[Orbach, Barak, "The Johnson-Jeffries Fight and Censorship of Black Supremacy", NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, 2010, Vol. 8, pp. 270-346]
[PDF available online via http://ssrn.com/abstract=1563863]
Arizona Legal Studies
Discussion Paper No. 10-09
The Johnson-Jeffries Fight and Censorship of Black Supremacy
Barak Y. Orbach
The University of Arizona
James E. Rogers College of Law
The Johnson-Jeffries Fight 100 Years Thence:
THE JOHNSON-JEFFRIES FIGHT AND CENSORSHIP OF BLACK SUPREMACY
Barak Y. Orbach*
[* Associate Professor of Law, The University of Arizona. www.orbach.org.]
[Abstract]
In April 2010, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in United States v. Stevens, in which the Court struck down a federal law that banned the depiction of conduct that was illegal in any state. Exactly one hundred years earlier, without any federal law, censorship of conduct illegal under state law and socially condemned mushroomed in most towns and cities across the country. In the summer of 1910, states and municipalities adopted bans on prizefight films in order to censor black supremacy in controversial sport that was illegal in most states. It was one of the worst waves of movie censorship in American history, but it has been largely ignored and forgotten. On the Fourth of July, 1910, the uncompromising black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, knocked out the “great white hope,” Jim Jeffries, in what was dubbed by the press and promoters as “the fight of the century.” Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion himself, returned to the ring after a five-year retirement to try to reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race. He failed.
The knock out that sent the great white hope down to the floor shook the nation, prompted deadly racial riots, and induced one of the most disturbing waves of movie censorship in American history. This Article brings to light the story of a national movement to censor black supremacy, a movement that had significant success. The Article is a tribute to Jack Johnson and should serve as a contemporary warning about the risks and threats of content regulation, with lessons to the controversy over “community standards” in censorship.
I. PROLOGUE
In July 1910, a legal wildfire scorched the rights of blacks and entrepreneurs, but left close to no marks in the legal literature. During the three days following Independence Day, numerous states and municipalities adopted laws and policies to ban prizefight films in order to censor the black supremacy of one of the greatest athletes in history--Jack Johnson.
This Article chronicles the events that prompted this disturbing wave of movie censorship, and it explores how so many legislators, governors, mayors, and other public decisionmakers simultaneously acted to suppress content in a racist fashion. One of the oldest legal debates over obscenity is the role of “community standards.”[1] The central question in this debate is whether censorship rules should be derived from local or national cultural and moral standards. This Article demonstrates how the adoption of community standards may inflate costs for a suppressed industry (such as the motion picture industry) and, consequently, deter it from challenging socially undesirable standards.
On July 4, 1910, James “Jim” Jeffries stepped into the ring to fight John “Jack” Arthur Johnson. Jeffries was the former heavyweight champion of the world. In May 1905, he retired undefeated from boxing because no white man was left to fight him.[2] Johnson was the heavyweight champion of the world. He was black and the only man who could arguably challenge him was Jeffries.[3] Sixteen months earlier, Jeffries explained the motivations for his return to the ring: “I feel obligated to the sporting public at least to make an effort to reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race. . . . I should step into the ring again and demonstrate that a white man is king of them all.”[4]
Jack Johnson was the son of emancipated slaves. He ignored many social conventions, defeated whites in the ring, had claims for and gained a prime manhood symbol—the boxing heavyweight championship, and had public relationships with white women.[5] Johnson was widely regarded as a “bad nigger,” a status that came with many traits, most of which were related to lack of conformity with social order and norms.[6] Johnson perfected the qualities of the “bad nigger” and, worst of all, disregarded danger and interracial taboos.[7] To add insult to injury, Johnson was intelligent, strategic, undefeated, good looking, articulate, and sent his white rivals bleeding to the floor. In the racist United States of the turn of the century,[8] Johnson was the ultimate “bad nigger.”
Promoters and the press touted the Johnson-Jeffries match as “the fight of the century.”[9] Leading into the fight, gamblers believed in Jeffries’ supremacy. Indeed, the bets were overwhelmingly in his favor.[10]
An article in Current Literature provided “scientific” support to the gambling market’s prediction. In the week of the Johnson-Jeffries fight, Current Literature published the article, “The Psychology of the Prize Fight,” predicting a win for Jeffries.[11] The article showed that Jeffries’ whiteness blessed him with intellectual superiority, while Johnson’s blackness burdened him with an emotional streak that would prove advantageous only for short pugilistic encounters.[12]
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[Notes]
1 See, e.g., Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973). See also Frederick F. Schauer, The Law Of Obscenity (1976).
