John Arthur ("Jack") Johnson

The “Galveston Giant."

Arthur John (Jack) Johnson was the first black and first Texan, to win the heavyweight boxing championship of the world.

Born in Galveston Texas on March 31, 1878, he was the second of six children of Henry and Tiny Johnson. Henry was a former slave and his family was poor. After leaving school in the fifth grade, Johnson worked odd jobs around South Texas. He started boxing as a sparring partner and fought in the "battles royal," matches in which young blacks entertained white spectators who threw money to the winner.

Johnson turned professional in 1897 following a period with private clubs in Galveston. His family's home was destroyed by the great hurricane of 1900. A year later he was arrested and jailed because boxing was a criminal profession in Texas. He soon left Galveston for good.

Johnson first became the heavyweight champion of Negro boxing. Jim Jeffries, the white champ at the time, refused to fight Johnson because he was black. Then, in 1908, Johnson knocked out Tommy Burns in Australia to become world champion, although he was not officially given the title until 1910 when he finally fought and beat Jeffries in Reno. Jeffries had come out of retirement to become the first of many so-called "great white hopes."

Race rioting was sparked after the Johnson-Jeffries fight. A number of leading American film companies joined forces to shoot footage of the Jeffries-Johnson fight and turn it into a feature-length documentary film, at the cost of $100,000. The film was distributed widely in the U.S. and was exhibited internationally as well. As a result, Congress banned prize fight films from 1912 until 1940. In 2005, the film of the Jeffries-Johnson "Fight of the Century" was entered into the United States National Film Registry as being worthy of preservation. The Texas Legislature banned films of his victories over whites for fear of more riots.

Johnson didn't merely offend the whites through his physical prowess, but also through his flaunting of wealth, racing cars, and most egregiously, associating with white women, often several at a time. This was also a great offense to many blacks.

Johnson was charged with violating the Mann Act in November 1912 for traveling across state lines with his white mistress, prior to the enactment of the Act. The Mann Act was designed to stop the interstate prostitution trade. It was not intended, and could not reasonably interpreted to apply to consensual adults. In 1913, Johnson fled because of the trumped up charges of violating the “Mann Act's” stipulations against transporting white women across state lines for prostitution.

During his exile from the U.S., Johnson lost his championship to a white man, Jess Willard, in Cuba in 1915. He returned to the U.S. on July 20, 1920 and was arrested.

Sentenced to Leavenworth in Kansas, Johnson was appointed athletic director of the prison. Upon his release, he returned to boxing, but only participated in exhibition fights after 1928.

Although married three times, Johnson never had children. He died in a car crash June 10, 1946, near Raleigh, North Carolina.