ABSTRACT

When black boxer Jack Johnson defeated his white opponent Jim Jeffries on 4 July 1910, two new relationships were born, one between the black athlete and the cinema industry, and the other between blacks and whites.1 The Johnson-Jeffries fight became a prototype in America for a racial division with a new component. It introduced a kind of black empowerment, rendered through physical prowess. Johnson’s defeat of Jeffries became ingrained in the public consciousness, exacerbating white fear of blacks and of blackness.