Jack Johnson: The First Boxing Superstar
“I’m Jack Johnson. Heavyweight champion of the world.
I’m black. They never let me forget it.
I’m black all right! I’ll never let them forget it!”
After being born in and living through the entirety of the Jim Crow era, ‘The Galveston Giant’ was never going to enjoy the luxury of a peaceful life. Fortunately for him, his charismatic persona, movie-star good looks and fearsome fighting skills meant his legacy would never fade away. This is Jack Johnson, and this is the story of the man who shook up the world.
If the likes of John L. Sullivan and James J. Jefferies (who Johnson would go on to demolish across 15 rounds) had been the first stars of boxing, Johnson was undeniably the first bona-fide superstar. But his story of course, does not start there.
This story begins in 1878, Galveston, Texas. Johnson was one of the middle children in a family of 9. His parents were blue-collar, hard-working folk, along with being former slaves. However, in the working-class city of Galveston, Johnson was only aware of his immediate surroundings, where everyone seemed to be poor, regardless of colour. This would form Johnson’s early beliefs on race and desegregation and inevitably lead to Johnson breaking the well-established barriers facing black boxers of that era.
