Study for your final exam!!!
Exam Dates:
Monday = 9th Period
Wednesday = 3rd & 8th Periods
Friday = 4th & 7th Periods
Below are some study tools. First, you will find the exact essay assignment as it appears on the test. Underneath that you will see 23 questions from the articles and videos we read and saw in class. If you know the answers to these 23 questions, you know all that you need to complete the non-essay portion of the exam (short answer, multiple choice, fill-in the blank).
Please email me with any questions at mr.donohue@gmail.com.
Good luck!
-Mr. Donohue
SPORTS IN SOCIETY EXAM ESSAYWeek of Monday, March 2
Which athlete (or team) do you respect the most for their contributions to society: Jack Johnson, Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, or The Harlem Globetrotters? Choose one and defend your choice while comparing it to two other athletes. Be sure to follow the rubric below.
The essay is worth 30 points. 6 points will be awarded in each of the following areas:
1) State at least 3 reasons why you chose this athlete (only mention athletic achievements if they were major moments of change in society).
2) Give one reason why you might choose each of the other two athletes instead (2 reasons total).
3) Two athletic feats your athlete is known for.
4) Be sure to include at least six historical facts about your athlete (may overlap with other areas of the rubric).
5) Spelling, grammar, punctuation, and proper essay form
ESSAY FORM:
Introduction: state your opinion and begin to back it up with your reasons.
At least one body paragraph: Compare your athlete to two other athletes. Give reasons why other athletes may have had great contributions to society, but state why your choice is better. Be sure to use details to support your opinion.
Conclusion: Restate and add new ideas.
STUDY QUESTIONS
1) What do we learn about JJ’s parents?
2) What was a “battle royal”?
3) Was Johnson considered a “smart” boxer?
4) Who was Jack Jefferies?
5) What was Johnson’s reaction to being told who he should date?
6) How did Johnson handle racial insults during his fights?
7) What do we learn about Joe Louis’ parents?
8) What were some of Joe Louis’ rules? Why did he have these rules?
9) What was the difference between the “public” and “private” Joe Louis?
10) What did Louis need to do to claim the heavyweight championship in his own mind?
11) How was Louis “betrayed” by America?
12) What was Louis’ job in Las Vegas?
13) What was Owens’ family heritage?
14) What risk did Luz Long take in befriending Owens?
15) What was Jackie Robinson’s natural reaction in the face of discrimination?
16) What was Dodger president Branch Rickey looking for when he first talked with Robinson?
17) When did Robinson debut in the Major Leagues?
18) What famous act did Pee Wee Reese undertake to help Robinson during his first year?
19) What did America think of African -American basketball players before the Globetrotters?
20) Where were the Globetrotters originally from?
21) What was the result of the first Lakers-Globetrotters game? What impact did it have on the sporting world?
22) What Olympic events did Jim Thorpe win?
23) How many times did Babe Didrikson win the US Open?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Homework Due Wednesday, February 24!
Read the Jackie Robinson article and answer the questions below. (Hint: The answers appear in order throughout the article).
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Owens pierced a myth
By Larry Schwartz
ESPN.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For most athletes, Jesse Owens' performance one spring afternoon in 1935 would be the accomplishment of a lifetime. In 45 minutes, he established three world records and tied another.
Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics.
But that was merely an appetizer for Owens. In one week in the summer of 1936, on the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race.
Owens' story is one of a high-profile sports star making a statement that transcended athletics, spilling over into the world of global politics. Berlin, on the verge of World War II, was bristling with Nazism, red-and-black swastikas flying everywhere. Brown-shirted Storm Troopers goose-stepped while Adolf Hitler postured, harangued, threatened. A montage of evil was played over the chillingly familiar Nazi anthem: "Deutschland Uber Alles."
This was the background for the 1936 Olympics. When Owens finished competing, the African-American son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves had single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy.
He gave four virtuoso performances, winning gold medals in the 100- and 200- meter dashes, the long jump and on America's 4x100 relay team. Score it: Owens 4, Hitler 0.
A remarkably even-keeled and magnanimous human being, Owens never rubbed it in. Just as sure as he knew fascism was evil, he also knew his country had a ways to go too in improving life for African-Americans.
"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Owens wasn't complaining. That wasn't his style. He believed it was his job "to try to make things better."
Born James Cleveland Owens on Sept. 12, 1913, in Oakville, Ala., he was often ill as a child, suffering from both chronic bronchial congestion and several bouts of pneumonia. Inadequate housing, food and clothing didn't help his health.
By the age of seven he was expected to pick 100 pounds of cotton a day. At nine his family moved to Cleveland. When a teacher asked his name, he answered, "J.C.," which is what he was called. The teacher misunderstood his Southern drawl and the name was Jesse from then on.
As a teenager he set or tied national high school records in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the long jump (called the broad jump then). At Ohio State, he was not a good student but he was easily the swiftest on the track.
Two weeks before the 1935 Big Ten Championships, Owens was involved in some playful hi-jinks with his roommates. But the prank backfired and he slipped on water during his getaway, severely injuring his tailbone.
On May 25 in Ann Arbor, Mich., Owens couldn't even bend over to touch his knees. But as the sophomore settled in for his first race, he said the pain "miraculously disappeared."
3:15 -- The "Buckeye Bullet" ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the world record. 3:25 -- In his only long jump, he leaped 26-8 1/4, a world record that would last 25 years.
3:34 -- His 20.3 seconds bettered the world record in the 220-yard dash.
4:00 -- With his 22.6 seconds in the 220-yard low hurdles, he became the first person to break 23 seconds in the event.
Some credit Owens with setting five world records, saying he also beat the marks for the shorter 200 meters and 200-meter low hurdles.
In his junior year at Ohio State, Owens competed in 42 events and won them all, including four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships and three at the Olympic Trials.
In Germany, the Nazis portrayed African-Americans as inferior and ridiculed the United States for relying on "black auxiliaries." One German official even complained that the Americans were letting "non-humans, like Owens and other Negro athletes," compete.
But the German people felt otherwise. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin's glittering Olympic Stadium and his autograph or picture was sought as he walked the streets.
On Aug. 3, the 5-foot-10, 165-pound Owens won his first final, taking the 100 meters in 10.3, edging out Ralph Metcalfe, also an African-American.
The next day, Owens was almost out of the long jump shortly after qualifying began. He fouled on his first two jumps, though he was stunned when officials counted a practice run down the runway and into the pit as an attempt.
With one jump remaining, Luz Long, a tall, blue-eyed, blond German long jumper who was his stiffest competition, introduced himself. He suggested that Owens make a mark several inches before the takeoff board and jump from there to play it safe. Owens took the advice, and qualified.
In the finals that afternoon, Long's fifth jump matched Owens' 25-10. But Owens leaped 26-3¾ on his next attempt and won the gold medal with a final jump of 26-5½. The first to congratulate the Olympic record holder was Long, who looked like the model Nazi but wasn't.
"It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens said. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II." Owens, though, would continue to correspond with Long's family.
In the 200-meter dash on August 5, Owens won in an Olympic record of 20.7 seconds, beating out Mack Robinson, the older brother of Jackie Robinson.
That was supposed to be the end of Owens' Olympic participation. But from out of the blue, Owens and Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jews on the U.S. track team, on the 4x100-meter relay.
The rumor was that the Nazi hierarchy had asked U.S. officials not to humiliate Germany further by using two Jews to add to the gold medals the African-Americans already had won. Glickman blamed U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage for acquiescing to the Nazis.
On August 9, the 4x100 relay team, with Owens running leadoff, won by 15 yards and its world-record time of 39.8 seconds would last 20 years. Upon Owens' return to New York and a ticker-tape parade, he had to ride the freight elevator to a reception in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria. He was treated as a kind of curiosity. When endorsements didn't come his way, he made money by, among other activities, running against horses and dogs.
"People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?" Owens said. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals."
Not until the fifties did he achieve financial security, becoming a public speaker for corporations and opening a public-relations firm.
In a 1950 Associated Press poll, he was voted the greatest track and field star for the first half of century, outpolling Jim Thorpe by almost three to one.
In 1976, President Ford presented Owens with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow upon a civilian.
Owens, a-pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, died of lung cancer at age 66 on March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Ariz.
Four years later, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honor.
A decade after his death, President Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bush called his victories in Berlin "an unrivaled athletic triumph, but more than that, a triumph for all humanity."
JACKIE ROBINSON QUESTIONS
1) What was Jackie Robinson’s natural reaction in the face of discrimination?
2) What was Dodger president Branch Rickey looking for when he first talked with Robinson?
3) What major events in American race relations happened after Robinson crossed the color barrier?
4) What did Robinson face when he entered the Major Leagues and how did he handle it?
5) What awards did Robinson win as a baseball player?
6) What type of player was Robinson? What was he known for?
7) When and where was Robinson born? Where was he raised?
8) What sports did Robinson letter in during college?
9) Why was Robinson court-martialed while in the army?
10) What was commissioner Happy Chandler’s attitude about race in sports?
11) When did Robinson debut in the Major Leagues?
12) What was Pee Wee Reese’s famous act to help Robinson during his first year?
13) How did Robinson begin to act by 1949? What award did he win that year?
14) What job did Robinson have after retiring?
15) What did Robinson suffer from after retiring?
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Owens pierced a myth
By Larry Schwartz
ESPN.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For most athletes, Jesse Owens' performance one spring afternoon in 1935 would be the accomplishment of a lifetime. In 45 minutes, he established three world records and tied another.
Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics.
But that was merely an appetizer for Owens. In one week in the summer of 1936, on the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race.
Owens' story is one of a high-profile sports star making a statement that transcended athletics, spilling over into the world of global politics. Berlin, on the verge of World War II, was bristling with Nazism, red-and-black swastikas flying everywhere. Brown-shirted Storm Troopers goose-stepped while Adolf Hitler postured, harangued, threatened. A montage of evil was played over the chillingly familiar Nazi anthem: "Deutschland Uber Alles."
This was the background for the 1936 Olympics. When Owens finished competing, the African-American son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves had single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy.
