The Life Of His Fight

In an undated photo from Ken Burns's latest PBS documentary, Jack Johnson prepares to defend his heavyweight title. The two-part film is a study in racial conflict and defiance. (Pbs)

In "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," a rich, rambunctious and extraordinary life has been turned into a remarkable and fascinating documentary, yet one perhaps too mild-mannered for its lusty subject. Those familiar with Johnson's wild ride through the early 20th century are bound to learn new details; those unfamiliar will likely be flabbergasted, but director Ken Burns also wants to make sure we're depressed.

John Arthur Johnson became heavyweight champion of the world in 1908 at age 30, the first African American to hold the title, then had to defeat another fighter two years later, a champ who'd retired undefeated, to make his title official. But Johnson's real fight, his lifelong battle, was against the white power structure that at every juncture obsessively conspired against him.

The two-part film, tonight and tomorrow night at 9 on PBS, is a profile in courage, definitely, but also a profile in defiance. Johnson did not present himself as a "civil rights " leader, or a spokesman for any cause, and with his brashness he angered even black groups fighting for equality in an organized, essentially polite way. Johnson deferred to no one. "He wouldn't let anybody define him," says James Earl Jones, one of many commenting experts. "He was a self-defining man."

Jones became a star playing Johnson in the prize-winning play "The Great White Hope," and among those who saw that play after it moved from Washington's Arena Stage to Broadway was Mohammad Ali, another legendary champ. Even if Ali hadn't seen "Hope," it would be negligent to make a documentary about Johnson without mentioning him, because Ali's career was rife with parallels to Johnson's. Like Johnson, Ali was persecuted not only for his beliefs but for his flamboyance, his effronteries to the establishment.

Johnson was, as dozens of photographs and rare ancient film footage keep verifying, a magnificent figure, whether dandied up in bow tie, straw hat and tailored suit, or nearly naked, proud of his tremendous strength and musculature, fighting in tight shorts rather than the laughable baggy silks favored today. Naturally, inescapably, white men saw him as a sexual threat, and just in case they didn't, Johnson made anything but a secret of his preference for white women. He had a series of white mistresses and wives who were photographed proudly and adoringly at his side. The hubris, considering the time in which he lived, still seems awesome.

Filmmaker Burns is big on context, as anyone familiar with his work knows, and Johnson makes an ideal symbolic figure. Burns and writer Geoffrey C. Ward see Johnson's victory over retired but reigning champion Jim Jeffries (who for years had vowed never to step into the ring with "a Negro") as the starting shot for "a marathon struggle for racial supremacy" that continues to this day. Burns may be a tad too obsessive about his thesis, seeing all of history primarily in terms of racial conflict. Part of what made his "Jazz" miniseries such a lugubrious downer was its redundancy about race, and Burns's "Baseball" was for the most part a racial epic as well, and a nearly joyless one.

Obviously the story of Johnson's life is a story of racial conflict. But it still would have been nice if Burns had relented a little on the solemnity and dwelt more on the champ's exuberance, his infectious delight in hedonism and in flaunting his success -- and his excess -- in the faces of his enemies. He strode across the color line even in his choice of brothels, daring to patronize Chicago's most opulent whites-only whorehouse, where he met a young woman who'd become one of the succession of Mrs. Jack Johnsons.

His cars, like his suits, were custom-made, and Johnson loved violating speed limits as he roared his way through the '10s and '20s. He seemed to have no great love for the sport of boxing but used it as "a way out," as narrator Keith David says -- a way out of Galveston, Tex., where he was born in 1878, and a way out of poverty and ignominy. He had many other talents: He played the bass fiddle, starred in a vaudeville act built around his mythic career, even patented a wrench that he invented for working on one of his showy sports cars. Historian Stanley Crouch, most engaging of the assorted experts, bursts into laughter recalling a fight in which Johnson shouted to his girlfriend in the first row, asking her in which round she wanted to see a knockout. She picked the fourth round. Johnson cheerfully complied.

The film opens with some jolly jazzy riff from the era, but much of the music heard in the background reflects Burns's monomania for melancholia, and that would include the boring, mourning original music by Wynton Marsalis. One of the old recordings used is a song called "Weary Blues," which describes too well the tone of the film.

"Rise" and "fall" get equal time, two hours each night, but one could argue that the story of Johnson's rise, smashing his way through racial barriers -- old ones and new ones erected in his honor -- is worth more attention than the story of his decline.

It took Herculean determination for Johnson just to get a shot at the title. John L. Sullivan, a heavyweight champion of the time, flatly declared, "I will not fight a Negro. I never have and never shall." Jeffries, whom Johnson would eventually defeat, said, "The title will never go to a black man if I can help it." Johnson defeated every possible black contender, however, and finally went all the way to Sydney, Australia, to fight Tommy Burns, a Canadian racist who taunted Johnson during the fight with racial epithets -- all of them bouncing off Johnson's impenetrable exterior.

Burns would be paid $30,000 for the 20-round fight and Johnson only $5,000, but Johnson's victory all but forced Jeffries to come out of retirement and defend the heavyweight title, even though Jeffries had swollen to nearly 300 pounds relaxing on his California farm. No slouch, he lost 100 of those pounds in time to meet Johnson in the ring, but he was now too old and out of shape, and a newspaper headline over the story of Johnson's victory indicates Jeffries was a gracious and maybe non-racist loser:

" 'Jack Better Than I Ever Was,' Jeffries Says."

Sadly, though, the sweetness of victory was short-lived. News of Johnson's victory and films of the fight shown in theaters throughout the country sparked terrible riots in many cities, including Washington and Philadelphia. Congress later banned interstate traffic in fight films and, in a move directed unabashedly at Johnson, one Georgia senator tried to introduce legislation to ban interracial marriage. Johnson was on his second or third wife by this time. Later, the Mann Act, prohibiting interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes, would be used -- actually mis-used -- by the federal government to indict Johnson. While free on bail, he escaped to Canada, then Europe, but his tour there was rudely interrupted by World War I.

Some of the vintage fight films are almost harrowing to watch, especially a match that took place in the 105-degree heat of a Cuban afternoon -- scheduled for 45 rounds (!) and pitting Johnson against a gigantic former ranch hand, the 6-foot-6 Jess Willard. At 27 he was 10 years younger than Johnson, and in the 26th round Willard knocked him out.

Johnson "sought the spotlight to the very end," narrator David says, and usually it followed him, though his popularity waned and, increasingly, progressive black groups distanced themselves from him. The venerated Booker T. Washington expressed disapproval, but the more assertive W.E.B. Du Bois defended him. Looking back now, it's all but impossible not to admire in amazement Johnson's bravado and audacity. He lived to be 68 and died not from an assassin's bullet but from his love of speed, wrapping his car around a tree outside Raleigh, N.C.

The voices of an impressive cast are heard on the soundtrack, reading from writings, newspaper articles and other accounts of the times, with Samuel. L. Jackson ably handling the words and reminiscences of Johnson himself. Whatever bones one may want to pick with Burns about what he chooses to emphasize and what he downplays, he is so clearly exhaustive, earnest and dedicated in his work that it always has class and stature. Fortunately, and unlike some of the mammoth Burns films of the past, "Unforgivable Blackness" is as entertaining as it is noble.

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (two hours tonight and tomorrow) airs at 9 p.m. on WETA (Channel 26) and Maryland Public Television.