The back story of Black Jack, it’s a funny story. I think it’s a funny story but it’s a unique story because it actually came about through research that I was doing for a book a number of years that just came out a few years ago on Muhammad Ali called Twelve Rounds to Glory. I had done a lot of research on that book and in the midst of doing research you come across interesting characters and such. And one of the names that I came across was Jack Johnson who was the first black heavyweight champion.
And a lot of people equated Muhammad Ali’s style and personality and related it to his time to Jack Johnson and his time, which was the turn of the century. Early 1900s. So as I was doing research his name kind of jumped and I just wrote it down. Probably a few months after that, Ken Burns did a PBS special about him called “Unforgiveable Blackness.” I decided to watch it and I was just completely fascinated because you know Ken Burns always does a great job in his storytelling.
He’s very thorough. And going from you know in this case going from very young to the end of his career. And his life ultimately. So I got to really see every single part of him and I says man when you’re considering somebody to write about for a biography, the appeal for kids, the appeal has to be what were they like as a child, it’s one thing to focus on them being an adult but for kid’s biographies we want to see how they got to the finished part.
So we focus a lot on the earlier part, and he was very interested in reading even though he never finished the 6th grade. He wanted to be a great man and he tried to figure out the best way to do it. And it was his idea actually to box, it was actually his mom’s idea so when she got tired of seeing her boy pushed around. And she just said fight back. And he did and the rest as they is history. And so the focus of it became the fight between him and Jim Jeffries.
For the heavyweight championship of the world. And at that time what made it all that more special was it was the first time a black man was contending for the heavyweight championship, and he constantly wanted that fight but Jim Jeffries would constantly say “no.” He wouldn’t fight a black man. But yet on the same token he kept calling Jack Johnson yellow.
Meaning you know a coward. And so everybody kind of laughed. And the people got fed up to a point where they said “Look you guys are the two best boxers you should be fighting.” And so I thought it set the stage for an interesting book. Not only his life but the fact the fight for him to become the heavyweight champion would be become the ultimate finished centerpiece.