He gave four virtuoso performances, winning gold medals in the 100- and 200- meter dashes, the long jump and on America's 4x100 relay team. Score it: Owens 4, Hitler 0.
A remarkably even-keeled and magnanimous human being, Owens never rubbed it in. Just as sure as he knew fascism was evil, he also knew his country had a ways to go too in improving life for African-Americans.
"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Owens wasn't complaining. That wasn't his style. He believed it was his job "to try to make things better."
Born James Cleveland Owens on Sept. 12, 1913, in Oakville, Ala., he was often ill as a child, suffering from both chronic bronchial congestion and several bouts of pneumonia. Inadequate housing, food and clothing didn't help his health.
By the age of seven he was expected to pick 100 pounds of cotton a day. At nine his family moved to Cleveland. When a teacher asked his name, he answered, "J.C.," which is what he was called. The teacher misunderstood his Southern drawl and the name was Jesse from then on.
As a teenager he set or tied national high school records in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the long jump (called the broad jump then). At Ohio State, he was not a good student but he was easily the swiftest on the track.
Two weeks before the 1935 Big Ten Championships, Owens was involved in some playful hi-jinks with his roommates. But the prank backfired and he slipped on water during his getaway, severely injuring his tailbone.
On May 25 in Ann Arbor, Mich., Owens couldn't even bend over to touch his knees. But as the sophomore settled in for his first race, he said the pain "miraculously disappeared."
3:15 -- The "Buckeye Bullet" ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the world record. 3:25 -- In his only long jump, he leaped 26-8 1/4, a world record that would last 25 years.
3:34 -- His 20.3 seconds bettered the world record in the 220-yard dash.
4:00 -- With his 22.6 seconds in the 220-yard low hurdles, he became the first person to break 23 seconds in the event.
Some credit Owens with setting five world records, saying he also beat the marks for the shorter 200 meters and 200-meter low hurdles.
In his junior year at Ohio State, Owens competed in 42 events and won them all, including four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships and three at the Olympic Trials.
In Germany, the Nazis portrayed African-Americans as inferior and ridiculed the United States for relying on "black auxiliaries." One German official even complained that the Americans were letting "non-humans, like Owens and other Negro athletes," compete.
But the German people felt otherwise. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin's glittering Olympic Stadium and his autograph or picture was sought as he walked the streets.
On Aug. 3, the 5-foot-10, 165-pound Owens won his first final, taking the 100 meters in 10.3, edging out Ralph Metcalfe, also an African-American.
The next day, Owens was almost out of the long jump shortly after qualifying began. He fouled on his first two jumps, though he was stunned when officials counted a practice run down the runway and into the pit as an attempt.
With one jump remaining, Luz Long, a tall, blue-eyed, blond German long jumper who was his stiffest competition, introduced himself. He suggested that Owens make a mark several inches before the takeoff board and jump from there to play it safe. Owens took the advice, and qualified.
In the finals that afternoon, Long's fifth jump matched Owens' 25-10. But Owens leaped 26-3¾ on his next attempt and won the gold medal with a final jump of 26-5½. The first to congratulate the Olympic record holder was Long, who looked like the model Nazi but wasn't.
"It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens said. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II." Owens, though, would continue to correspond with Long's family.
In the 200-meter dash on August 5, Owens won in an Olympic record of 20.7 seconds, beating out Mack Robinson, the older brother of Jackie Robinson.
That was supposed to be the end of Owens' Olympic participation. But from out of the blue, Owens and Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jews on the U.S. track team, on the 4x100-meter relay.
The rumor was that the Nazi hierarchy had asked U.S. officials not to humiliate Germany further by using two Jews to add to the gold medals the African-Americans already had won. Glickman blamed U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage for acquiescing to the Nazis.
On August 9, the 4x100 relay team, with Owens running leadoff, won by 15 yards and its world-record time of 39.8 seconds would last 20 years. Upon Owens' return to New York and a ticker-tape parade, he had to ride the freight elevator to a reception in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria. He was treated as a kind of curiosity. When endorsements didn't come his way, he made money by, among other activities, running against horses and dogs.
"People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?" Owens said. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals."
Not until the fifties did he achieve financial security, becoming a public speaker for corporations and opening a public-relations firm.
In a 1950 Associated Press poll, he was voted the greatest track and field star for the first half of century, outpolling Jim Thorpe by almost three to one.
In 1976, President Ford presented Owens with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow upon a civilian.
Owens, a-pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, died of lung cancer at age 66 on March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Ariz.
Four years later, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honor.
A decade after his death, President Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bush called his victories in Berlin "an unrivaled athletic triumph, but more than that, a triumph for all humanity."
JACKIE ROBINSON QUESTIONS
1) What was Jackie Robinson’s natural reaction in the face of discrimination?
2) What was Dodger president Branch Rickey looking for when he first talked with Robinson?
3) What major events in American race relations happened after Robinson crossed the color barrier?
4) What did Robinson face when he entered the Major Leagues and how did he handle it?
5) What awards did Robinson win as a baseball player?
6) What type of player was Robinson? What was he known for?
7) When and where was Robinson born? Where was he raised?
8) What sports did Robinson letter in during college?
9) Why was Robinson court-martialed while in the army?
10) What was commissioner Happy Chandler’s attitude about race in sports?
11) When did Robinson debut in the Major Leagues?
12) What was Pee Wee Reese’s famous act to help Robinson during his first year?
13) How did Robinson begin to act by 1949? What award did he win that year?
14) What job did Robinson have after retiring?
15) What did Robinson suffer from after retiring?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Homeword Due Tuesday, February 24th!
For Tuesday, finish the Jesse Owens article and questions (below). Then find 3 similarities and/or differences between Jesse Owens and Joe Louis (think about their events against the Nazis!!!)
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
QUESTIONS
What year did Jesse Owens compete in the Berlin Olympics?
How did the roar of ‘Heil Hitler’ make Owens feel?
What was Owens’ family heritage?
What events did Owens win golds in?
What reception did Owens get back in America?
What was Owens’ reaction to that reception?
Where and when was Owens born?
How was Owens’ health as a child?
What task was Owens expected to perform every day at the age of 7?
How did Owens perform as a sophomore at Ohio State?
What did he accomplish as a junior?
What did the Nazis call African-American athletes? How did the German people treat Owens?
What happened to allow Owens to qualify for the finals of the 1936 Olympic long jump?
What risk did Luz Long take in befriending Owens?
Why was Owens added to the 4x100 team in 1936?
What happened to Owens after he returned to America from the 1936 Olympics?
What honors were given to Owens after his death?
Owens pierced a myth
By Larry Schwartz
Special to ESPN.com
"This was the guy that tweaked Hitler's mustache. This is the guy who showed the master race they were the minor race. Jesse Owens was an authentic American hero from then on," says Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Jim Murray on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.
For most athletes, Jesse Owens' performance one spring afternoon in 1935 would be the accomplishment of a lifetime. In 45 minutes, he established three world records and tied another.
But that was merely an appetizer for Owens. In one week in the summer of 1936, on the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race.
Owens' story is one of a high-profile sports star making a statement that transcended athletics, spilling over into the world of global politics. Berlin, on the verge of World War II, was bristling with Nazism, red-and-black swastikas flying everywhere. Brown-shirted storm troopers goose-stepped while Adolph Hitler postured, harangued, threatened. A montage of evil was played over the chillingly familiar Nazi anthem: "Deutschland Uber Alles."
"I remember seeing Hitler coming in with his entourage and the storm troopers standing shoulder to shoulder like an iron fence," Owens said about Germany's leader entering Olympic Stadium. "Then came the roar of 'Heil, Hitler!' from 100,000 throats. And all those arms outstretched. It was eerie and frightening."
This was the background for the 1936 Olympics. When Owens finished competing, the African-American son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves had single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy.
He gave four virtuoso performances, winning gold medals in the 100- and 200- meter dashes, the long jump and on America's 4x100 relay team. Score it: Owens 4, Hitler 0.
A remarkably even-keeled and magnanimous human being, Owens never rubbed it in. Just as sure as he knew fascism was evil, he also knew his country had a ways to go too in improving life for African-Americans.
"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Owens wasn't complaining. That wasn't his style. He believed it was his job "to try to make things better."
Born James Cleveland Owens on Sept. 12, 1913, in Oakville, Ala., he was often ill as a child, suffering from both chronic bronchial congestion and several bouts of pneumonia. Inadequate housing, food and clothing didn't help his health.
By the age of seven he was expected to pick 100 pounds of cotton a day. In the early 1920s, his family moved to Cleveland. When a teacher asked his name, he answered, "J.C.," which is what he was called. The teacher misunderstood his Southern drawl and the name was Jesse from then on.
As a teenager he set or tied national high school records in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the long jump (called the broad jump then). At Ohio State, he was not a good student but he was easily the swiftest on the track.
Two weeks before the 1935 Big Ten Championships, Owens was involved in some playful hi-jinks with his roommates. But the prank backfired and he slipped on water during his getaway, severely injuring his tailbone.
On May 25 in Ann Arbor, Mich., Owens couldn't even bend over to touch his knees. But as the sophomore settled in for his first race, he said the pain "miraculously disappeared."
• 3:15 - The "Buckeye Bullet" ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the world record
• 3:25 - In his only long jump, he leaped 26-8¼, a world record that would last 25 years.
• 3:34 - His 20.3 seconds bettered the world record in the 220-yard dash.
• 4:00 - With his 22.6 seconds in the 220-yard low hurdles, he became the first person to break 23 seconds in the event.
In his junior year at Ohio State, Owens competed in 42 events and won them all, including four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships and three at the Olympic Trials.
In Germany, the Nazis portrayed African-Americans as inferior and ridiculed the United States for relying on "black auxiliaries." One German official even complained that the Americans were letting "non-humans, like Owens and other Negro athletes," compete.
But the German people felt otherwise. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin's glittering Olympic Stadium and his autograph or picture was sought as he walked the streets.
