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Lester Walton’s Champion: Black America’s Uneasy Relationship with Jack Johnson

In 1908 Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world. His reign would be rife with controversy, leading to widespread racial violence and draconian government intervention. Lester Walton, theater critic for the New York Age, became obsessed with Johnson; his extensive writing on the boxer powerfully reveals not just Walton’s own struggle with issues of race in America, but sheds light on the difficulties the black community at large faced in trying to make sense of a figure who simultaneously represented hope for the positive change Reconstruction failed to produce and, ironically, also threatened to intensify the hardships of Jim Crow era oppression.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc500142
Date08 1900
CreatorsMcKee, Dave
ContributorsWallach, Jennifer, Pomerleau, Clark, Haglar, Harland
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, McKee, Dave, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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