Name: The boxing film that was banned around the world
Uploaded: 2021-02-24T18:05:04.000Z
Duration: 9 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is the last surviving film frame of a famous boxing match in 1908.

Fought in Sydney, Australia, between American boxer Jack Johnson and defending champion,

And the film displayed signature traits of Johnson's:

and flashing his famous “golden smile” while he fought.

The reel ends moments before police stepped into the ring and put a stop to it, preventing

This is the night Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight champion of the world.

In front of 20,000 mostly-white spectators.

And, more importantly, motion picture cameras.

Copies of the fight film spread throughout Australia within days.

Replaying Johnson's effortless victory over and over at screening events attended by paying

Pretty soon, that film was seen worldwide.

And from the moment Jack Johnson's reign as world heavyweight champion began,

Commercial motion pictures and professional boxing both came to prominence around the turn

Boxing's format, short rounds fought in a stationary ring,

lent itself well to early film, with its clunky cameras and relatively short film reels.

Film companies would travel around the country, projecting reels of prizefights in packed

And that's because boxing, going back centuries, has been wrapped up in themes of identity

Not just their national communities, but also their race.

Theresa Runstedtler teaches history at American University.

And specializes in the intersection of race and sport.

They imagined that boxers in the ring, particularly for interracial fights,

that they were almost engaged in this kind of… Darwinian struggle.

Fights between white men and Black men, they became a kind of metaphor for race relations.

So in other words, if a white man won, it would reinforce ideas of white supremacy.

But if a Black man won, then it would upend ideas of white supremacy.

As professional boxing, or “prizefighting”, became more popular around the turn of the

century, fights pitting Black boxers against white boxers were organized at all levels.

Except for the highest honor in the sport:

There had been a kind of unwritten rule that white heavyweight fighters were not to fight

This de facto line of segregation was called the “color line.”

And so Jack Johnson, being the best Black fighter at the time, struggled to find white

Johnson, who by 1908 had already defended his separate title of World Colored Heavyweight

Champion 17 times, was repeatedly denied a shot at the most prestigious title in the

Until defending champion Tommy Burns accepted his challenge in 1908.

And you already know how that turned out.

Burns's defeat at the hands of a Black American fighter disrupted that narrative of white

You can see this happening in how newspapers framed the fight.

Reporting on Johnson was heavily skewed to appeal to white readers.

And overwhelmingly drew attention to his race, sometimes before using his name.

Jack Johnson, holding on to the heavyweight crown was just not acceptable in an era of

of white imperialism, Jim Crow and global white supremacy.

The search for a white heavyweight to take the title back from Johnson began the night

Former heavyweights claimed they would come out of retirement to fight him, and that “a

The most popular choice among promoters and white boxing fans was James Jeffries.

A former heavyweight champion who had retired undefeated in 1905.

And was named “the only hope of the white race.”

Johnson, for his part, was ready to defend his title against anyone, the retired Jeffries

Jeffries was out of shape, and hadn't stepped into the ring in over four years.

They had him believing that if he just trained a little bit and got back in shape, that he

And get the heavyweight crown back for the white race.

The pressure, and the promise of big money, worked.

Johnson and Jeffries signed a deal, setting a date for the following year.

White press coverage leading up to the fight depicted racist cartoons of an over-confident

And predicted his downfall at the hands of Jeffries.

This fight, hyped as the “battle of the century,” was to be a contest of racial

And, of course, it would all be on camera.

The fight was set for July 4th, 1910, in Reno Nevada.

Outfitted with nine motion picture cameras positioned around the ring.

To document and then commercially distribute the event.

On July 4th, Independence Day, over 20,000 spectators crowded inside.

They imagined that this would be the ultimate way to celebrate.

To watch Jim Jeffries, their great white hope, beat the crap out of this uppity, unruly African-American

Crowds gathered outside in cities all across the US too.

And packed into theaters, separated by race, because of segregation laws in the US,

to listen to instantaneous telegram updates of every round.

who, 9 months earlier, knocked out challenger Stanley Ketchel so hard,

Would lose his heavyweight title to Jim Jeffries.

In the 15th round, Johnson knocked Jeffries down for the first time in Jeffries' career.

And when he tried, sent him through the ropes.

Jeffries' corner helped him to his feet and entered the ring, which technically should

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The boxing film that was banned around the world

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