On August 3, the 5-10, 165-pound Owens won his first final, taking the 100 meters in 10.3, edging out Ralph Metcalfe, also an African-American.
The next day, Owens was almost out of the long jump shortly after qualifying began.
He fouled on his first two jumps, though he was stunned when officials counted a practice run down the runway and into the pit as an attempt.
With one jump remaining, Owens said Luz Long introduced himself and suggested that
Owens make a mark several inches before the takeoff board and jump from there to play it safe. Owens took the advice from his stiffest competitor, a tall, blue-eyed blond German, and qualified.
In the finals that afternoon, Long's fifth jump matched Owens' 25-10. But Owens leaped 26-3¾ on his next attempt and won the gold medal with a final jump of 26-5½.
The first to congratulate the Olympic record holder was Long, who looked like the model Nazi but wasn't.
"It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens said.
"You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II."
Owens, though, would continue to correspond with Long's family.
In the 200-meter dash on August 5, Owens won in an Olympic record of 20.7 seconds, beating out Mack Robinson, the older brother of Jackie Robinson.
That was supposed to be the end of Owens' Olympic participation. But from out of the blue, Owens and Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jews on the U.S. track team, on the 4x100-meter relay.
The rumor was that the Nazi hierarchy had asked U.S. officials not to humiliate
Germany further by using two Jews to add to the gold medals the African-Americans already had won. Glickman blamed U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage for acquiescing to the Nazis.
On August 9, the 4x100 relay team, with Owens running leadoff, won by 15 yards and its world-record time of 39.8 seconds would last 20 years.
Upon Owens' return to New York and a ticker-tape parade, he had to ride the freight elevator to a reception in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria. He was treated as a kind of curiosity. When endorsements didn't come his way, he made money by, among other activities, running against horses and dogs.
"People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?" Owens said. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals."
Not until the fifties did he achieve financial security, becoming a public speaker for corporations and opening a public-relations firm.
In a 1950 Associated Press poll, he was voted the greatest track and field star for the first half of century, outpolling Jim Thorpe by almost three to one.
In 1976, President Ford presented Owens with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow upon a civilian.
Owens, a-pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, died of lung cancer at 66 on March 31, 1980 in Tucson.
Four years later, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honor.
A decade after his death, former President George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bush called his victories in Berlin "an unrivaled athletic triumph, but more than that, a triumph for all humanity."
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
QUESTIONS
What year did Jesse Owens compete in the Berlin Olympics?
How did the roar of ‘Heil Hitler’ make Owens feel?
What was Owens’ family heritage?
What events did Owens win golds in?
What reception did Owens get back in America?
What was Owens’ reaction to that reception?
Where and when was Owens born?
How was Owens’ health as a child?
What task was Owens expected to perform every day at the age of 7?
How did Owens perform as a sophomore at Ohio State?
What did he accomplish as a junior?
What did the Nazis call African-American athletes? How did the German people treat Owens?
What happened to allow Owens to qualify for the finals of the 1936 Olympic long jump?
What risk did Luz Long take in befriending Owens?
Why was Owens added to the 4x100 team in 1936?
What happened to Owens after he returned to America from the 1936 Olympics?
What honors were given to Owens after his death?
Owens pierced a myth
By Larry Schwartz
Special to ESPN.com
"This was the guy that tweaked Hitler's mustache. This is the guy who showed the master race they were the minor race. Jesse Owens was an authentic American hero from then on," says Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Jim Murray on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.
For most athletes, Jesse Owens' performance one spring afternoon in 1935 would be the accomplishment of a lifetime. In 45 minutes, he established three world records and tied another.
But that was merely an appetizer for Owens. In one week in the summer of 1936, on the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race.
Owens' story is one of a high-profile sports star making a statement that transcended athletics, spilling over into the world of global politics. Berlin, on the verge of World War II, was bristling with Nazism, red-and-black swastikas flying everywhere. Brown-shirted storm troopers goose-stepped while Adolph Hitler postured, harangued, threatened. A montage of evil was played over the chillingly familiar Nazi anthem: "Deutschland Uber Alles."
"I remember seeing Hitler coming in with his entourage and the storm troopers standing shoulder to shoulder like an iron fence," Owens said about Germany's leader entering Olympic Stadium. "Then came the roar of 'Heil, Hitler!' from 100,000 throats. And all those arms outstretched. It was eerie and frightening."
This was the background for the 1936 Olympics. When Owens finished competing, the African-American son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves had single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy.
He gave four virtuoso performances, winning gold medals in the 100- and 200- meter dashes, the long jump and on America's 4x100 relay team. Score it: Owens 4, Hitler 0.
A remarkably even-keeled and magnanimous human being, Owens never rubbed it in. Just as sure as he knew fascism was evil, he also knew his country had a ways to go too in improving life for African-Americans.
"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Owens wasn't complaining. That wasn't his style. He believed it was his job "to try to make things better."
Born James Cleveland Owens on Sept. 12, 1913, in Oakville, Ala., he was often ill as a child, suffering from both chronic bronchial congestion and several bouts of pneumonia. Inadequate housing, food and clothing didn't help his health.
By the age of seven he was expected to pick 100 pounds of cotton a day. In the early 1920s, his family moved to Cleveland. When a teacher asked his name, he answered, "J.C.," which is what he was called. The teacher misunderstood his Southern drawl and the name was Jesse from then on.
As a teenager he set or tied national high school records in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the long jump (called the broad jump then). At Ohio State, he was not a good student but he was easily the swiftest on the track.
Two weeks before the 1935 Big Ten Championships, Owens was involved in some playful hi-jinks with his roommates. But the prank backfired and he slipped on water during his getaway, severely injuring his tailbone.
On May 25 in Ann Arbor, Mich., Owens couldn't even bend over to touch his knees. But as the sophomore settled in for his first race, he said the pain "miraculously disappeared."
• 3:15 - The "Buckeye Bullet" ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the world record
• 3:25 - In his only long jump, he leaped 26-8¼, a world record that would last 25 years.
• 3:34 - His 20.3 seconds bettered the world record in the 220-yard dash.
• 4:00 - With his 22.6 seconds in the 220-yard low hurdles, he became the first person to break 23 seconds in the event.
In his junior year at Ohio State, Owens competed in 42 events and won them all, including four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships and three at the Olympic Trials.
In Germany, the Nazis portrayed African-Americans as inferior and ridiculed the United States for relying on "black auxiliaries." One German official even complained that the Americans were letting "non-humans, like Owens and other Negro athletes," compete.
But the German people felt otherwise. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin's glittering Olympic Stadium and his autograph or picture was sought as he walked the streets.
On August 3, the 5-10, 165-pound Owens won his first final, taking the 100 meters in 10.3, edging out Ralph Metcalfe, also an African-American.
The next day, Owens was almost out of the long jump shortly after qualifying began.
He fouled on his first two jumps, though he was stunned when officials counted a practice run down the runway and into the pit as an attempt.
With one jump remaining, Owens said Luz Long introduced himself and suggested that
Owens make a mark several inches before the takeoff board and jump from there to play it safe. Owens took the advice from his stiffest competitor, a tall, blue-eyed blond German, and qualified.
In the finals that afternoon, Long's fifth jump matched Owens' 25-10. But Owens leaped 26-3¾ on his next attempt and won the gold medal with a final jump of 26-5½.
The first to congratulate the Olympic record holder was Long, who looked like the model Nazi but wasn't.
"It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens said.
"You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II."
Owens, though, would continue to correspond with Long's family.
In the 200-meter dash on August 5, Owens won in an Olympic record of 20.7 seconds, beating out Mack Robinson, the older brother of Jackie Robinson.
That was supposed to be the end of Owens' Olympic participation. But from out of the blue, Owens and Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jews on the U.S. track team, on the 4x100-meter relay.
The rumor was that the Nazi hierarchy had asked U.S. officials not to humiliate
Germany further by using two Jews to add to the gold medals the African-Americans already had won. Glickman blamed U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage for acquiescing to the Nazis.
On August 9, the 4x100 relay team, with Owens running leadoff, won by 15 yards and its world-record time of 39.8 seconds would last 20 years.
Upon Owens' return to New York and a ticker-tape parade, he had to ride the freight elevator to a reception in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria. He was treated as a kind of curiosity. When endorsements didn't come his way, he made money by, among other activities, running against horses and dogs.
"People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?" Owens said. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals."
Not until the fifties did he achieve financial security, becoming a public speaker for corporations and opening a public-relations firm.
In a 1950 Associated Press poll, he was voted the greatest track and field star for the first half of century, outpolling Jim Thorpe by almost three to one.
In 1976, President Ford presented Owens with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow upon a civilian.
Owens, a-pack-a-day smoker for 35 years, died of lung cancer at 66 on March 31, 1980 in Tucson.
Four years later, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honor.
A decade after his death, former President George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bush called his victories in Berlin "an unrivaled athletic triumph, but more than that, a triumph for all humanity."
Friday, February 13, 2009
Mid-Term Assignment, Due Monday February 23th, 2009
Below you will find the mid-term assignment on Jack Johnson. Select one of the three options and complete for your first day back. A rubric for each option is located below the assignment.
Use notes on Jack Johnson and refer to the article from class for help (found several posts below this one). Also, google search "Jack Johnson" if you need additional help.
Have a great break!
-Mr. Donohue
Sports in Society Mid-Term Assignment:
Jack Johnson
Due: Monday, February 23
Length: 2 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12-point font
Assignment: Choose one of the following three options.
Option 1: Write two one-page journal entries from the point of view of Jim Jefferies. The first entry is just before the “Fight of the Century” (Johnson vs Jefferies) and the second entry will reflect his thoughts two months after the fight.
Be sure to include:
*A realistic date for both entries – remember the fight took place on July 4th, 1910.
*In your first entry, mention the odds of the fight and the expectations of the white press/populace. Why are you being called out of retirement? Who has Johnson faced and beaten before this fight? Do you think you will be the guy to stop him?
*In your second entry, mention how African-Americans and whites are reacting to the outcome. Is this win good for America? Could you have beaten Johnson in your prime?
