it should surprise no one that, in 18 innings of play, no home runs were hit.

The Highlanders finished 2nd that season, but a distant 2nd, as Connie Mack's Athletics went on to beat the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. This began a string of 4 American League Pennants in 5 seasons.

* The New York Giants swept their arch-rivals, the Brooklyn Superbas, at the Polo Grounds. The Giants won the 1st game 6-5 in 13 innings. Nap Rucker went the distance for Brooklyn, while Christy Mathewson pitched the last 5 innings for John McGraw. The Giants won the 2nd game much more comfortably, 12-1.

Then named for a renowned circus troupe, Hanlon's Superbas, because they had once been managed by Ned Hanlon, the Brooklyn team would be renamed the next season, becoming the Dodgers.

* The Philadelphia Phillies swept the Boston Doves at the South End Grounds in Boston. The Phils won the 1st game, 4-3 in 10 innings; and the 2nd game, 6-5. The Boston team was then named for their owner, George Dovey. In 1912, they became the Braves.

* The Boston Red Sox swept the Washington Senators at Boundary Field in Washington. They won the 1st game, 3-2 in 14 innings; and the 2nd game, 6-3.

* A doubleheader was split at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 5-2. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 7-2.

* A doubleheader was split at League Park in Cleveland. The Detroit Tigers won the 1st game, 3-1. The Cleveland Naps won the 2nd game, 5-3. Once manager and 2nd baseman Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie left the team in 1914, the Naps were renamed the Cleveland Indians.

* The Chicago White Sox swept the St. Louis Browns at Comiskey Park in Chicago. They won the 1st game, 5-3; and won the 2nd game, 7-4.

* And a doubleheader was split at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals won the 1st game, 8-3. The Cincinnati Reds won the 2nd game, 6-4.