Ken Burns on Jack Johnson Story aired: Monday, January 17, 2005
In 1910, 15 long trains of white boxing fans travel to Reno, Nevada to see the prizefight of the century, between the so-called "Great White Hope" Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson, who two years earlier shocked and infuriated whites by becoming the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
Johnson was larger than life and even in the Jim Crow South not afraid to show it. Many whites at the time saw beating Jack Johnson as righting a social wrong. His contemporary W.E.B. Dubois pointed out that Johnson's "unforgivable blackness" was the source of his troubles.
"Unforgivable Blackness" is the title of a new Ken Burns two-part documentary about Jack Johnson that airs tonight and tomorrow on PBS stations around the country.
