“. . . BECAUSE OF THE COLOR LINE”
An interview with Mark Allen Baker and a review of his newest book.
By Roger Zotti
The World Colored Heavyweight title can be viewed in three phases: Phase I—from creation to Jack Johnson capturing the Heavyweight Championship of the World (December 26, 1908); Phase II—from December 26, 1908, until September 7, 1915, the obscure title was exchanged between Sam McVey, Joe Jeannette, and Sam Langford; and finally, Phase III—prompted by Jack Johnson’s loss to Jess Willard, on April 5, 1915 . . . . The final phase of its existence lasted until Joe Louis made it clear that the designation was no longer needed.
Mark Allen Baker, The World Colored Heavyweight Championship, 1876-1937
Why?
In the Preface of his latest book, The World Colored Heavyweight Championship, 1876-1937, award winning author Mark Allen Baker explains why he wrote about “the color line” in boxing: “[It] was originally used in reference to the racial segregation that existed in the United States after the abolition of slavery. So how in the world did it end up in boxing? Did the sport eliminate the color line? Searching for answers, I found none. . . . I discovered intriguing books on the periphery of the issue, but no single reference that got to the heart of the matter. There were no reliable sources for all the details I sought.”
Baker contuned: “[I used] the fight game as my canvas. I immersed myself in the project for a year. Desiring a book that painted a picture of the color line, I needed an artist’s tool. I chose to use a vague title bestowed during the segregated era of boxing, the World Colored Heavyweight Championship, as my paintbrush. It was the perfect choice. As a leverage mechanism or a tool to counter racism, it brought to my canvas the realism I was looking for. The classification embraced some of the finest pugilists the sport has ever known . . . and elevated the Heavyweight Championship of the World into the most sought-after designation in all of sports.”
The color line, as Baker writes in his Introduction, “was racist behavior . . . and it was wrong.”
Interview
Roger Zotti: What was most challenging about writing your book?
Mark Allen Baker: Everything. There was nothing easy about this book. Nothing. Every step was a challenge filled with contradictions, or so it seemed. Sources were limited. Due to the rampant racism many Black fighters endured, some had their ring battles ignored. And as a result, a precious part of boxing history was lost. Misconceptions, of which there were many around the topic, needed to be corrected.
For years, many authors shied away from this delicate and controversial topic. However, ignoring this aspect of boxing history doesn’t make it go away. I felt it was my obligation as a boxing historian to address the topic.
Including a tremendous amount of detail, a trademark of my work, so I have been told, this book will paint an entirely different vista of this period of boxing. Because of the way the book is structured, readers will be able to assemble a custom view of The World Colored Heavyweight Championship. And they will also be able to access what impact, if any, the title had on the color line.
Every boxing fan has a vision of the Heavyweight Championship of the World. Well, it is about to change.
RZ: Obviously, Jack Johnson played a key role in challenging the color line. And of course, Joe Louis did too.
MAB: Jack Johnson challenged ‘the color line’ in the ring, although the title and the black fighters who contended for it continued until the reign of Joe Louis a generation later. [My book] traces the advent and demise of the Championship, the stories of the talented professional athletes who won it, and the demarcation of the color line both in and out of the ring.
RZ: In your introduction you write that Louis “sealed the color line’s casket with three more nails, or events, if you will.” Those three nails are—
MAB: —first, he avenged his loss to Max Schmeling in 1938. Second, he defeated by knockout his good friend John Henry Lewis in 1939, which was only the second world heavyweight title fight between two Black fighters.
RZ: And the last nail—
MAB: —was that Louis defended his world heavyweight title 25 times and held it for 12 years.
RZ: As we speak, what are you working on?
MAB: Well, currently, I am working on my twenty-fifth book. It will be my fourth biography. I participate in both the regional and national book markets. I also fact check titles. With regard to boxing, I have been involved with about a dozen titles.
My grandfather was a club boxer in upstate New York, and my father was a professional baseball player—he was a teammate of Rocky Marciano’s brother Louis (Marchegiano). As a child I corresponded with many fighters including Gene Tunney. To this very day, I remain close to many members of the boxing community and their families.
Most are aware I have been involved with the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York since it began. Hank Kaplan, Herb Goldman, along with Ed Brophy and myself, handled most of the early inductee biographies. I published all the early bound Press Kits which included both long and short biographies, quotes, and a list of inductees.
Larry, Harry, and Sam
Rich in historical insight, thoroughly researched, and enhanced by many photographs, Baker’s extraordinary The World Colored Heavyweight Championship, 1876-1937, is a book to read, savor and discuss. It’s a book dealing with a crucial time in boxing and simultaneously is a lesson in American history.
I’m concerned here with just three of the heavyweights Baker writes about whose skin color prevented them from fighting for the world heavyweight title.
Born in 1901, Toronto, Canada’s Larry Gains—he was nicknamed “The Toronto Terror”—began his pro boxing career in 1923, retired in 1942, and posted a 118-22-5 (63 K0s/ 14 KO’ by) record. At one time he was the British Empire heavyweight champion. He also won the Canadian heavyweight championship in 1931. Gains died in 1983.
