Photo: Ken Burns's Unforgivable Blackness
Jack Johnson's smile drove white people mad. Drove them absolutely out of their racist minds. A brash, towering African-American whose flashy tailor-made suits, uninhibited carousing, and predilection for white women made him public enemy number one in Jim Crow's America, the poor southerner became the first black man to ever win the heavyweight boxing championship on July 4, 1910. In Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, filmmaker Ken Burns meticulously details how Johnson's prowess in the ring made him a sports star, and how his unrepentant individualism and disdain for society's demands that he be a subservient second-class citizen made him the prime target of white America's burning racial hatred. Nick Schager
Jack Johnson's smile drove white people mad. Drove them absolutely out of their racist minds. A brash, towering African-American whose flashy tailor-made suits, uninhibited carousing, and predilection for white women made him public enemy number one in Jim Crow's America, the poor southerner became the first black man to ever win the heavyweight boxing championship on July 4, 1910. In Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, filmmaker Ken Burns meticulously details how Johnson's prowess in the ring made him a sports star, and how his unrepentant individualism and disdain for society's demands that he be a subservient second-class citizen made him the prime target of white America's burning racial hatred. Nick Schager
