When Jack Johnson took the heavyweight title from Tommy Burns and defeated the once great Jim Jeffries in an ill-fated comeback the search was on for the “great white hope.” From 1908 when he won the title until his 1915 match with big Jess Willard, the heavyweight champion attracted more attention than any other black American in history up until the time of Joe Louis and was the most controversial black athlete until Muhammad Ali.
Johnson was the epitome of the “bad nigger.” The origins and use of “bad” by blacks as a term of admiration can be traced to slavery. A “bad nigger” was one who would not submit to his shackles and resisted the supremacy of the white man (Gilmore p 13). Jack Johnson refused to bow down to the white man and defiantly said by his actions “I am better and stronger than any white man alive.” The white race, for the most part, had a difficult time accepting the fact of Johnson’s dominance of the heavyweight division. One observer went so far to say,
after Jeffries defeat, that Johnson wasn’t really a Negro; he was a Numidian- from a long lost tribe of Caucasians.
Most experts and boxers had picked former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries to defeat Johnson in the ring. John L. Sullivan, James J. Corbett, Robert Fitzsimmons, Tommy Burns, Abe Attell, Battling Nelson all picked Jeff to win. Even black boxers like Sam Langford and Joe Jeanette picked the white man. Perhaps Jeanette, who had fought Johnson more than any other man spoke for them all when he said, “Why Jeffries can lose half of his strength, have his endurance cut in two, carry a ton of extra weight and still whip Johnson” But such was not the case
as the wonderful Negro boxer totally dominated the once unbeaten Jeffries and stopped him in the 15th round, a result, which induced riots, lynchings, beatings, and other white on black, and black on white violence.
To add fuel to the fire is the fact that it wasn’t enough for Johnson to be superior in the ring to a white man, he also had to have affairs with and marry white women,
which challenged the white man sexually.