*Fact: Jefferies was 35 at the time of the fight, but out of boxing for six years. Johnson was 32.
Option 2: You are a columnist for an African-American newspaper writing an opinionated column about “The Fight of the Century”.
Was the fight all you expected it to be? Are you frightened about the aftermath? Is this a significant moment in African-American history? How will you encourage the public, regardless of skin color, to react?
Option 3: Write a one-on-one interview between yourself and Jack Johnson after “The Fight of the Century”? What do you most want to know? What do you want people to hear from Jack Johnson? Be sure to cover topics from Johnson’s life and from his fights in the ring. Also, remember that at the time of this interview major race riots are going on around America. What information would you want from Johnson regarding America’s reaction to the “Fight of the Century”?
Sports in Society Mid-Term Assignment: Jack Johnson
Rubric
Option 1: Jim Jefferies’ Journal Entries
The following areas will be graded on a scale of 1-5:
*A reflection on society’s expectations before the fight and reaction after the fight.
*6-8 historical facts from the Jack Johnson article or video. Also, the journal entries must be properly dated.
*The diary entries are clearly written with Jim Jefferies’ voice (use ‘I’, not ‘he’ or ‘you’).
*Reality – keep your writing consistent with what you have learned about American society and the individuals you have studied. (For example, do not write that white America wanted Jim Jefferies to lose the fight).
*Spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Option 2: Sports Column from an African-American Newspaper.
The following areas will be graded on a scale of 1-5:
*Commentary on what Johnson’s victory means for the African-American community.
*6-8 historical facts from the Jack Johnson article or video.
*Your clear and sustained opinion throughout the column.
*Reality – keep your writing consistent with what you have learned about American society and the individuals you have studied. (See example above)
*Spelling, grammar, punctuation and paragraph separation.
Option 3: Jack Johnson Interview.
The following areas will be graded on a scale of 1-5:
*Relevant and informed questions from the interviewer (“Does your victory make you a hero?” is a good question, “What is your favorite color?” is not).
*6-8 historical facts from the Jack Johnson article or video.
*Realistic responses based upon what you have learned about Johnson.
*Proper use of interview format (below).
-Me: (write your question)
-Jack Johnson: (response) (you may write “JJ” after the first time he responds to a question)
*Spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Use notes on Jack Johnson and refer to the article from class for help (found several posts below this one). Also, google search "Jack Johnson" if you need additional help.
Have a great break!
-Mr. Donohue
Sports in Society Mid-Term Assignment:
Jack Johnson
Due: Monday, February 23
Length: 2 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12-point font
Assignment: Choose one of the following three options.
Option 1: Write two one-page journal entries from the point of view of Jim Jefferies. The first entry is just before the “Fight of the Century” (Johnson vs Jefferies) and the second entry will reflect his thoughts two months after the fight.
Be sure to include:
*A realistic date for both entries – remember the fight took place on July 4th, 1910.
*In your first entry, mention the odds of the fight and the expectations of the white press/populace. Why are you being called out of retirement? Who has Johnson faced and beaten before this fight? Do you think you will be the guy to stop him?
*In your second entry, mention how African-Americans and whites are reacting to the outcome. Is this win good for America? Could you have beaten Johnson in your prime?
*Fact: Jefferies was 35 at the time of the fight, but out of boxing for six years. Johnson was 32.
Option 2: You are a columnist for an African-American newspaper writing an opinionated column about “The Fight of the Century”.
Was the fight all you expected it to be? Are you frightened about the aftermath? Is this a significant moment in African-American history? How will you encourage the public, regardless of skin color, to react?
Option 3: Write a one-on-one interview between yourself and Jack Johnson after “The Fight of the Century”? What do you most want to know? What do you want people to hear from Jack Johnson? Be sure to cover topics from Johnson’s life and from his fights in the ring. Also, remember that at the time of this interview major race riots are going on around America. What information would you want from Johnson regarding America’s reaction to the “Fight of the Century”?
Sports in Society Mid-Term Assignment: Jack Johnson
Rubric
Option 1: Jim Jefferies’ Journal Entries
The following areas will be graded on a scale of 1-5:
*A reflection on society’s expectations before the fight and reaction after the fight.
*6-8 historical facts from the Jack Johnson article or video. Also, the journal entries must be properly dated.
*The diary entries are clearly written with Jim Jefferies’ voice (use ‘I’, not ‘he’ or ‘you’).
*Reality – keep your writing consistent with what you have learned about American society and the individuals you have studied. (For example, do not write that white America wanted Jim Jefferies to lose the fight).
*Spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Option 2: Sports Column from an African-American Newspaper.
The following areas will be graded on a scale of 1-5:
*Commentary on what Johnson’s victory means for the African-American community.
*6-8 historical facts from the Jack Johnson article or video.
*Your clear and sustained opinion throughout the column.
*Reality – keep your writing consistent with what you have learned about American society and the individuals you have studied. (See example above)
*Spelling, grammar, punctuation and paragraph separation.
Option 3: Jack Johnson Interview.
The following areas will be graded on a scale of 1-5:
*Relevant and informed questions from the interviewer (“Does your victory make you a hero?” is a good question, “What is your favorite color?” is not).
*6-8 historical facts from the Jack Johnson article or video.
*Realistic responses based upon what you have learned about Johnson.
*Proper use of interview format (below).
-Me: (write your question)
-Jack Johnson: (response) (you may write “JJ” after the first time he responds to a question)
*Spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
HW #6, Due Wednesday, February 11th!
For Wednesday, read the Joe Louis article below and answer the following questions:
1) How was Max Schmeling able to beat Joe Louis in their first fight?
2) How was Joe Louis viewed by the white public? How did it compare to how Jack Johnson was treated?
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
'Brown Bomber' was a hero to all
By Larry Schwartz
Special to ESPN.com
________________________________________
The son of an Alabama sharecropper, great grandson of a slave, great great grandson of a white slave owner became the first African-American to achieve lasting fame and popularity in the 20th century.
Joe Louis, in the far right corner, floored Max Schmeling three times and won their much-publicized June 22, 1938 rematch at Yankee Stadium in a first-round knockout.
In a time when his people were still subject to lynchings, discrimination and oppression, when the military was segregated and African-Americans weren't permitted to play Major League Baseball, Joe Louis was the first African-American to achieve hero worship that was previously reserved for whites only. When he started boxing in the 1930s, there were no African-Americans in positions of public prominence, none who commanded attention from whites.
"What my father did was enable white America to think of him as an American, not as a black," said his son, Joe Louis Jr. "By winning, he became white America's first black hero."
Louis was heavyweight champion of the world in an era when the heavyweight champion was, in the minds of many, the greatest man in the world. Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champ, wasn't popular with whites. Louis, on the other hand, converted all into his corner. When "The Brown Bomber" avenged his loss to Germany's Max Schmeling -- viewed as a Nazi symbol -- the entire country celebrated, not just African-Americans.
Louis' war-time patriotism in a racially divided country made him a symbol of national unity and purpose. Twice he donated his purse to military relief funds. He endeared himself even more to the American public when he said the U.S. would win World War II "because we're on God's side."
While some accused Louis of being an Uncle Tom, others realized it wasn't in his training or character to be militant. His uncommon sense of dignity, exemplified by his refusal to be pictured with a slice of watermelon, increased his popularity.
When some called Louis "a credit to his race," sportswriter Jimmy Cannon responded, "Yes, Louis is a credit to his race -- the human race."
He also was a credit to boxing, which often contributes to the worst in the human race. His championship reign, from 1937 until he retired in 1949, is the longest of any heavyweight. With his powerful left jab, his destructive two-fisted attack that he released with accuracy at short range, and his capacity for finishing a wounded opponent, the 6-foot-1½ fighter defeated all 25 of his challengers, another record.
Louis also was a winner with women. Though married four times, including twice to his first wife, he discreetly enjoyed the company of both African-American and white women, including Lena Horne, Sonja Henie and Lana Turner.
He was born Joseph Louis Barrow on May 13, 1914, in a shack in the cotton-field country near Lafayette, Ala. Besides being African-American, he also was part Indian and part white. His father was committed to a state hospital for the mentally ill before he was 2.
After Louis' mother heard her husband had died (he hadn't, though), she remarried. The children slept three to a bed in Alabama before the family moved to Detroit in the 1920s. Joe was learning cabinet-making in a vocational school and taking violin lessons when he turned to boxing at the request of a schoolmate.
Fighting under the name Joe Louis, so his mother wouldn't find out, he won 50 of 54 amateur bouts and gained the attention of John Roxborough, king of the numbers rackets in Detroit's African-American neighborhoods. Roxborough and Julian Black, a speakeasy owner who also ran numbers, convinced Louis to turn pro in 1934, and they became his managers.
To shape the fighter's image, Roxborough publicized seven commandments, which would be inoffensive to white Americans. They included: Never be photographed with a white woman, never gloat over a fallen (read white) opponent, never engage in fixed fights, and live and fight clean.
Louis won his first 27 fights, 23 by knockout, with his most impressive victories being a sixth-round TKO of Primo Carnera and a fourth-round KO of Max Baer, both former heavyweight champions. His undefeated streak ended on June 19, 1936 when Schmeling detected a chink in Louis' armor: Because Louis carried his left hand low, he was vulnerable to a counter right.
In the fourth round, Schmeling's overhand right dropped Louis, who never recovered, though he lasted until the 12th before two rights by Schmeling ended the fight. In the dressing room, Louis cried.
His road to the title had merely taken a detour. On June 22, 1937, he became the first African-American champ since Johnson when he dethroned James Braddock, knocking out "The Cinderella Man" in the eighth round. "For one night, in all the darktowns of America, the black man was king," wrote Alistair Cooke.
Louis became a symbol of African-American power in a time when they felt powerless. "Every Negro boy old enough to walk wanted to be the next Brown Bomber," said Malcolm X, then the leader of the militant Black Muslims.
Exactly one year later, Louis exacted his revenge on Schmeling. The fight was for more than the heavyweight championship, more than two individuals competing. It was built into a battle of two ideologies.
