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Billy Bob's TV Appearances

UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS:
THE RISE AND FALL OF JACK JOHNSON (2005)

Distributor
PBS

Director
Ken Burns

Quote
BILLY BOB (reading from the 1910 L.A. Times Editorial):  "If you have ambition for yourself or your race, you must try for something better in development than that of the mule."

Plot
(This is directly from PBS' official site.)

Jack Johnson — the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century — enters the ring once again in January 2005 when PBS airs Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a provocative new PBS documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns. The two-part film airs on PBS Monday-Tuesday January 17-18, 2005, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET.

Burns, whose past films on PBS (The Civil War, Baseball, JAZZ, etc.) are among the most-watched documentaries ever made, shows the gritty details of Johnson's life through archival footage, still photographs, and the commentary of boxing experts such as Stanley Crouch, Bert Sugar, the late George Plimpton, Jack Newfield, Randy Roberts, Gerald Early and James Earl Jones, who portrayed Johnson in the Broadway play and film based on Johnson's life, "The Great White Hope."

"Johnson in many ways is an embodiment of the African-American struggle to be truly free in this country — economically, socially and politically," said Burns. "He absolutely refused to play by the rules set by the white establishment, or even those of the black community. In that sense, he fought for freedom not just as a black man, but as an individual."

Johnson, who was born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas, began boxing as a young teenager in the Jim Crow-era South. Boxing was a relatively new sport in America, and was banned in many states. African-Americans were permitted to compete for most titles, but not for the title that whites considered their exclusive domain: Heavyweight Champion of the World. African-Americans were considered unworthy to compete for the title — not for lack of talent, but simply by virtue of not being white.

Despite this, Johnson was persistent in challenging James J. Jeffries — the heavyweight champion at the time, who was considered by many to be the greatest heavyweight in history — for a shot at the title. For 14 years, Johnson had made a name for himself as well as a considerable amount of money with his ability to beat black and white opponents with shocking ease. Jeffries, however, refused to fight a black boxer and instead decided to retire undefeated.

Then in 1908, after defeating most other white opponents, the new champion Tommy Burns agreed to fight Johnson in Australia for the unheard of sum of $30,000. In the 14th round, after beating Burns relentlessly, the fight was stopped and Johnson became the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World.

In Unforgivable Blackness, Johnson biographer Randy Roberts observes, "The press reacted [to Johnson's victory] as if Armageddon was here. That this may be the moment when it all starts to fall apart for white society."

His victory spurred a search among whites for a "great white hope" who could beat Johnson and win back the title. They finally found him in Johnson's old nemesis, Jim Jeffries, who decided to return from retirement and give Johnson the fight he had always wanted. This fight was especially important to Johnson, because many whites had dismissed his claim to the title as invalid; Burns, it was argued, was never the true champion because he didn't win the title by beating Jeffries. No one had beaten Jeffries, and most thought he was certain to reclaim the title for whites.

The Johnson-Jeffries fight, dubbed the "Battle of the Century," took place on July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada. Johnson knocked out Jeffries in the 15th round. Johnson's victory sparked a wave of nationwide race riots across in which numerous African-Americans died. Newspaper editorials warned Johnson and the black community not to be too proud. Congress eventually passed an act banning the interstate transport of fight films for fear that the images of Johnson beating his white opponents would provoke further unrest.

Perhaps even more troubling for white America than Johnson's dominance over his white opponents in the boxing ring were his romantic entanglements with white women. One of his frequent traveling companions was Hattie McClay, a white prostitute. They were later joined by Belle Schreiber, also a white prostitute whom Johnson met in Chicago. "He wouldn't let anybody define him," says James Earl Jones in Unforgivable Blackness. "He was a self-defined man. And this issue of his being black was not that relevant to him. But the issue of his being free was very relevant."

Johnson eventually married a white woman, Etta Duryea. Their relationship was troubled; Johnson drank heavily and abused her; she was a victim of chronic depression. Duryea eventually committed suicide in 1912. Three months later, Johnson married Lucille Cameron, another white woman and a former prostitute. In 1910, Congress passed the Mann Act, which outlawed the transportation of women in interstate or foreign commerce "for the purpose of prostitution, debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." While the law was intended to be used against commercialized vice, the U.S. government used it to make Jack Johnson pay for his success and his lifestyle.

In 1913, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act. His former lover, Belle Schreiber, testified against him. Even at the time it was widely thought to be a sham trial, with the prosecutor himself saying after the verdict, "This Negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted. Perhaps as an individual he was. But it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks."

Johnson fled the country and spent several years as a fugitive in Europe. In 1914 he lost his title to Jess Willard in Cuba.

In 1920, Johnson returned to the U.S., surrendered to authorities and served his time in prison. He was never again given a shot at the heavyweight title, and in 1946, after being angered by a racist incident at a diner, drove his car too fast around a turn in North Carolina and was killed.

"Johnson's story is more than the story of a tremendous athlete, or even one who broke a color line," said Ken Burns. "It is the story of a man who forced America to confront its definition of freedom, and that is an issue with which we continue to struggle."

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington, D.C. Corporate funding provided by General Motors Corporation. Additional funding provided by PBS, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and Rosalind P. Walter.

