The Great White Hope: Jack Johnson to Barack Obama

The 4th of July, 1910, was a steamy summer day, yet people from around the country converged on Reno Nevada to see what they hoped would be a vindication of their deep seated and long held belief that Jim Jeffeies was the best boxer in the world. The Los Angeles times called it a “battle between the white hope and the black peril”.

That day, millions of white people around the country had their great white hopes smashed and beaten and utterly humiliated.

The world had seen yet another example of the fact that Jack Johnson was the best fighter on the planet. The great white hope turned out to be nothing more than a landing pad for Mr. Johnsons large, black fist.

The lead up to this fight was much like the lead up to the heavy weight championship fights of today.There were promoters that promoted and fans that speculated and back then like now sides were chosen.

But unlike today, the racial rhetoric that flew around was not masked with code words or innuendo, no back then it was clear that the reason so many wanted Mr. Jeffries to win was to hold up and confirm what they believed in deeply. The belief that no black man could ever be as good at anything as a white man..

Jim Jefferies, who had refused to fight Johnson repeatedly, stated that he would not ever fight a “Negro, because no Negro could ever be the heavyweight champion of the world”. He had vowed to leave the fight game before he would fight Jack Johnson or any other black man. He did as he promised.

Jim Jeffries decided to retire to grow alfalfa on his farm in California and rather than fight the obvious top contender, Johnson. He arranged a fight between two white boxers and gave the heavy weight title to the winner. But the true fight fans and I suspect the white people that didn't pin their hope on the superiority of white people in all endeavors, pressed Jeffries and even called him “yellow”, which apparently is so close to being called black that Jeffries could not stand it and agreed to fight Johnson.

Jeffries was no stranger to Johnson. Jack Johnson had beaten Jefferies younger brother to a pulp in the ring and after Johnson knocked him out, Jack Johnson was kind enough to carry him to his corner, where big brother Jim was, and let the elder Jeffries know that he could whip him too.

The night that Johnson whooped Big Jim Jeffries like he was a wayward child, riots broke out across the nation. Thousands were injured and hundreds of innocent black people were killed. Why? Because the world had been reminded that a black man could in fact not only be the equal of a white man, that sometimes the black man was the superior of the two.

Jack Johnson was a fearless man, didn't know that emotion existed. He knew that every time he knocked the dog shit out of a white fighter in the presence of thousands of disappointed white men, it was well within the realm of possibility that someone could fill him full of led from the bleachers and would perhaps be named man of the year for it. But that never penetrated Mr. Johnsons persona and he lived as he pleased, as a free man, that happened to be black.

Forty years before Emit Till lost his life for the most minor intrusion into the domain of southern whites, Jack Johnson dated who he choose and couldn't care less that other black men thinking of doing the same would likely be lynched and burned and mutilated in the town square.

He wore the finest clothes and often made the well dressed white men around him look like vagabonds in comparison. He had a mouth full of gold teeth and drove the most expensive cars he could find and if the girl he was riding with happened to be white, oh well. He was free and didn't let anyone mistake him for anything but free.

Naturally the status quo at the time was so far from his modus operandi that actual federal laws were established to get to him. The Mann Act (look it up) was a law designed to trip old Jack up and it did.

But through it all, he remained the man he wanted to be.

Most people don't know that Jack Johnson was more than just a 6 foot tall black brute of a boxer. He was a highly intelligent man that held patents on improvements he had made to the newly invented automobile, he read voraciously and had as sharp a mind as one could hope to have. He could have just as well beat any of his opponents in a debate on any topic than to knock them out. He was equal parts, Mike Tyson, Huey P. Newton and Barack Obama.

So, when I heard the freshman republican congresswoman from Kansas Lynn Jenkins say that the GOP was looking for a great white hope I thought of old Jack Johnson and what he might of thought of Barack Obama.

They never did find any white boxer to beat Jack until he was dam near sixty, and the speculation to this day was that Jack took a dive in that fight against Jack Dempsey for the money.

There are people that dislike our president and some dislike him solely because he is black, that does not surprise me nor does it shed any bad light on white people as a whole. But one thing that I can't stand is someone that offers a lie, because they think you are too stupid to figure out the truth.

So when that pollywog space lizard looking woman tried to claim that she had no idea of the origin of the phrase and that she was sorry IF she offended anyone. I was embarrassed for her.

Could she be so under-informed that she really didn't know what that phrase meant or where it originated? How do intellectually handicapped people get elected to congress? Either she is as dumb as a bag of hammers or she's a race baiting con artist that got caught on camera, either way the people of her district should send her to Alaska, where a dumb broad has a chance.

It's just my opinion, what do you think?