In one corner was Schmeling, representing Hitler (though Schmeling wasn't a Nazi) and everything fascism stood for. In the other corner was Louis, representing the U.S. and everything democracy meant. Louis was invited to the White House, where President Franklin Roosevelt felt the champ's biceps. "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany," he said.
There were reports of messages to Schmeling from Hitler warning him that he had better win for the glory of the Third Reich. Hitler hailed him as a paragon of Teutonic manhood and telephoned him personally before he left the dressing room.
Schmeling wasn't gone from the room long. Before some 70,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, Louis pulverized the reluctant Aryan figurehead, knocking him to the canvas three times. Two years of waiting ended for Louis after 124 seconds, with Schmeling lying broken on the canvas. Louis had crossed the line from champion to idol as Americans of all color and ancestry celebrated.
He went through a "Bum of the Month" club until he met former light-heavyweight champ Billy Conn on June 18, 1941. It appeared as if Louis was about to lose his title after 12 rounds, as he trailed by three and two rounds on two officials' scorecards. But Conn ignored his corner's instruction to box with caution, and the result was Louis knocking him out with two seconds left in the 13th round.
Louis enlisted in the Army in 1942 and fought close to 100 exhibitions before some two million servicemen. After the war, he knocked out Conn again ("He can run, but he can't hide") and won three other fights, including two with Jersey Joe Walcott, before abdicating his title.
However, because he needed money to pay back taxes, he returned. After not fighting for two years, he lost a one-sided decision to his successor as champ, Ezzard Charles, in 1950 and retired for good when Rocky Marciano knocked him out in the eighth round in 1951.
Louis' fights earned him close to $5 million, but the money went like three-minute rounds, mostly due to his extravagances and generosity. The IRS, conveniently forgetting Louis' generosity during the war, demanded a reported $1.2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties, and he suffered the humiliation of competing as a pro wrestler to help pay his debts. Following several stays in hospitals for cocaine addiction and paranoia, he became an "official greeter" at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Louis spent his last four years in a wheelchair before dying of a heart attack at 66 on April 12, 1981 in Las Vegas. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery at the request of President Ronald Reagan. In death, like in life, he was a hero.
1) How was Max Schmeling able to beat Joe Louis in their first fight?
2) How was Joe Louis viewed by the white public? How did it compare to how Jack Johnson was treated?
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
'Brown Bomber' was a hero to all
By Larry Schwartz
Special to ESPN.com
________________________________________
The son of an Alabama sharecropper, great grandson of a slave, great great grandson of a white slave owner became the first African-American to achieve lasting fame and popularity in the 20th century.
Joe Louis, in the far right corner, floored Max Schmeling three times and won their much-publicized June 22, 1938 rematch at Yankee Stadium in a first-round knockout.
In a time when his people were still subject to lynchings, discrimination and oppression, when the military was segregated and African-Americans weren't permitted to play Major League Baseball, Joe Louis was the first African-American to achieve hero worship that was previously reserved for whites only. When he started boxing in the 1930s, there were no African-Americans in positions of public prominence, none who commanded attention from whites.
"What my father did was enable white America to think of him as an American, not as a black," said his son, Joe Louis Jr. "By winning, he became white America's first black hero."
Louis was heavyweight champion of the world in an era when the heavyweight champion was, in the minds of many, the greatest man in the world. Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champ, wasn't popular with whites. Louis, on the other hand, converted all into his corner. When "The Brown Bomber" avenged his loss to Germany's Max Schmeling -- viewed as a Nazi symbol -- the entire country celebrated, not just African-Americans.
Louis' war-time patriotism in a racially divided country made him a symbol of national unity and purpose. Twice he donated his purse to military relief funds. He endeared himself even more to the American public when he said the U.S. would win World War II "because we're on God's side."
While some accused Louis of being an Uncle Tom, others realized it wasn't in his training or character to be militant. His uncommon sense of dignity, exemplified by his refusal to be pictured with a slice of watermelon, increased his popularity.
When some called Louis "a credit to his race," sportswriter Jimmy Cannon responded, "Yes, Louis is a credit to his race -- the human race."
He also was a credit to boxing, which often contributes to the worst in the human race. His championship reign, from 1937 until he retired in 1949, is the longest of any heavyweight. With his powerful left jab, his destructive two-fisted attack that he released with accuracy at short range, and his capacity for finishing a wounded opponent, the 6-foot-1½ fighter defeated all 25 of his challengers, another record.
Louis also was a winner with women. Though married four times, including twice to his first wife, he discreetly enjoyed the company of both African-American and white women, including Lena Horne, Sonja Henie and Lana Turner.
He was born Joseph Louis Barrow on May 13, 1914, in a shack in the cotton-field country near Lafayette, Ala. Besides being African-American, he also was part Indian and part white. His father was committed to a state hospital for the mentally ill before he was 2.
After Louis' mother heard her husband had died (he hadn't, though), she remarried. The children slept three to a bed in Alabama before the family moved to Detroit in the 1920s. Joe was learning cabinet-making in a vocational school and taking violin lessons when he turned to boxing at the request of a schoolmate.
Fighting under the name Joe Louis, so his mother wouldn't find out, he won 50 of 54 amateur bouts and gained the attention of John Roxborough, king of the numbers rackets in Detroit's African-American neighborhoods. Roxborough and Julian Black, a speakeasy owner who also ran numbers, convinced Louis to turn pro in 1934, and they became his managers.
To shape the fighter's image, Roxborough publicized seven commandments, which would be inoffensive to white Americans. They included: Never be photographed with a white woman, never gloat over a fallen (read white) opponent, never engage in fixed fights, and live and fight clean.
Louis won his first 27 fights, 23 by knockout, with his most impressive victories being a sixth-round TKO of Primo Carnera and a fourth-round KO of Max Baer, both former heavyweight champions. His undefeated streak ended on June 19, 1936 when Schmeling detected a chink in Louis' armor: Because Louis carried his left hand low, he was vulnerable to a counter right.
In the fourth round, Schmeling's overhand right dropped Louis, who never recovered, though he lasted until the 12th before two rights by Schmeling ended the fight. In the dressing room, Louis cried.
His road to the title had merely taken a detour. On June 22, 1937, he became the first African-American champ since Johnson when he dethroned James Braddock, knocking out "The Cinderella Man" in the eighth round. "For one night, in all the darktowns of America, the black man was king," wrote Alistair Cooke.
Louis became a symbol of African-American power in a time when they felt powerless. "Every Negro boy old enough to walk wanted to be the next Brown Bomber," said Malcolm X, then the leader of the militant Black Muslims.
Exactly one year later, Louis exacted his revenge on Schmeling. The fight was for more than the heavyweight championship, more than two individuals competing. It was built into a battle of two ideologies.
In one corner was Schmeling, representing Hitler (though Schmeling wasn't a Nazi) and everything fascism stood for. In the other corner was Louis, representing the U.S. and everything democracy meant. Louis was invited to the White House, where President Franklin Roosevelt felt the champ's biceps. "Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany," he said.
There were reports of messages to Schmeling from Hitler warning him that he had better win for the glory of the Third Reich. Hitler hailed him as a paragon of Teutonic manhood and telephoned him personally before he left the dressing room.
Schmeling wasn't gone from the room long. Before some 70,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, Louis pulverized the reluctant Aryan figurehead, knocking him to the canvas three times. Two years of waiting ended for Louis after 124 seconds, with Schmeling lying broken on the canvas. Louis had crossed the line from champion to idol as Americans of all color and ancestry celebrated.
He went through a "Bum of the Month" club until he met former light-heavyweight champ Billy Conn on June 18, 1941. It appeared as if Louis was about to lose his title after 12 rounds, as he trailed by three and two rounds on two officials' scorecards. But Conn ignored his corner's instruction to box with caution, and the result was Louis knocking him out with two seconds left in the 13th round.
Louis enlisted in the Army in 1942 and fought close to 100 exhibitions before some two million servicemen. After the war, he knocked out Conn again ("He can run, but he can't hide") and won three other fights, including two with Jersey Joe Walcott, before abdicating his title.
However, because he needed money to pay back taxes, he returned. After not fighting for two years, he lost a one-sided decision to his successor as champ, Ezzard Charles, in 1950 and retired for good when Rocky Marciano knocked him out in the eighth round in 1951.
Louis' fights earned him close to $5 million, but the money went like three-minute rounds, mostly due to his extravagances and generosity. The IRS, conveniently forgetting Louis' generosity during the war, demanded a reported $1.2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties, and he suffered the humiliation of competing as a pro wrestler to help pay his debts. Following several stays in hospitals for cocaine addiction and paranoia, he became an "official greeter" at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Louis spent his last four years in a wheelchair before dying of a heart attack at 66 on April 12, 1981 in Las Vegas. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery at the request of President Ronald Reagan. In death, like in life, he was a hero.
Monday, February 9, 2009
HW #4, Due Tuesday, February 10th!
Read Jim Thorpe article (below). What was his most impressive accomplishment? Explain your answer and compare it to some of his other accomplishments.
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Thorpe preceded Deion, Bo (Jim Thorpe)
By Ron Flatter
Special to ESPN.com
________________________________________
Didn't we hear about Jim Thorpe from our dad or granddad?
We certainly never saw him in person. But we sure knew the legend. He was the Olympic track champion who lost his gold medals because he played minor league baseball. Long before Bo and Deion, he was the athlete who played pro baseball and football at the same time.
Jim Thorpe was an all-American in college as a four-position player.
He was voted "The Greatest Athlete of the First Half of the Century" by the Associated Press and became a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But Thorpe's legend was galvanized into America's conscience at the 1912 Olympics.
He won the decathlon and pentathlon in Stockholm. When King Gustav V of Sweden congratulated Thorpe, he said, "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world."
Thorpe reputedly replied, "Thanks, king."
He returned home a star. Thorpe's name was so big, he received that most American of honors -- a ticker-tape parade in New York City. "I heard people yelling my name," he said, "and I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends."
