President Obama: Jack Johnson Punched Back

In a recent monologue, Bill Maher said that the United States has two main political parties: one party on the center-right: the Democrats, and one party in a mental institution: the Republicans. Frankly, his comment insults those who receive care at psychiatric facilities; at least they are looking for help.

The Republicans, however, proudly soak in their own bile, every week dishing out a new dollop of reaction. Last week, their national embarrassment was the Republican Congresswoman from Topeka, Kansas, Lynn Jenkins. At a town meeting, Jenkins called for a "great white hope" to emerge from the Republican Party to defeat Barack Obama’s agenda. Let this sink in: in front of a small crowd of rabid supporters in Topeka, already in full froth about “death panels,” she called for a “great white hope.” Her examples of “great white hopes” were congressmen like Eric Cantor and Steve Ryan, both of whom are, among other things, white. Later, her spokesperson Mary Geiger may have made it worse by saying, "There may be some misunderstanding there when she talked about the great white hope. What she meant by it is they have a bright future. They're bright lights within the party.”

Yes, white is “bright” while Obama brings the “darkness.”

Team Obama, per their usual posture on the nuts of August, refused to stand up to this racist idiocy. His spokesperson Bill Burton said, “We obviously give Congressman Jenkins the benefit of the doubt." This has become the Obama administration m.o.: take a right hook to the face and just smile through your bloodied teeth.

Jenkins has since said she was “unaware of any negative connotation” and is sorry if anyone was offended. One thing is certain: if she did know the actual, unvarnished history of the phrase “great white hope,” Jenkins may have chosen her words carefully. "Great white hopes” tend to get knocked into next week.

The yearning for a “great white hope” emerged when African American boxer, Jack Johnson became the first heavyweight champ with black skin in 1908. The media  brayed for a "a great white hope" (a phrase coined by author Jack London) to restore order to the boxing world—and the world in general. Former champion Jim Jeffries, the Eric Cantor of the boxing world, was urged out of retirement to challenge Johnson, saying, "I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro."

Johnson didn’t give Jeffries, the press, or anyone else the benefit of the doubt. In a July 4th, 1910, Philadelphia Inquirer story titled, "Johnson Believes He's Jeff's Master," he is quoted as saying,  "I honestly believe that in pugilism I am Jeffries' master, and it is my purpose to demonstrate this in the most decisive way possible....  The tap of the gong will be music to me." To call himself Jeffries’ master, when people born as slaves and masters still lived throughout the United States, was verbal TNT.

The fight itself was the ugliest public display this side of a Topeka town meeting. As David Remnick wrote in King of the World, the ringside band played a song called, "All coons look alike to me," and crowds of whites chanted "kill the nigger." But Johnson, employing a highly cerebral defensive style, toyed with Jeffries, and made easy work of the winded former champion. In an early incarnation of the information superhighway, young children working as "telegram runners" ran through urban environs after every round, shouting out the progress.

The failure of the "white hope" caused—it is no exaggeration to say—a deep and abiding crisis in the media and white society. "That Mr. Johnson should so lightly and carelessly punch the head of Mr. Jeffries," wrote the New York World, "must come as a shock to every devoted believer in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race."

Violent race riots exploded around the country when Jeffries finally hit the mat. Their character involved mobs of whites attempting to enter black urban neighborhoods, and being repelled.

After the smoke cleared, 151 African Americans were dead. It was the most national urban uprising that the U.S. would see until the aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination in 1968. The backlash against boxing was immediate and intense. Congress even debating the banning of boxing altogether. All of a sudden, the violent, manly sport was pure sin.

Johnson was implored by Booker T. Washington among others to condemn the rioting. He refused. His defiance led to being prosecuted on Mann Act charges of white slavery (taking a white woman across state lines for immoral purposes.) The charges were so baseless that the US House of Representatives recently voted to exonerate Johnson posthumously. Incidentally, this vote gives lie to Jenkins' claim of being ignorant of the history. Either that or she didn't read the bill. But with every arrow Johnson took, in the eyes of the black community, he was becoming folklore.

In the words of one spiritual:

Amaze an' Grace, how sweet it sounds, Jack Johnson knocked Jim Jeffries down.

Jim Jeffries jumped up an' hit Jack on the chin, An' then Jack knocked him down again.

The Yankees hold the play, The white man pulls the trigger;

But it make no difference what the white man say, The world champion's still a nigger.

The great W.E.B. DuBois wrote the following about Johnson in 1914:

"Why then this thrill of national disgust?...It comes down, then, after all to this unforgivable blackness."

These words could be said about much of the "town hall right's" opposition to Obama today.