Status Quo Changing Boxers and the Media's Response Through Championing “White Hopes”
Status Quo Changing Boxers and the Media’s Response Through Championing “White Hopes”
When heavyweight champion of the world Tommy Burns made the choice to fight Jack
Johnson on December 26th, 1908, he provided Johnson with the opportunity to become the first black world champion and unknowingly set the stage for the “white hope” phenomenon that reached a climax after Johnson then defeated the white Jim Jeffries in 1910 (Hutchinson 7, 15).
In this first fight, Burns was crushed by the superior Johnson, but the fight was bigger than just one man winning and another losing (Hutchinson 7). As Phillip J. Hutchinson puts it in Framing
White Hopes, “Johnson’s victory…represented a critical rupture in the symbolic relationship between the heavyweight championship and the social interests it had come to represent over the preceding two decades” (Hutchinson 7). Johnson’s defeat of Burns left the idea of white masculinity and superiority in shambles, and a white fighter was needed to mend it, a concept that was heavily circulated by the media (Hutchinson 7-8). Nearly fifty years later, the black
Muhammad Ali was best boxer in a sport dominated by black boxers. What set him apart, and thus threatened to change the status quo, was his conversion to the Muslim faith, his rejection of his “enslaved past”, his opposition to the Vietnam War and his general black activism (Farred
28, 39). At this point in time there was no viable white challenger to Ali and so black boxers, as a result of media involvement, took on the mantel of the “white hope” (Farred 36). In the cases of Johnson and Ali the media portrayed these two black champion boxers as dangers to society because they threatened the status quo socially and politically. Though they controlled their own destinies in the ring, the media attempted to control the image of race outside of it, but Ali, unlike Johnson, was actually successful in seizing some control over this as well.
1 The emergence of Jack Johnson led white America, through material and ideas disseminated by the media, to desire a “white hope” in order to reclaim a sense of racial superiority. As a result of Johnson’s complete and utter domination of Burns inside the ring the idea of white racial superiority was significantly threatened (Hutchinson 7). In winning Johnson took control over boxing, which the press over the past two decades had “crafted…as the epitome of masculinity and civilization” (Hutchinson 8). Had the media not written boxing as the epitome of white masculinity then Johnson’s victory would have been of less significance, but by going ahead and defining what whiteness at its best was supposed to look like the media set the stage for it to be threatened by the black Johnson. In order reclaim superiority it became necessary for the white media again to act and exert its influence. The way they did this was by convincing former white heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries to come out of retirement through a constant barrage of articles about him, which included the message that they needed him to be the “white hope” of America (Hutchinson 9). First the media conveyed race by defining what the highest standard of white masculinity was and after the defeat of Burns the media again became social actor by getting Jim Jeffries to fight in an attempt to reestablish the white race as superior.
Sports, through media involvement, continued to be a forum for conveying ideas of race following the events of July 4th, 1910. On that date Jack Johnson provided a fifteenth-round knockout victory of Jeffries (Hutchinson 13). For the media something they had constructed, in this case, the “white hope” of Jim Jeffries, again was defeated by the force that was Jack
Johnson. Not only was Jeffries defeated, but “the entire structure of a vital national narrative collapsed alongside the former champion” (Hutchinson 13). Over the next five years America, and the media, demonstrated by countless articles on the subject, searched for a “white hope” to defeat Johnson, but not one “lived up to expectations” and most never were good enough to even
2 fight Johnson (Hutchinson 17). Yet, as invincible as Johnson was inside the ring, he was equally as vulnerable outside of it. His philandering with white women allowed the media to create a
“hysteria” about his relationships and he was then arrested on charges that he had “abducted
[Lucille] Cameron in violation of recent white slavery laws” (Hutchinson 19). Johnson was vilified by the media for actions that they did not consider socially acceptable, and in doing so the media attempted to convey what proper black behavior was (Hutchinson 19). Ultimately
Johnson fled the country and skipped out on bail, which in part returned things to a sense of normalcy through his absence. Importantly, it was the media’s involvement that helped dim
Johnson’s star and forced him into self-imposed exile.
Despite fleeing to Europe, the Johnson drama was not over. Finally, in 1915, Johnson was defeated by Jess Willard, the newest “white hope” (Hutchinson 20). In this instance the media was again an important actor in conveying race in sports. This is evidenced by the fact that
Johnson’s defeat was championed by the media as “a victory cause for great celebration in white
America” (Hutchinson 20). Ultimately, the white media was as much of an actor in the Jack
Johnson era as Johnson, Jeffries or any other boxer was. It was the media “who as able to construct the boxer’s social presence in terms of an overarching narrative framework”
(Hutchinson 21). This “framework” had all intents and purposes of keeping the status quo of racial views about white superiority and black inferiority. From 1908-1915, Johnson did contest ideas of race, but the media was still successful in opposing him and conveying their own racist views.