Later that year, Thorpe scored 25 touchdowns and 198 points to lead an outstanding Carlisle Indian School team. That launched him toward a pro football career, highlighted in 1920 when he helped found the American Professional Football Association, which would evolve into the National Football League.
That was the flash point for a turn in Thorpe's life. Although he would continue to write his legacy as an athlete nonpareil, he was stripped of his gold medals in 1913 after it was discovered he had violated amateur rules by being paid to play minor league baseball in 1909 and 1910. Attempts to have the medals returned were not rewarded until 1982, almost 30 years after Thorpe's death.
He was born on May 28, 1888 near Prague, Okla., on Sac-and-Fox Indian land. His given name was Wa-Tho-Huk, which means "Bright Path."
Thorpe was one of the few in his immediate family to have a long life. His twin brother Charles died of pneumonia at age 8. Both his parents died when he was a teenager.
As a child, the rambunctious Thorpe became his athletic father's protege, at times running 20 miles home from school. "I never was content," he said, "unless I was trying my skill in some game against my fellow playmates or testing my endurance and wits against some member of the animal kingdom."
Although he showed immediate promise, Thorpe was only a star in his schoolyards.
That changed in the spring of 1907. Attending Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, Thorpe was clad in work clothes when he walked past track practice one day. He watched as others failed to clear a high-jump bar set at 5-9. Thorpe gave it a shot and, despite wearing heavy overalls, he cleared the bar easily.
Two years later, the 5-foot-9 1/2-inch, 144-pound Thorpe almost single-handedly overcame the entire Lafayette track team at a meet in Easton, Pa., winning six events.
"After it was all over, Thorpe couldn't tell you how he did it," Lafayette coach Harold Anson Bruce said. "Everything came natural."
During the summers of 1909 and 1910, Thorpe was paid - reports have him earning from $2 a game to $35 a week - for playing for Rocky Mountain in Fayetteville in the Class D Eastern Carolina League. He naively used his real name, unlike other collegians who adopted pseudonyms to foil amateur rules.
Then again, Thorpe may have thought he would never compete as an amateur again. It took some arm-twisting by coach Pop Warner to get Thorpe to come back to Carlisle for the 1911 football season.
Warner promoted Thorpe as "the greatest all-around athlete in the world." Thorpe dominated an 18-15 upset of highly regarded Harvard with his four field goals and outstanding running in front of 30,000 in Cambridge. It was the highlight of a season in which Thorpe, halfback/defender/punter/place-kicker, was named an All-American.
Then came that grand summer of 1912. On July 7, he won the Olympic pentathlon. The next day, he finished tied for fourth in the high jump and on July 13, he came in seventh in the long jump. Then came the decathlon, and Thorpe set a world record with 8,412 points. The standard Thorpe set was so high that, if he had duplicated his marks 36 years later, they would have held up well enough to win a silver medal.
After collecting Olympic gold and New York ticker tape, Thorpe picked up where he left off for Warner's Carlisle football team. He ran spectacularly in a 27-6 Army win. In a Thanksgiving snowstorm, Thorpe had three touchdowns and two field goals in a 32-0 victory over Brown. He was named an All-American again.
Two months later, Worcester (Mass.) Telegram writer Roy Johnson discovered Thorpe's pay-for-play past. Asked for his response by the Amateur Athletic Union, Thorpe wrote, "I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things. I was not very wise in the ways of the world and did not realize this was wrong."
In January 1913, Thorpe was stripped of his amateur status and, with it, his two Olympic gold medals. After leaving Carlisle, Thorpe signed to play baseball and be a gate attraction for the New York Giants. He admitted he was more "a sitting hen, not a ballplayer."
Troubled by the curveball, Thorpe hit only .252 in his six seasons (1913-15, 1917-19) as an outfielder with the Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Boston Braves. His best season was his last one, when he batted .327 in 60 games for Boston.
In 1915, Thorpe played two football games for the Canton Bulldogs for a pricey $250 per contest. He decided to stay on as the biggest drawing card for a team that would be recognized as "world champion" in 1916, 1917 and 1919.
While playing for the Bulldogs in 1920, Thorpe was named the first president of the American Professional Football Association. After playing with Cleveland in 1921, Thorpe created and played for the all-Native American Oorang Indians. Stints with Rock Island, the New York Giants and a return engagement with Canton followed through 1926.
After more than a year out of football, Thorpe signed with the Chicago Cardinals to make one last appearance against the Chicago Bears on Nov. 30, 1928. "Jim Thorpe played a few minutes but was unable to get anywhere," one reporter wrote. "In his forties and muscle-bound, Thorpe was a mere shadow of his former self."
Thorpe's days as a competitive athlete were over.
Without sports, Thorpe drifted. His drinking, an issue before, became destructive.
There were many fights, and almost as many jobs. He took odd jobs under assumed names, working as a painter, ditch digger, deck hand, auto-plant guard and bar bouncer. The fifties brought him renewed fame. Besides being named top athlete of the half-century, he was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film "Jim Thorpe All-American."
Thorpe died at 64 of a heart attack on Mar. 28, 1953. By then, he was living in a trailer in Lomita, Cal. In 1954, his body was moved to Mauch Chunk, Pa., a small town which agreed to change its name to Jim Thorpe.
Pressure to have Thorpe's good name restored to Olympic rolls persisted. They were based on a rule, in effect in 1912, which said officials had 30 days to contest an athlete's amateur status. Thorpe's standing did not come into question until six months after the Games.
It was not until Oct. 13, 1982, that the International Olympic Committee finally agreed to restore Thorpe's gold medals. The following January, replicas were presented to Thorpe's family.
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Thorpe preceded Deion, Bo (Jim Thorpe)
By Ron Flatter
Special to ESPN.com
________________________________________
Didn't we hear about Jim Thorpe from our dad or granddad?
We certainly never saw him in person. But we sure knew the legend. He was the Olympic track champion who lost his gold medals because he played minor league baseball. Long before Bo and Deion, he was the athlete who played pro baseball and football at the same time.
Jim Thorpe was an all-American in college as a four-position player.
He was voted "The Greatest Athlete of the First Half of the Century" by the Associated Press and became a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But Thorpe's legend was galvanized into America's conscience at the 1912 Olympics.
He won the decathlon and pentathlon in Stockholm. When King Gustav V of Sweden congratulated Thorpe, he said, "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world."
Thorpe reputedly replied, "Thanks, king."
He returned home a star. Thorpe's name was so big, he received that most American of honors -- a ticker-tape parade in New York City. "I heard people yelling my name," he said, "and I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends."
Later that year, Thorpe scored 25 touchdowns and 198 points to lead an outstanding Carlisle Indian School team. That launched him toward a pro football career, highlighted in 1920 when he helped found the American Professional Football Association, which would evolve into the National Football League.
That was the flash point for a turn in Thorpe's life. Although he would continue to write his legacy as an athlete nonpareil, he was stripped of his gold medals in 1913 after it was discovered he had violated amateur rules by being paid to play minor league baseball in 1909 and 1910. Attempts to have the medals returned were not rewarded until 1982, almost 30 years after Thorpe's death.
He was born on May 28, 1888 near Prague, Okla., on Sac-and-Fox Indian land. His given name was Wa-Tho-Huk, which means "Bright Path."
Thorpe was one of the few in his immediate family to have a long life. His twin brother Charles died of pneumonia at age 8. Both his parents died when he was a teenager.
As a child, the rambunctious Thorpe became his athletic father's protege, at times running 20 miles home from school. "I never was content," he said, "unless I was trying my skill in some game against my fellow playmates or testing my endurance and wits against some member of the animal kingdom."
Although he showed immediate promise, Thorpe was only a star in his schoolyards.
That changed in the spring of 1907. Attending Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, Thorpe was clad in work clothes when he walked past track practice one day. He watched as others failed to clear a high-jump bar set at 5-9. Thorpe gave it a shot and, despite wearing heavy overalls, he cleared the bar easily.
Two years later, the 5-foot-9 1/2-inch, 144-pound Thorpe almost single-handedly overcame the entire Lafayette track team at a meet in Easton, Pa., winning six events.
"After it was all over, Thorpe couldn't tell you how he did it," Lafayette coach Harold Anson Bruce said. "Everything came natural."
During the summers of 1909 and 1910, Thorpe was paid - reports have him earning from $2 a game to $35 a week - for playing for Rocky Mountain in Fayetteville in the Class D Eastern Carolina League. He naively used his real name, unlike other collegians who adopted pseudonyms to foil amateur rules.
Then again, Thorpe may have thought he would never compete as an amateur again. It took some arm-twisting by coach Pop Warner to get Thorpe to come back to Carlisle for the 1911 football season.
Warner promoted Thorpe as "the greatest all-around athlete in the world." Thorpe dominated an 18-15 upset of highly regarded Harvard with his four field goals and outstanding running in front of 30,000 in Cambridge. It was the highlight of a season in which Thorpe, halfback/defender/punter/place-kicker, was named an All-American.
Then came that grand summer of 1912. On July 7, he won the Olympic pentathlon. The next day, he finished tied for fourth in the high jump and on July 13, he came in seventh in the long jump. Then came the decathlon, and Thorpe set a world record with 8,412 points. The standard Thorpe set was so high that, if he had duplicated his marks 36 years later, they would have held up well enough to win a silver medal.
After collecting Olympic gold and New York ticker tape, Thorpe picked up where he left off for Warner's Carlisle football team. He ran spectacularly in a 27-6 Army win. In a Thanksgiving snowstorm, Thorpe had three touchdowns and two field goals in a 32-0 victory over Brown. He was named an All-American again.
Two months later, Worcester (Mass.) Telegram writer Roy Johnson discovered Thorpe's pay-for-play past. Asked for his response by the Amateur Athletic Union, Thorpe wrote, "I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things. I was not very wise in the ways of the world and did not realize this was wrong."
In January 1913, Thorpe was stripped of his amateur status and, with it, his two Olympic gold medals. After leaving Carlisle, Thorpe signed to play baseball and be a gate attraction for the New York Giants. He admitted he was more "a sitting hen, not a ballplayer."
