THE GREAT and most famous anti-US slavery abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, railed against the way southern slave masters regularly pitted their slaves against those of other slave masters in boxing and wrestling matches and gambled on the outcome.

Douglass described these bouts as “safety valves, designed to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity.”

In her magisterial work — Boxing: A Cultural History — Kasia Boddy reveals that “Douglass set up a school to teach his fellow slaves to read, but this had to be kept secret, ‘for they (the slave masters) had much rather see us engaged in these degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings’.”

This being said, Douglass recounts in his autobiography — Narrative of the Life — the time when as a slave he was hired out by his master to a particularly violent slaveholder named Covey as a field hand and was beaten and whipped to the point where he decided to retaliate with his fists.

“The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger,” Douglass writes.

“He would occasionally say, he didn’t want to get hold of me again. ‘No, thought I, you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before’.”

Decades earlier, the first world title fight in boxing — as acknowledged by most boxing historians — took place at Capthall Common in Sussex on December 18 1810.

It was fought between Tom Molineaux, a former slave from Virginia who began boxing when he arrived in New York as a freeman at the age of 20, and English champion Tom Cribb.

The occasion was preserved for posterity in the writings of the most popular English sportswriter of the period, Pierce Egan.

“The pugilistic honour of the country was at stake,” Egan opined. “The national laurels to be borne away by a foreigner — the mere idea to an English breast was afflicting, and the reality could not be endured…”

The fight lasted 35 rounds. In the 19th round, members of the crowd rushed into the ring and attacked Molineaux, who’d made the mistake of daring to outbox his opponent.

The result was the American sustaining a broken finger. But no matter, in the open and in the rain the fight continued, with Molineaux continuing to dominate — until by the start of the 28th round (yes, you read that right, the 28th round) Cribb appeared out for the count.

However, the judicious employment of time-wasting by the Englishman’s cornermen, who brought proceedings to a halt on the back of allegations of foul play by the American, allowed him to recover.

Cribbs subsequently emerged victorious after Molineaux hit his head on one of the corner posts, forcing him to concede seven rounds later.

Racism was of course key in the ill-treatment meted out to Molineaux. He alluded to it in the open letter he published after his defeat, challenging Cribb to a rematch while “expressing the confident hope that the circumstances of my being a different colour to that of a people amongst whom I have sought protection will not in any way operate to my prejudice.”

The rematch took place the following year before a crowd of 15–20,000 people. Tom Cribb again emerged victorious; this time over 11 rounds.
 
On March 31 1878 in Galveston, Texas, a baby was born who would grow to become both a champion of the ring and cultural icon who become a hero in the eyes of black America and a pariah in the eyes of white America.

Towards the end of the 19th century — on March 31 1878 in Gavleston, Texas, to be precise — Jack Johnson was born to parents who were former slaves.

The exact number of fights Jack Johnson had has been disputed. The least number cited is 77. Considering that boxing bouts in the early part of the 20th century could go on for 30 rounds and more, the immense physical ordeal he endured in a career that ended at the age of 60 in 1938 is remarkable.

Johnson’s significance in the social and cultural history of the US is rooted in his unflinching defiance of the racial hierarchy that underpinned the nation’s dominant cultural values.

However, even he was unprepared for the racial hatred directed at him after he defeated heavyweight champion Tommy Burns in 1908 in Sydney, Australia.

The heavyweight title was deemed the exclusive property of the white Anglo-Saxon race and in daring to win it in a one-sided fight, the new black champion instantly became the subject of a moral panic.

Famed writer and novelist Jack London put the call out for a white champion to wrest the title back from the black impostor who was now holding it.

It was London who coined the term the “great white hope,” which endured and remained a part of US sporting vocabulary up until Gerry Cooney was defeated by Larry Holmes in 1982.

Johnson was forced to fight a series of white contenders as a racist US boxing establishment set out to find someone to prove the physical and fighting superiority of the white race. Of the series of fights that followed, his encounter with Stanley Ketchel in 1909 has gone down in history.

The fight lasted twelve hard rounds, at which point Ketchel connected with a right to the head that succeeded in dropping Johnson to the canvas.

As Johnson got back to his feet, Ketchel moved in to finish him off. But before he could unleash another punch he was met with a right hand to the jaw that knocked him spark out.

According to legend, the punch was so hard some of Ketchel’s teeth ended up embedded in Johnson’s glove.

Perhaps as a consequence of his being so maligned and rejected by mainstream society, Johnson was a man who sought solace in the company of prostitutes, another much maligned demographic.

He was fined and sentenced to prison by an all-white jury. However, defiance still running through his veins, instead of meekly accepting his sentence, he skipped bail and fled to Canada — and from there across the Atlantic to France.

For the next seven years Jack Johnson remained outside the US, moving between Europe and South America. He continued to defend his title, though only sporadically, until finally losing it to Jess Willard in Havana, Cuba in 1915. Incredibly, the fight went 26 rounds before Willard KO’d the champion.

Jack Johnson married three times, on each occasion to a white woman. At his funeral in 1948, a reporter asked Irene Pineau, his third and last wife, what she’d loved about him most.

“I loved him because of his courage,” she replied. “He faced the world unafraid. There wasn’t anybody or anything he feared.”