Decades after the success of Jack Johnson in the ring, a young boxer named Cassius Clay rose to prominence and then changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Had Muhammad Ali been just another black boxer the backlash against him by the media would likely never have occurred.
3 Comparably, there was little criticism of former black heavyweight champion Joe Louis, who was often actually pictured as heroic (Farred 34). However, Ali was not just any boxer, he was the black boxer who changed his name in order to “[reject] his enslaved past and [bring] into public view the effects of slavery” (Farred 28). He was also the boxer who converted to Islam, supported the shift “to the militancy of Black Power” and rejected the Vietnam War (Farred 28,
37, 39). Thus, it is clear that Ali was not the typical black boxer of his era, just as Jack Johnson was not the typical boxer of his era either. Yet, unlike with Johnson there was no white opponent like Jim Jeffries that the media could champion as a “white hope” and in this this case they rarely tried to find one. Instead, other black boxers became quasi “white hopes” in their absence.
One famous boxer who took on this mantle was Ernie “the Octopus” Terrell. Terrell, in opposing Ali, “became the ‘white man’s nigger,’ a figure at once embellished and emboldened by the mainstream media hype and encumbered and undermined by a racist discourse uncomfortable with his blackness” (Farred 34). In no way was Terrell the perfect fit to be the
“white hope”, he was black after all, but the media had no other option and therefore “Terrell was made to take up white America’s burden” against the status quo upsetting, “‘uppity nigger’”
Muhammad Ali (Farred 34). In this way the media, like in the Johnson era, conveyed ideas of race. Unlike with Johnson the idea that white was superior to black was not as heavily conveyed.
Instead, the media expressed the notion that there was a good way to be black and a bad way;
Muhammad Ali was the bad.
Though the media began the backlash against Ali, the world champ did not ignore it like
Jack Johnson did. Instead, Ali faced the criticism head on. In his 1965 bout against black “white hope” Floyd Patterson, “a black convert to Roman Catholicism” who felt his fight versus Ali was
“a battle to regain the championship for American and Christianity”, “Ali positioned the ex-
4 champ as a flag bearer for the larger social forces opposed to him” (Farred 37, 38). In response to the media portrayal of the fight between America and a malevolent force, Ali put his own spin on the fight and openly made clear that it was both a political and social event. He leaned into the punch and by completely dismantling Patterson in the ring while simultaneously speaking out about the treatment of black Americans outside the ring he attempted to change the status quo
(Farred 39). Ali would not take things lying down. In doing so he “[broke] the mold that boxers conform to by standing strongly against the political tide” (Farred 48). He even painted his opponents, sometimes when there was no evidence of this being the case, as a version of “‘Uncle
Tom, an ugly and ignorant errand by for white America’” (Farred 52). Without a doubt Ali succeeded in creating for himself a media presence, but to do so he actually adopted the white media’s “racist vocabulary” and engaging in vilifying black boxers, whether the media considered them “white hopes” or not (Farred 51). Despite the moral issues with Ali’s reconstitution of racist language, Ali must be given credit for not allowing the media alone to be in control. He proved that the black boxer had risen enough since the time of Jack Johnson to strike back in the ring as well as outside of it and thus was able to convey his own ideas of race in opposition to the media’s.
Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali both disrupted the status quo with their success in the boxing ring, yet they were two very different figures. The former “defied the society’s governing sexual mores” and eviscerated the idea of white athletic superiority, while the latter was viewed as attacking religion, white America and patriotism (Farred 58). Though they were both black, it was only Ali who “self-consciously” took a racial stance and met the media and white America head on (Farred 58). It is important to not think of the two as the same person in different times,
Ali’s actions and political awareness clearly demonstrates they were not, as does his dislike of
5 Johnson’s relationships with white women (Farred 58). That being said, how the media responded to them was undoubtedly with extreme similarity. In both instances the media championed “white hopes” in order to return things to a sense of normalcy and to convey the backward ideas of race that the mass public desired. Both Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali challenged racial inequalities through their success and contested ideas about what it meant to be black, in sports and in everyday life, with the latter being something Ali directly sought to change. The media attempted to reverse this trend, through conveying them as radical and dangerous threats and through constructing “white hopes”. Though progress was slow, it is clear that Johnson and Ali’s success had a long-term impact. The acceptance of black boxers for who they are is clear through today’s responses to Ali himself. The media attempted to put these radical threats to the status quo down, but when Ali died the world mourned.
Works Cited
Farred, Grant. "Muhammad Ali, Third World Contender." What's My Name?, University of
Minnesota Press, 2003, pp. 27-93.
Hutchinson, Philip J. "The Press, Social Drama, and the Era of Jack Johnson, 1908-1915." From
Jack Johnson to LeBron James Sports, Media, and the Color Line, Lincoln, University of
Nebraska Press, 2016.
I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment: Ethan Cohen
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