He was the first black heavyweight champion in history, the most
celebrated-and most reviled-African American of his age. In
"Unforgivable Blackness, the prizewinning biographer Geoffrey C.
Ward brings to vivid life the real Jack Johnson, a figure far more
complex and compelling than the newspaper headlines he inspired
could ever convey. Johnson battled his way from obscurity to the
top of the heavyweight ranks and in 1908 won the greatest prize in
American sports-one that had always been the private preserve of
white boxers. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he
took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not
exist. While most blacks struggled just to survive, he reveled in
his riches and his fame. And at a time when the mere suspicion that
a black man had flirted with a white woman could cost him his life,
he insisted on sleeping with whomever he pleased, and married
three. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy
him, and he was forced to endure a year of prison and seven years
of exile. Ward points out that to most whites (and to some African
Americans as well) he was seen as a perpetual threat-profligate,
arrogant, amoral, a dark menace, and a danger to the natural order
of things.
"
Unforgivable Blackness is the first full-scale biography of Johnson
in more than twenty years. Accompanied by more than fifty
photographs and drawing on a wealth of new material-including
Johnson's never-before-published prison memoir-it restores Jack
Johnson to his rightful place in the pantheon of American
individualists.
"From the Hardcover edition.
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