What Billy Bob Gets To Do
Billy Bob reads from venomously racist 1910 editorial that was printed in The Los Angeles Times shortly after Jack Johnson defeated white boxer James J. Jeffries.  The Times' editorial retracting its shameful 1910 stance is printed below.  Read it and weep.

Backstory
Ken Burns directed Billy Bob to read the selection as if he were holding a knife to the throat of the listener.  

What YOU Can Do
There is a campaign, spearheaded by Senator John McCain, the Joint Associations of Boxers, and the Teamsters Union to have President Bush pardon Jack Johnson for "the racially motivated 1913 conviction that diminished Johnson's athletic, cultural, and historic significance and unduly tarnished his reputation."

You can click here to sign the petition, which will be sent to your senators.

 

Relevant Links
Official Site
Joint Association of Boxers Page
 IMDb Link
PDF reprint of L.A. Times Article (zoom in to read A Word to the Black Man)

BBT on DVD
The DVD and VHS are both available from PBS in various combinations with a commemorative book.  Otherwise, you can pick it up at Best Buy and most other video retailers.

Photo credit:  © 2005 PBS

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© 2005 by . . . Like the Wind Productions/Lonesome Rogues Design. This page is intended for entertainment and reference purposes only and is not intended to make a profit.  Film commentary reflects the opinions of the webmasters Amιlie and Sage and not the opinions of Billy Bob Thornton or his representatives.

 

 
EDITORIAL
Shame on Us
Jack Johnson, the first black man to become the heavyweight champion of the world, may be this country's most famous forgotten athlete. Filmmaker Ken Burns aims to correct this memory lapse in a two-part documentary airing on PBS, Monday and Tuesday nights. "Unforgivably Black: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" is not, of course, just about boxing. Burns made that clear earlier this week when he talked to The Times editorial board, bringing with him a reminder of this paper's own past that, besides making us wince hard, helped explain the nation's collective amnesia.

A century ago, when boxing was at the height of its popularity worldwide, blacks weren't allowed to compete against whites in championship matches in the United States. But in 1908, Texas-born Arthur "Jack" Johnson vanquished the reigning world champ, a Canadian, in Sydney, Australia. The notion of a black champion prompted a frantic search for a "great white hope" to take back the title, or as Jack London wrote in the New York Herald, "to remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face." James K. Jeffries, an undefeated former world champion of the proper skin hue, was coaxed out of retirement to try. The match, held in Reno on July 4, 1910, was billed as the fight of the century. Johnson was the one left smiling.

Our predecessors on this page, like Johnson himself, rightly described the match as a contest between individuals, not races. They decried the post-fight riots that left at least 26 people, mostly African Americans, dead nationwide. End of credit. Far from rising above the sentiments of the day, an editorial on July 6, 1910, reproduced in its worst part here, expressed them all too shamefully. It reminded rioting whites that their "mental superiority … does not rest on any huge bulk of muscle, but on brain development that has weighed words and charmed the most subtle secrets from the heart of nature." A "Word to the Black Man" warned "do not point your nose too high" and intoned: "If you have ambition for yourself or your race, you must try for something better in development than that of the mule."

A Modern Myopia

It's a little too easy now to look back and denounce editorial writers from a century ago. Likewise, it's all too expedient to put both time and geographical distance between ourselves and the murder charges filed in Mississippi last week for one of the most infamous crimes of the civil rights era.

It took the 1964 search teams 44 days to find the bodies of voter-registration activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, who were executed and buried 15 feet beneath an earthen dam. It took the state 40 years to bring murder charges against the now-79-year-old preacher alleged to have been the local Ku Klux Klan mastermind behind the atrocity.

Ah, yes, the South. So gothic, so racist, so not Los Angeles or Chicago or New York. That negative image was conveniently reinforced at last week's arraignment when the preacher's 63-year-old brother knocked a cameraman to the ground and a bomb threat emptied the courtroom. But the alternative image is far more vital: Mississippi is publicly confronting the very subject most of us would rather not talk about. A biracial citizens group pressed for the case to be reopened, and persistent reporting by Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger, which once printed whatever the Klan wanted, uncovered new evidence.

Jim Crow Laws

Now Burns reminds us that Jim Crow laws legalizing segregation and discrimination, though most prevalent in the South, were found across the country. Cities from San Francisco to Boston barred black boxers from fighting whites and even banned a motion picture of Johnson's Reno victory.

By 1913, the country had given up hope of finding a white boxer who could win back the championship. So it went after the high- living Johnson for violating the federal Mann Act, which prohibited transporting a woman across state lines for "debauchery."

The conviction was a sham. An initial charge fell apart after investigators realized that their "victim," a prostitute who later married Johnson, didn't cross a state line. Prosecutors bullied another prostitute into testifying that Johnson had paid her fare from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Both women and, indeed, all three of Johnson's wives, were white, and that was what prosecutors found unforgivable. As Burns said in his Los Angeles visit earlier this week, "Any examination of U.S. history brings you inevitably to race."

The filmmaker is leading an effort to win Johnson a posthumous presidential pardon. He is joined by Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, among many others. President Bush has been notoriously reluctant to grant pardons, but this one should be an easy decision for a man who, as governor of Texas, proclaimed an annual "Jack Johnson Day."

Count the members of this editorial board among those who believe that the best way to surmount the past is to confront it. Count us among those asking that Johnson be pardoned.