Troubled by the curveball, Thorpe hit only .252 in his six seasons (1913-15, 1917-19) as an outfielder with the Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Boston Braves. His best season was his last one, when he batted .327 in 60 games for Boston.
In 1915, Thorpe played two football games for the Canton Bulldogs for a pricey $250 per contest. He decided to stay on as the biggest drawing card for a team that would be recognized as "world champion" in 1916, 1917 and 1919.
While playing for the Bulldogs in 1920, Thorpe was named the first president of the American Professional Football Association. After playing with Cleveland in 1921, Thorpe created and played for the all-Native American Oorang Indians. Stints with Rock Island, the New York Giants and a return engagement with Canton followed through 1926.
After more than a year out of football, Thorpe signed with the Chicago Cardinals to make one last appearance against the Chicago Bears on Nov. 30, 1928. "Jim Thorpe played a few minutes but was unable to get anywhere," one reporter wrote. "In his forties and muscle-bound, Thorpe was a mere shadow of his former self."
Thorpe's days as a competitive athlete were over.
Without sports, Thorpe drifted. His drinking, an issue before, became destructive.
There were many fights, and almost as many jobs. He took odd jobs under assumed names, working as a painter, ditch digger, deck hand, auto-plant guard and bar bouncer. The fifties brought him renewed fame. Besides being named top athlete of the half-century, he was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film "Jim Thorpe All-American."
Thorpe died at 64 of a heart attack on Mar. 28, 1953. By then, he was living in a trailer in Lomita, Cal. In 1954, his body was moved to Mauch Chunk, Pa., a small town which agreed to change its name to Jim Thorpe.
Pressure to have Thorpe's good name restored to Olympic rolls persisted. They were based on a rule, in effect in 1912, which said officials had 30 days to contest an athlete's amateur status. Thorpe's standing did not come into question until six months after the Games.
It was not until Oct. 13, 1982, that the International Olympic Committee finally agreed to restore Thorpe's gold medals. The following January, replicas were presented to Thorpe's family.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Homework #3, Due Monday, February 9th!
For Monday, read the rest of the Jack Johnson article (two posts below) and create a timeline for Johnson's life. Be sure to include 6-8 points on the timeline.
If you have trouble recalling how to create a timeline, please contact me at mr.donohue@gmail.com
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
If you have trouble recalling how to create a timeline, please contact me at mr.donohue@gmail.com
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Thursday, February 5, 2009
HW #2, Due Friday, February 5th!
Read page 2 of the Jack Johnson article in the post below this one. In 2-3 sentences, explain what advantage Johnson had over his opponents.
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Homework #1, Due Thursday, February 5th!
Sports in Society:
Read the first page of the Jack Johnson article (below) and list 5-7 facts about him.
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Johnson earned respect, drew anger (Jack Johnson)
________________________________________
By Kieran Mulvaney
Special to ESPN.com
Sixty years before Muhammad Ali, there was Jack Johnson.
Like Ali, Johnson was the dominant heavyweight of his era. Like Ali, he challenged the notions of how a heavyweight champion -- particularly a black heavyweight champion -- should act, and he outraged much of white society in the process. And like Ali, he was a hero to most African-Americans but also earned the ire of many of his fellow black boxers for his behavior, which many felt was disrespectful, reflected badly on the rest of them and hurt the broader cause of equal rights.
But whereas Ali, at least for a while, cloaked himself in the comforting blanket of the Nation of Islam, Johnson had no such support group. And unlike Ali, Johnson did not live to see his image rehabilitated; not until several decades after his death, when his life was later seen through a prism of racial inequality and civil rights struggle, was Johnson viewed as a pioneer, among the first prominent African-Americans not only to refuse to be cowed by white society but also to apparently revel in flaunting his superiority over it.
He also happened to be one of the greatest fighters who ever lived, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, and by most measures, among the top three or four heavyweight champs of all time.
Jack Johnson is knocked out in the 26th round by Jess Willard during their 1915 world heavyweight title bout in Havana, Cuba. Willard took the title that Johnson had held since 1908.
Born in Galveston, Texas, on March 31, 1878, Johnson grew up poor in a town where blacks weren't allowed to use the same sidewalks as whites. After a modicum of schooling, he found work in the docks, and honed his fighting skills in barbaric "Battle Royals," in which six to eight men -- all blindfolded and all black -- fought until only one remained standing.
Such was the nature of these spectacles that boxing was actually a rung or two above them on society's ladder, and it was to boxing that Johnson turned, winning his first professional bout in 1897. In 1901, he suffered a knockout loss at the fists of the far more experienced Joe Choynski, following which both combatants were arrested for participating in unsanctioned fights. While in jail, Choynski taught the crude Johnson the finer points of pugilism; after regaining his freedom, Johnson became increasingly adept at his craft, and garnered growing attention for his abilities.
"If you go back to 1903, the sporting press was already saying, 'This Jack Johnson's one of the best heavyweights in the world,'" said Kevin Smith, author of "The Sundowners: The History of the Black Prizefighter 1870-1930". "In 1904, they were talking about him as an opponent for [heavyweight champ Jim] Jeffries, and by 1905, when Jeffries started talking publicly about retirement, they were saying the only real fight left out there for him was Johnson."
______________________________END PAGE 1____________________________________________
Instead of fighting Johnson, Jeffries retired, handpicked the two white boxers he had selected to battle out his succession and refereed the contest himself. Johnson was denied an opportunity to fight for the championship until the title finally passed into the hands of a Canadian, Tommy Burns, who, after much cajoling and the promise of the then-hugely attractive purse of $30,000, faced Johnson in Australia.
"I think being in Australia was the key to making it happen," Smith said. "I think the money could have been found in the U.S. I doubt you'd have found a promoter brave enough to promote it, for fear of Johnson winning."
And Johnson did win, easily. He brutalized and taunted Burns under the blazing Sydney sun on the day after Christmas, 1908, until finally, in the 14th round, the police stepped in to stop the massacre.
It didn't hurt that Johnson dwarfed Burns, an advantage he frequently enjoyed over his opponents.
"In a day and age when the average size was 5-8, 5-9, he was 6-1½," observed boxing historian Bert Sugar. (The 5-7 Burns, who weighed 168 pounds to Johnson's 192, was particularly encumbered.)
But, Sugar said, there was more to Johnson than just sheer physicality:
"He was defensively gifted. He could block any punch. There were fights when he could just lean on the ropes and play pitty-pat with his opponent's punches. And he never had to kill his instinct until he got hit. Witness the Stanley Ketchel bout [in October 1909]. Ketchel, who came up to his navel maybe, swatted him in the 12th round and knocked him down. And Johnson just popped right up, and as Ketchel moved in for the kill, Johnson unleashed one punch. And the next thing you see, Ketchel is laying on the canvas, re-enacting the crucifixion of Christ, and Johnson is leaning on the ropes picking his teeth out of his gloves."
It was not the way Johnson fought that aroused horror and ire among many of those who saw him defeat Burns. It was the very nature of what had come to pass, the fact that a black man had risen to the very pinnacle of sports, the symbol of physical superiority, the heavyweight championship of the world.
It was immediately too much for some to bear. The writer Jack London, reporting from ringside at the Burns bout, wrote that it was incumbent upon the retired Jeffries to "emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove the golden smile from Johnson's face."
Jeffries eventually responded to the clamor, and in July 1910, six years after he had last fought, was summarily battered by the reigning champion, who demonstrated once again his suffocating, dominating style.
_______________________________________End Page 2____________________________________
"[Johnson] was extremely good at tying men up," Smith noted. "He'd jab, jab, tie you up. Jab, jab, bang, uppercut. If you watch the Jeffries fight, he'd jab him, tie him up, and then rip him with an uppercut. He had a supreme uppercut."
Or, as Sugar put it: "He wore out Jeffries until it was time to hit him. And then he hit him."
Jeffries' corner stopped the fight after 15 rounds of a scheduled 45 -- yes, 45 3-minute rounds. Johnson's victory sparked wild celebrations that morphed into race riots across the country, and spawned numerous reported instances of whites attacking blacks. Several states banned the showing of film of the fight.
In between Burns and Jeffries, Johnson repelled a series of white challengers -- Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, Tony Ross, Al Kaufman and Ketchel. But it wasn't enough for Johnson to defeat his opponents. He carried them physically, prolonging their punishment, verbally taunting them all the while to underline his superiority.
That, of course, infuriated his white critics further, but they were driven altogether apoplectic by his behavior outside the ring.
It wasn't enough that he beat up white men. He also dated white women -- many of them, in succession, whom he escorted, frequently at speed, in his roadsters. One story has him being pulled over for speeding by a traffic cop who demanded an on-the-spot $50 fine. Johnson gave him a $100 bill and told him to keep the change because he'd be coming through in the opposite direction at the same speed.
"The arrogance! I mean, can you imagine a black man being arrogant in 1908?" boxing historian Mike Silver asked rhetorically.
"Here was a man who was free of anything that could hold him back in terms of slave mentality. He almost made this tremendous effort to put himself as far away from that as possible, in terms of marrying white women, becoming very cultured -- he was a rake and he was a cad, but he also spoke three languages. He was an extremely intelligent man. If you drew an IQ chart for fighters, he would be very near the top."
Observed Smith: "It was like white America was an open sore and he was just picking at it, and picking at it."
In the process, Johnson painted a giant bull's-eye on his back. His enemies longed to bring him down and found the means to do so when he sent a white girlfriend a railroad ticket to travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Johnson was charged with violating the Mann Act, against "transporting white women across state lines for immoral purposes," and fled into exile.
______________________________________End Page 3_________________________________
He lived and fought for a while in France, defending his title in 1913 against Battling Jim Johnson, and in 1914 against Frank Moran. In April 1915, aged 37 and softened by life in Europe, he was lured back across the Atlantic, where, at a racetrack in Havana, Cuba, he lost his championship to the giant Jess Willard.