Gains and Ernest Hemingway—the writer was living with his wife in Paris at the time—became friends. In Hemingway’s memoir of his life in Paris, A Moveable Feast, he praised Gains’ fighting ability, but was too harsh when he criticized what happened to him in his first pro fight, a knockout loss to Frank Moody. Hemingway neglected to mention Moody had 118 fights before fighting the nineteen-year-old Gains. Nevertheless, Hemingway closely followed Gains’ boxing career.
Gains, who stood six foot one and weighed between 190 and 200 pounds, held the World Colored Heavyweight Championship twice, and authored The Impossible Dream, his autobiography.
It’s worth noting what Gains wrote about his victory over future heavyweight champion Max Schmeling—they fought August 25, 1925, in Cologne. “My tactics for this one were very simple,” he said. Knowing that Schmeling possessed a devastating right hand, “I had to stay away from it,” which he did in round one. In round two “I caught the German with a left hook to the body and crossed over with a right . . . and Max was gone. You have to remember that those were the early days for Max, and that I was the more experienced man. So I don’t read too much into that result.”
Gains’ comments about his win were humble and honest. Rare qualities in any sport today.
Turning to Harry Wills . . . Hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana, standing six foot three, and weighing between 205 and 215 pounds, the man nicknamed the Black Panther claimed the World Colored Heavyweight Championship after defeating Sam McVey in 1915.
Wills called out White fighters like Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion, and former heavyweight title holder Jess Willard. “’I am willing to meet either Willard or Dempsey for any number of rounds,’ Baker quotes him as saying, ‘and let the entire receipts go to any war fund designated by a committee.’”
But Dempsey’s manager Jack Kearns rebuffed the challenge—Willard did, too—and in a slick rationalization why Dempsey wouldn’t fight Wills, Kearns said, ‘”There are just as good White boxers as there are Colored, and if Jack licks them there will be no need of him meeting the Black boys to prove that he is the best in the class.’”
Baker counters Kearns’ remarks with a quote from the El Paso Herald : “‘When a man lays claim to the championship of the world he should be prepared to defend that claim against any man, White, Black, Red, Brown, or Yellow. For a champion to bar a man because of the color of his skin is to make himself look ridiculous. There is no room for argument on the point.’”
The highly regarded Wills began fighting professionally in 1911 and retired in 1932 with a record of 70-9-3 (56 KOs/ 5 KO’ by). He died in 1958, age 66.
A word about the formidable Sam Langford. Nicknamed the Boston Bonecrusher, he stood 5’7½, weighed between 165 and 185 pounds, and had a reach of 71 inches. One of many Black boxers most White fighters refused to fight, Langford kept active by battling other Black boxers multiple times, including Wills (some sources say they fought between 18 and 22 times), Sam McVey, Battling Jim Johnson, and Joe Jeannette.
Jack Dempsey and Jack Johnson were among the fighters who avoided fighting Langford. Dempsey is alleged to have said, “There was one man I wouldn’t fight because I knew he would flatten me. I was afraid of Sam Langford.”
Johnson defeated Langford in 1906, but after he became heavyweight champion in 1908, he refused to fight him again. In Geoffrey C. Ward’s Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, the author writes that Johnson “backed out of his promise . . . to fight Sam Langford in London” because “ ’I beat Sam easy before, and a match between us wouldn’t draw.’” Well, maybe.
In Monte Cox’s article “Sugar Ray Robinson Again Named Greatest Boxer of All-Time,” in the IBRO Journal (2/26/2020), the author lists five fighters as having “the best record in boxing history in terms of their accomplishments and quality of opposition.” Langford is one of them. Cox points out that Langford fought “more fights against Hall of Famers than anyone else and had the second most wins with 26. . . . Langford also knocked out every top heavyweight of his day except the ones who refused him a title shot.”
As previously noted, Gains, Wills, and Langford were three of many Black prizefighters who were never given the opportunity—which they rightly deserved—to fight for the world heavyweight championship because of the color line.
In his autobiography, Gains speaks both for himself and for other talented Black heavyweights when he writes: “I dreamed of becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. But, for me, it was always the impossible dream, the unreachable star. The politics of the day were against it. The bar was up.”
Interview
RZ: Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you and/or your book?
MAB: Yes, there is. Some readers forget that authors deal with many obstacles during the production of a book. Please allow me to present a few examples: In some cases, such as biographies, relatives of the subject are still alive. I always try to be sensitive to any requests I receive from family members. We are restricted by criteria such as packaging, word counts and even the maximum number of photographs a title may include.
While my readers will verify that I always push these limits, I must also meet the criteria of the publisher; and many publishers no longer provide a photography budget. Use of a specific photograph of a classic ring battle can be very costly to an author and beyond reach to most boxing writers.
As a ring historian, my genuine love for the fight game drives me to do what I do. My greatest fear is that someone, like Battling Nelson, or even the contributions of the Attell family, will be forgotten. There are now hundreds of books about Muhammad Ali, and he certainly is worthy of each one; however, even he would agree we do the sport a disservice if we don’t recognize the contributions of others such as Sam Langford, Sam McVey, Joe Jeannette and Jack Johnson.
Conscious that fight fans work hard, I always seek to deliver a quality product.
RZ: And you’ve never disappointed your readers.
A regular contributor to the IBRO Journal, Roger Zotti has written two books about boxing, Friday Night World and The Proper Pugilist. Contact him at rogerzotti@aol.com for more information.