Jack Johnson

by Robert H. deCoy

Book Overview

The life of Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight champion of the world, is the story of civil rights in the first half of the 20th Century. A stunningly written biography!

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870675818
• ISBN13: 9780870675812
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Holloway House Publishing Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.1" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Every unanimity is also a stupidity

I'm a brazilian, agronomist and I like to read books. A brazilian called Nelson Rodrigues, told a great sentence decades ago: "Toda unanimidade é burra".Tranlating this sentence to English we have: "Every unanimity is also a stupidity." Borning in a very poor and negro family in Texas, Jack Johnson from the first to the last second of his life, was eugenics' victim. At that times, to protect "The race" was so needed as to protect "The nature" today.Then racism/eugenics was so followed godless religion, as ecology is today.At Jack Johnson's times, to be against racism/eugenics was so terrible, as to be against ecologism today. In 1910 decade, no other black was so hated as Jack Johnson.Among his foes was Winston Churchill to example.In fact in American presidential election of 1912, all three candidates were rabid eugenicists/racists. Even showing that Jack Johnson's image was becaming better after Hitler's rise in 1933, this book shows how Johnson's death was after a terrible eugenic/racist prejudice in 1946. ********************************************************************** On pages 145 and 146 of this book is writen:"When Ed Conkle, the son of a Protestant minister and head of United Press (UPI, caught wind of it, he shouted to his men keep that vice stuff coming in on Johnson and that white girl; "People like to read 'bout what they're doing." Virginia Brooks and Alice Aldrich of "The Law and Order League" caught the scent too.So did the "chicken-eating" black preachers of Chicago and around the country, who saw Johnson and his antics as their only means of being quoted in the white press as "Negro leaders," upon denouncing him.Which they did almost to a ma, with few and rare execeptions, in public and in front of white folk. Those who did not openly condemn him for his actions,which they were never sure of, simply condenmed him for his " gross and public indiscretions." At the same time, the newspapers and the Negro leader-preachers were willing to ignore the fact that Julius Rosenwald, founder of Sears and Roebuck mail and order houses, was called before the Illinois Vice Comission, admiting that he paid some 119 "appentices," fifteen- and sixteen-years-old, $5 a week or less for an eight-hour day, along with some four thousand or more women employees than $8 a week; he was considered not nearly as guilty of the of the crime of "white slavery" as Jack Johnson was. According to the Vice Comission, since Johnson was not white, and since they did not consider him a "philanthropist" like Rosenwald, therefore, only he and a few others like him could be guilty of committing the act of "white slavery." ******************************************************************** Failure of this book are: 1-About the last decade of Johnson's life this book is weak. 2-The deep hate against Johnson, didn't acme only from Negro-preachers , but also White-preachers and scientists.Almost all american scientist at that times were eugenicists/racist