Willard did to Johnson what Johnson often did to others -- he fought defensively, content to counterpunch, forcing Johnson to do the leading. By the 20th round, Johnson was tiring, and he crumpled to the canvas in the 26th.
The Great White Hope had finally been found. The first black heavyweight champion of the world had been dethroned, and an African-American would not be granted another shot at the crown until Joe Louis in 1937.
"Blacks were so, so proud of him at the time, and he earned a grudging respect from white people. He actually broke down barriers," said Silver. "Other blacks hated him later; they hated him because they felt he set them back, especially the fighters. The fighters felt that he had hurt them; blacks didn't get a title shot for over 20 years. After all the trouble he caused, they weren't going to give another black man the chance to win the title."
After his defeat, Johnson remained in exile, fighting in Spain and Mexico before eventually returning to the United States in 1920, whereupon he was incarcerated in Leavenworth for his Mann Act conviction. On his release, he fought sporadically until 1938.
On June 10, 1946, Johnson was driving to New York to attend a fight between Louis and Billy Conn when he stopped at a restaurant outside Raleigh, N.C. Denied service at the whites-only establishment, he stalked furiously out to his roadster, slammed on the gas pedal and sped, wheels spinning, out of the parking lot. As he turned into a bend on the road, he lost control of his vehicle, which flew across the highway and slammed into a telephone pole, killing him.
Jack Johnson was 68.
Read the first page of the Jack Johnson article (below) and list 5-7 facts about him.
See you in class!
-Mr. Donohue
Johnson earned respect, drew anger (Jack Johnson)
________________________________________
By Kieran Mulvaney
Special to ESPN.com
Sixty years before Muhammad Ali, there was Jack Johnson.
Like Ali, Johnson was the dominant heavyweight of his era. Like Ali, he challenged the notions of how a heavyweight champion -- particularly a black heavyweight champion -- should act, and he outraged much of white society in the process. And like Ali, he was a hero to most African-Americans but also earned the ire of many of his fellow black boxers for his behavior, which many felt was disrespectful, reflected badly on the rest of them and hurt the broader cause of equal rights.
But whereas Ali, at least for a while, cloaked himself in the comforting blanket of the Nation of Islam, Johnson had no such support group. And unlike Ali, Johnson did not live to see his image rehabilitated; not until several decades after his death, when his life was later seen through a prism of racial inequality and civil rights struggle, was Johnson viewed as a pioneer, among the first prominent African-Americans not only to refuse to be cowed by white society but also to apparently revel in flaunting his superiority over it.
He also happened to be one of the greatest fighters who ever lived, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, and by most measures, among the top three or four heavyweight champs of all time.
Jack Johnson is knocked out in the 26th round by Jess Willard during their 1915 world heavyweight title bout in Havana, Cuba. Willard took the title that Johnson had held since 1908.
Born in Galveston, Texas, on March 31, 1878, Johnson grew up poor in a town where blacks weren't allowed to use the same sidewalks as whites. After a modicum of schooling, he found work in the docks, and honed his fighting skills in barbaric "Battle Royals," in which six to eight men -- all blindfolded and all black -- fought until only one remained standing.
Such was the nature of these spectacles that boxing was actually a rung or two above them on society's ladder, and it was to boxing that Johnson turned, winning his first professional bout in 1897. In 1901, he suffered a knockout loss at the fists of the far more experienced Joe Choynski, following which both combatants were arrested for participating in unsanctioned fights. While in jail, Choynski taught the crude Johnson the finer points of pugilism; after regaining his freedom, Johnson became increasingly adept at his craft, and garnered growing attention for his abilities.
"If you go back to 1903, the sporting press was already saying, 'This Jack Johnson's one of the best heavyweights in the world,'" said Kevin Smith, author of "The Sundowners: The History of the Black Prizefighter 1870-1930". "In 1904, they were talking about him as an opponent for [heavyweight champ Jim] Jeffries, and by 1905, when Jeffries started talking publicly about retirement, they were saying the only real fight left out there for him was Johnson."
______________________________END PAGE 1____________________________________________
Instead of fighting Johnson, Jeffries retired, handpicked the two white boxers he had selected to battle out his succession and refereed the contest himself. Johnson was denied an opportunity to fight for the championship until the title finally passed into the hands of a Canadian, Tommy Burns, who, after much cajoling and the promise of the then-hugely attractive purse of $30,000, faced Johnson in Australia.
"I think being in Australia was the key to making it happen," Smith said. "I think the money could have been found in the U.S. I doubt you'd have found a promoter brave enough to promote it, for fear of Johnson winning."
And Johnson did win, easily. He brutalized and taunted Burns under the blazing Sydney sun on the day after Christmas, 1908, until finally, in the 14th round, the police stepped in to stop the massacre.
It didn't hurt that Johnson dwarfed Burns, an advantage he frequently enjoyed over his opponents.
"In a day and age when the average size was 5-8, 5-9, he was 6-1½," observed boxing historian Bert Sugar. (The 5-7 Burns, who weighed 168 pounds to Johnson's 192, was particularly encumbered.)
But, Sugar said, there was more to Johnson than just sheer physicality:
"He was defensively gifted. He could block any punch. There were fights when he could just lean on the ropes and play pitty-pat with his opponent's punches. And he never had to kill his instinct until he got hit. Witness the Stanley Ketchel bout [in October 1909]. Ketchel, who came up to his navel maybe, swatted him in the 12th round and knocked him down. And Johnson just popped right up, and as Ketchel moved in for the kill, Johnson unleashed one punch. And the next thing you see, Ketchel is laying on the canvas, re-enacting the crucifixion of Christ, and Johnson is leaning on the ropes picking his teeth out of his gloves."
It was not the way Johnson fought that aroused horror and ire among many of those who saw him defeat Burns. It was the very nature of what had come to pass, the fact that a black man had risen to the very pinnacle of sports, the symbol of physical superiority, the heavyweight championship of the world.
It was immediately too much for some to bear. The writer Jack London, reporting from ringside at the Burns bout, wrote that it was incumbent upon the retired Jeffries to "emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove the golden smile from Johnson's face."
Jeffries eventually responded to the clamor, and in July 1910, six years after he had last fought, was summarily battered by the reigning champion, who demonstrated once again his suffocating, dominating style.
_______________________________________End Page 2____________________________________
"[Johnson] was extremely good at tying men up," Smith noted. "He'd jab, jab, tie you up. Jab, jab, bang, uppercut. If you watch the Jeffries fight, he'd jab him, tie him up, and then rip him with an uppercut. He had a supreme uppercut."
Or, as Sugar put it: "He wore out Jeffries until it was time to hit him. And then he hit him."
Jeffries' corner stopped the fight after 15 rounds of a scheduled 45 -- yes, 45 3-minute rounds. Johnson's victory sparked wild celebrations that morphed into race riots across the country, and spawned numerous reported instances of whites attacking blacks. Several states banned the showing of film of the fight.
In between Burns and Jeffries, Johnson repelled a series of white challengers -- Philadelphia Jack O'Brien, Tony Ross, Al Kaufman and Ketchel. But it wasn't enough for Johnson to defeat his opponents. He carried them physically, prolonging their punishment, verbally taunting them all the while to underline his superiority.
That, of course, infuriated his white critics further, but they were driven altogether apoplectic by his behavior outside the ring.
It wasn't enough that he beat up white men. He also dated white women -- many of them, in succession, whom he escorted, frequently at speed, in his roadsters. One story has him being pulled over for speeding by a traffic cop who demanded an on-the-spot $50 fine. Johnson gave him a $100 bill and told him to keep the change because he'd be coming through in the opposite direction at the same speed.
"The arrogance! I mean, can you imagine a black man being arrogant in 1908?" boxing historian Mike Silver asked rhetorically.
"Here was a man who was free of anything that could hold him back in terms of slave mentality. He almost made this tremendous effort to put himself as far away from that as possible, in terms of marrying white women, becoming very cultured -- he was a rake and he was a cad, but he also spoke three languages. He was an extremely intelligent man. If you drew an IQ chart for fighters, he would be very near the top."
Observed Smith: "It was like white America was an open sore and he was just picking at it, and picking at it."
In the process, Johnson painted a giant bull's-eye on his back. His enemies longed to bring him down and found the means to do so when he sent a white girlfriend a railroad ticket to travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Johnson was charged with violating the Mann Act, against "transporting white women across state lines for immoral purposes," and fled into exile.
______________________________________End Page 3_________________________________
He lived and fought for a while in France, defending his title in 1913 against Battling Jim Johnson, and in 1914 against Frank Moran. In April 1915, aged 37 and softened by life in Europe, he was lured back across the Atlantic, where, at a racetrack in Havana, Cuba, he lost his championship to the giant Jess Willard.
Willard did to Johnson what Johnson often did to others -- he fought defensively, content to counterpunch, forcing Johnson to do the leading. By the 20th round, Johnson was tiring, and he crumpled to the canvas in the 26th.
The Great White Hope had finally been found. The first black heavyweight champion of the world had been dethroned, and an African-American would not be granted another shot at the crown until Joe Louis in 1937.
"Blacks were so, so proud of him at the time, and he earned a grudging respect from white people. He actually broke down barriers," said Silver. "Other blacks hated him later; they hated him because they felt he set them back, especially the fighters. The fighters felt that he had hurt them; blacks didn't get a title shot for over 20 years. After all the trouble he caused, they weren't going to give another black man the chance to win the title."
After his defeat, Johnson remained in exile, fighting in Spain and Mexico before eventually returning to the United States in 1920, whereupon he was incarcerated in Leavenworth for his Mann Act conviction. On his release, he fought sporadically until 1938.
On June 10, 1946, Johnson was driving to New York to attend a fight between Louis and Billy Conn when he stopped at a restaurant outside Raleigh, N.C. Denied service at the whites-only establishment, he stalked furiously out to his roadster, slammed on the gas pedal and sped, wheels spinning, out of the parking lot. As he turned into a bend on the road, he lost control of his vehicle, which flew across the highway and slammed into a telephone pole, killing him.
Jack Johnson was 68.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
