“jeff, It’s Up To You!” (February 1964 | Volume: 15, Issue: 2)

“jeff, It’s Up To You!”

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Authors: Finis Farr

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February 1964 | Volume 15, Issue 2

When Jack Johnson beat Tommy Burns for the world heavyweight professional boxing championship at Sydney, Australia, on December 26, 1908, he became the first Negro to hold the highest title in boxing, with all its symbolic and economic importance. It was not a popular victory. Perhaps the white public at this period would have accepted a modest and respectable Negro as champion, but never one like Johnson. A former drifter who had seen the inside of countless jails throughout the United States, he had begun his pugilistic career fighting in barrooms and back streets. He cut a figure in international café society, was frequently drunk and in trouble for speeding in his racing car, played the bull fiddle, and made no secret of his liking for handsome blonde white women of the sort who generally travelled with boxers, jockeys, and criminals. So it was that the famous writer Jack London, covering the Burns fight for the New York Herald , ended his dispatch with the appeal that James J. Jeffries, who had retired undefeated in 1905, should “emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove the golden smile from Jack Johnson’s face. Jeff, it’s up to you!”

Thirty years old when he won the title, the Texas-born Johnson was a superb fighter—some authorities say the best who ever came along. It seemed so, after he defeated Burns, although other powerful Negroes like Sam Langford, whom he had previously beaten, might have made trouble had Jack allowed any of them a return match. But his virtuosity was now so great that he could show disrespect both to opponents and audiences in a way that set the brutal fight crowds gibbering with rage. In vain were the “White Hopes” sent against him. The burly Al Kaufman, who was taller and heavier, could do nothing. Victor McLaglen, the future movie star, was badly beaten. Capable boxers like Tony Ross, Billy Delaney, and Philadelphia Jack O’Brien were helpless against him, and the middleweight champion, Stanley Ketchel, was floored in twelve rounds. There grew up a general belief that only Jim Jeffries could put Johnson on his back. Flourishing in a thousand barrooms, the desire to see the Negro defeated at last became so intense that it focussed attention on Jeffries like the converging of the sun’s rays through a burning glass.

Born in 1875, James Jackson Jeffries had grown up in the boiler-making trade in California and turned to the ring as a young man. In 1899, after only twelve professional fights, he won the world’s heavyweight championship by knocking out Bob Fitzsimmons. When Jeffries retired six years later, he had never been knocked off his feet. After an elimination bout, which he refereed, he conferred the title on Marvin Hart, who promptly lost it to Burns. An awesome figure in retirement, Jeffries had ballooned to a weight of more than three hundred pounds, but retained his great strength, and could still break