2 See infra Part I.
3 For analysis of sports experts of the time, see
What is He Going to Do?, Wilkesbarre Times, Nov. 5, 1903, at 11;
Ring Honors to Negro Race, CHI. DAILY TRIB., Jul. 3, 1910, at C3.
4 Jeffries Will Meet Johnson, L.A. Times, Mar. 1, 1909, At I12.
See infra Section II.B for a detailed discussion of the circumstances that led to Jeffries’ return from retirement.
5 Many biographies tell the story of Jack Johnson. The most notable one is
Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson 5, 47, 88–89, 211 (2004).
6 See, e.g.,
Della Burt, The Legacy of the Bad Nigger, 5 J. Afro-Am. Issues 111 (1977);
Jerry H. Bryant, Born In A Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man In African American Folklore And Fiction (2003).
7 See, e.g.,
Al-Tony Gilmore, Bad Nigger! The National Impact Of Jack Johnson 13 (1975):
Many characteristics of the “bad nigger” have been listed [in the literature] and Johnson qualifies for all of them. Important among these qualities is an utter disregard of death and danger. Primarily because of this feature, one white writer of the late nineteenth century was moved to write that the “bad nigger” was “the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless.” Surely many whites must have felt this way about Johnson as they watched him risk his life by merely stepping through the arena ropes in front of a predominantly 2010] white audience to do battle with a white man. In this sense, Jack Johnson was truly the archetype twentieth century “bad niggers.”
For his relationships with white women, Johnson was the first to be convicted of violating the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (the “Mann Act”), 36 Stat. 825, codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424. The Act prohibited interstate transportation of “woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” Id. § 2. Senator John McCain is leading a campaign to pardon Johnson and has secured multiple concurrent resolutions urging the President to pardon Jack Johnson. See, e.g., S.Con.Res. 16 Expressing the Sense that the President of the United States should exercise his constitutional authority to pardon posthumously John Arthur “Jack” Johnson for the racially motivated conviction in 1913 that diminished the athletic, cultural, and historical significance of Jack Johnson and unduly tarnished his reputation (Apr. 1, 2009).
8 There are many ways to think about racism in the United States during the early twentieth century.
One way is to read this Article. Another is through the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. See, e.g.,
David M.Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History Of The Ku Klux Klan (3Rd Ed. 1987);
Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan In America (1987).
9 See, e.g., Fight of Century, Says Jack London, PHILADELPHIA INQ., July 2, 1910, at 10.
10 See, e.g.,
Betting is Peculiar, WASH. POST, July 4, 1910, at 2;
10 to 6 on Eve of Fight, N.Y. TIMES, July 4, 1910, at 14;
Jeff Rules Favorite, 100-60, Chi. Daily Trib., July 4, 1910, at 11;
Bet $40,000 on Jeffries, WASH. POST, July 4, 1910 at 2;
Wall Street Slow to Place Bets on the Fight at Reno, N.Y. HERALD, Jul. 2, 1910, at 2;
How Betting Goes All Over the Country, PHILA. INQUIRER July 3, 1910, at 8;
Betting Favors Jeffries; Odds of 10 to 6 1-2 Offered, ATLANTA CONST., Jul. 4, 1910, at 9.
11 The Psychology of the Prize Fight, 49 CURRENT LITERATURE 57 (Jul. 1910).
12 Id.:
Expert opinion has inclined to the theory that the negro is the strongest man physically. . . . The superiority of the brain of the white man to that of the black, we are told, is undisputed by all authorities. The white man’s brain is a finer intellectual instrument than that of his black brother. . . . [A] white man fighting with a negro to whom he is not physically inferior ought not to be defeated if the contest be prolonged. The explanation is that in the first onslaught of a pugilistic encounter the emotional element preponderates. The negro is more emotional than the white man. Therefore, in a brief encounter, the negro would have the advantage. With the prolongation of the conflict the intellectual power of the antagonists functions.
See also Intellectuality of the New Pugilism, 44 Current Opinion 130 (1913) (arguing that Johnson was less useful than Jeffries in the “scientific attitude” since he was “a cotton-picking negro,” but “like so many of his unhappy race” he was a “true musician,” and concluding that music gave Johnson patience, allowed him to train in the “modern style,” and “had its therapeutic effects upon his artistic temperament.”).
