By Steven G. Farrell: James J. Jefferies, who was of Dutch and English lineage, was probably less prejudice than Sullivan or Corbett. Like Corbett, he had fought Jackson but unlike Corbett he had won. Afterwards, Jeff stated “I probably wouldn’t have hurt Peter much when he was at his best.” Jeff also had this to say to Jackson, “Don’t worry, Pete, we all come to it in the end.” There is an old photograph of Jefferies standing on a beach with two young black boys. Big Jeff has his arms on the shoulders of one of the lads. It is hardly the behavior of a bigot.
Carney (Ultimate Tough Guy: the Life & times of James J. Corbett) contends that ‘Jefferies initial response to Johnson’s challenges may have been to draw the color line, which he appears to have done on at least one occasion. But he realized that this was ridiculous in view of the fact that he he’d fought several black fighters.” Before moving away from Big Jeff I’d like to share a quote attributed to him about Tom “Sailor” Sharkey, an Irish heavyweight boxer and a friend of his. “God never made a wayward child so lovable or so hateful as an Irishman according to his mood.”
Jack Johnson was never the gallant defender of his people that some historians contend, nor was he the sadist that many whites accused him of being. He was cocky but not arrogant. He wasn’t a punishing fighter but a punishing counterpuncher. In boxing terms he was closer in style to Corbett than he was to Sullivan or Jefferies. The Irish champs, who had to fight many of the prejudices of the day, were never depicted as “fiend incarnate.” Like Johnson. Ward (Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise & Fall of Jack Johnson) describes Johnson as being “independent, restless, with an ability to improvise, to attract attention, and to get around rules intended to tie him down.” Jack once had this to say about his handling of relationships with both blacks and whites: “I have found no better way of avoiding race prejudice than to act with people of other races as if prejudice did not exist.”
Once he was the king of the boxing world, Jack refused to fight black fighters, giving his reasons as that there was ‘no money in it.” However, he had no hesitation in fighting Irishmen like Sandy Ferguson, Jim Flynn and Victor McLaghlen, who fared better as a Hollywood actor later in life than he did as a fighter. The hulking Victor also performed better in his fistfight against John Wayne in The Quiet Man than he did in his match with Jack. When Jack toed the mark with Ferguson in Chelsea, Massachusetts, according to Ward, “nearly everyone present was Irish and howling for Johnson’s blood.” Jack , unhappily, lost his crown in the 26th round beneath the blazing sun to Jesses Willard down in Havana, Cuba. Sadder still was that many years later when Jack showed up to Joe Louis’s training camp before Joe’s fight with Max Schmeling, Joe reputedly declared, “Get that black cat out of here. I don’t want him in my camp.” Joe was only too well aware of how unpopular Johnson had been with both blacks and whites. It’s also reported that Jack placed his bet on Schmeling, a fighter from Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The part of Jack Johnson was played James Earl Jones in the 1970 movie, The Great White Hope” but he was called ‘Jack Jefferson” in some prankish Hollywood tribute to Johnson and Jefferies. Larry Pennell’s frank Brady represented Jefferies in the movie.
Jesse Willard, another WASP like Jefferies, didn’t fight anybody once he was champion, black or white, until he had his teeth knocked out and his block knocked off by Jack Dempsey in 1919. Jack Dempsey has the distinction of being the only Irish-Mormon to become the heavyweight champion of the world. He actually had more in common with Jack Johnson than he did with either Sullivan or Corbett. Both Dempsey and Johnson were boxing hobos who rode the rods as they built up impressive records fighting in mining camps and in the back rooms of honky tonks. Both men were virtually racism free and took on all worthy comers. Unfortunately Dempsey, who was a brave fellow who feared no man, allowed himself to be restricted by the rules of sanction racism due to Doc Kearns and Tex Rickard, the men who handled his career and promoted his fights. The big money was in fighting white contenders like Tommy Gibbons, George Carpientier and Luis Firpo while ignoring worthy black opponents like Harry Willis and Sam “the Boston Tar Baby” Langford.
Dempsey, once again like Johnson, had very little credibility with the general public because he had married a prostitute and was accused of dodging the draft during the World War One. Dempsey compounded his problem by appearing in a photograph of him working in a shipyard in a new pair of fancy spates. The public felt duped. Even Jack Johnson taunted Jack Dempsey by calling him “a slacker!” Later in his life, Jack Dempsey told Roger Kahn the sportswriter, “No matter how much I have, I’m for the poor person. The white poor and the black poor who have it worse. As long as I live, I’ll never forget I was poor.”
Gene Tunney returned the crown to the urban Irish Catholics by defeating Jack Dempsey in 1926 and 1927 in two ten round decisions, including the famous “long count.” Many Irish Americans felt more comfortable with Tunney over Dempsey because of Tunney’s religion and pure Irish roots as opposed to the only half Irish and fully Mormon Dempsey. Indeed, the bookish and shy Tunney had only taken up the sport to defend himself against the Irish street gang bullies who had terrorized him and his brothers in their Greenwich Village neighborhood. In time “the fighting Marine” lost the support of his own crown because he was a ‘no fight’ champion (he only fought fellow Irishman Tom Heeney in 1928 before he retired) who became more of a Connecticut Yankee country squire than an urban Mick.
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