Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

Anything with Ken Burns is usually fantastic.

 

They actually had an abstract statue of him in front of Menard Park on the seawall. I was about six at the time and didn't know what it was for. All I remember was the seagull sh*t all over it that the city didn't bother to clean.

 

Was Johnson ever pardoned for "violating" the Mann Act?

 

Did they talk about his fight with middleweight Stanley Ketchel tonight or was that on Monday night?

 

No, that is where we get the saying, "The mann is keeping a brother down."

 

Monday. He played with Ketchel like it was an exhibition until Ketchel snuck in a blow. Johnson leveled him immediately.

 

That was really hilarious. Ketchel thought to himself, "Hmm... I could be heavyweight champ!" I guess he couldn't pass up the chance. He knocked Johnson down, but the champ jumped up like, "b****!" and knocked the little guy's teeth out.

 

there is a great old bar in soho(ny) called fanelli's that has tons of old photos of the boxing greats. i was sitting just under the aforementioned Stanislaus Kiecal last night.

 

I haven't seen the Burns film, but did hear a great old blues song on the radio the other day about Jack Johnson being refused entry on the Titanic. The song went something like,
"When Jack Johnson tried to get on board,
captain said 'we dont haul no coal'
fare the well Titanic,
fare thee well"

 

Later in his life, Jack Johnson was also an accomplished inventor, acquiring at least a couple of patents. I assume this will be covered in the second part.

* A wrench, USPN 1,413,121, 4/18/1922
* Theft-preventing device for vehicles, USPN 1,438,709, 12/12/1922

 

The guy on PTI just said Jack Johnson was the most important black athlete of all time.

 

If anyone's interested, I went to Best Buy today during lunch and could've sworn I saw either a CD or DVD of this documentary. Could've sworn it was a DVD, but I wasn't paying much attention.

 

So that was an update on something that you might've seen, maybe? It might have been a CD, or a DVD, that possibly had something to do with Jack Johnson, or maybe a similar name? You weren't really paying attention though, either way?

Thanks for the update!

 

Just for you Sam, you ET.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1401824&skuId=6946852&type=product

 

They finally made a real statue for him, unfortunately in a very strange location.

 

I watched it on Netflix. It's a great story.

This and the Joe Louis documentary on HBO are both very good.