June 11, 2019: Boxing and America: Jack London and Jack Johnson

[On June 13^th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]

On an ugly moment when white supremacy took precedence over athletic supremacy.

I was super excited when I was invited to review Cecelia Tichi’s book Jack London: A Writer’s Fight for a Better America (2015) for the American Historical Review. There were lots of reasons for my excitement, including how important Tichi’s book Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America (1987) was for my development as an AmericanStudier, and how much I appreciated her goal in this new project of recuperating London as a public intellectual (and thus a model for that role in 21^st century America as well). But I was also just super excited to learn more about London, whom I knew largely as the author of hugely popular boys’ adventures stories about wolves and sailors and that one incredibly realistic and depressing story about a man who needs to build a fire in order to keep from freezing to death and the dog who becomes a witness to the unfolding horrors (all of which of course was a central rationale behind Tichi’s attempt to recreate the more socially and politically engaged sides of London as both a writer and a public figure).

I’m not trying to dwell on my one criticism of Tichi’s book here, but it turned out that one of the things I learned about London was a frustratingly bigoted moment that Tichi understandably but problematically minimized in her project. She did note (if still to my mind a bit too briefly) London’s lifelong fascination with Social Darwinism and that philosophy’s consistently hierarchical and racist worldviews; but it was in response to the controversial (at least for white supremacists) rise of early 20^th century African American boxing champion Jack Johnson that London would articulate much more overtly his own racism. In December 1908 Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight champ, defeating the reigning champ Tommy Burns, and that historic moment led London to implore a retired white champion to return to the ring and defend his race. Covering the 1908 fight as a syndicated sportswriter, London concluded his column, “But now one thing remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his [Burbank, CA] Alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”

Initially reticent, Jeffries did eventually emerge from retirement, facing Johnson in a July 4^th, 1910 championship bout in Reno. Jeffries was by this time so out of shape that “bout” probably isn’t the word, though, as he was quickly knocked down for the first time in his career and threw in the towel at that point. Given that white Americans often find reasons to riot in both sporting events and racism (although not usually at the same time), it’s unfortunately no surprise that Johnson’s victory led to riots around the country that left a handful of African Americans dead and many more injured (riots, I’ll note, that to this day, when they’re remembered at all, are usually and all too typically described with that deeply loaded phrase “race riot”). Perhaps it should be no more surprising that when an African American athlete reached the pinnacle of his sport, theories of physical prowess and the survival of the fittest gave way to white supremacist bigotry and ignorance, even from an otherwise intelligent and (as Tichi convincingly argues) socially progressive figure like Jack London. But it’s still frustrating to see how powerful such white supremacist nonsense can be—although it’s also deeply satisfying to see it literally and figuratively knocked on its ass.

Next boxing day tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 10, 2019: Boxing and America: A Clear but Troubling Association

[On June 13^th, 1935, underdog boxer James “Cinderella Man” Braddock won a stunning upset decision over heavyweight champion Max Baer. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that story and other ways in which this complex sport reflects American histories. Leading up to a weekend post on some of the undisputed champs in the realm of boxing films!]

On why AmericanStudiers can’t forget the sweet science, and why I wish we could.

If I were going to make the case for boxing’s crucial significance in American history and identity, I would start here: the story of African American life in the 20^th century can be pretty succinctly told through the sequence of Jack Johnson to Joe Louis to Sugar Ray Robinson to Muhammad Ali to Mike Tyson (three of whom will be focal points for later posts in this series, not coincidentally). Or maybe I would note how many great films use boxing as a metaphor for American history and identity, from The Champ (1931) to On the Waterfront (1954), Raging Bull (1980) to Cinderella Man (2005), Rocky (1976) to Rocky Balboa (2006), and dozens more besides (a handful of which will also non-coincidentally be the focus of the special weekend post). Or maybe I’d talk about all the resonances of the Hurricane—the boxer, the song, the movie (and perhaps Denzel’s best performance to date), the history. In any case, as this week’s series will hopefully illustrate, boxing and America seem profoundly and permanently intertwined.

Before I get into the rest of that series, however, I have to admit that I’ve got a couple problems with that association. For one thing, and it’s an obvious thing I guess but a hard one to get around, boxing is so thoroughly and unavoidably violent and destructive. I wrote a post my 2014 Super Bowl series on the necessary hypocrisy that comes with watching football these days, given what we have learned and continue to learn about the sport’s impacts on the bodies and (especially) brains of those playing it; I went even further in this post on MMA fighting. As with MMA, in the case of boxing such violent impact is not only part of the sport, it’s the most central and consistent part—and indeed, the point of the sport is for each participant to try to be more violent than his or her opponent, to damage that opponent sufficiently that he or she cannot continue. To be honest, the nickname “the sweet science” seems to me to exist in part to mask the fundamental reality that boxing is neither sweet nor scientific, but instead (or at least especially) a savage test of who can sustain the most violence and pain.

It’s hard for me to argue that such a sport should occupy a prominent role in 21^st century American society and culture. Of course, it’s also undeniable that boxing has already lost much of its prior prominence, a change that has been due not to its violence (since again the even more violent Ultimate Fighting is extremely popular at the moment) as much as to the impression that the sport is profoundly corrupt. And that’s my other problem with the role of boxing in narratives of American history and identity—we may have recently become more aware of the role that corrupt promoters and organizations, judges and paydays, and the like play in the world of boxing, but as far as I can tell those realities have been part of the sport for as long as it has existed. Of course America has always had its fair share of corruption and greed as well, but do we want a nationally symbolic sport that emphasizes those qualities? It’d be the equivalent of the Black Sox scandal being the norm in baseball, rather than a glaring exception. I can’t deny boxing’s role in our past and identity, but I can’t pretend I don’t find that more than a little disturbing.

Next boxing day tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other boxing stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 8-9, 2019: Jewish American Journeys: Michael Hoberman’s Books

[On June 1, 1916, Louis Brandeis was confirmed to the Supreme Court, becoming the first Jewish American Justice. So this week I’ve highlighted the American stories of Brandeis and four other exemplary Jewish Americans, leading up to this special weekend tribute to one of our best Jewish Studies scholars!]

In honor of both this week’s series and the New England American Studies Association conference (happening Saturday right here at Fitchburg State), a tribute to three wonderful works through which my colleague and friend (and longtime NEASA contributor) Michael has expanded the disciplines of Jewish Studies:

1)      How Strange It Seems: The Cultural Life of Jews in Small Town New England (2008): Michael’s second book combines oral history and folklore studies (among other disciplinary lenses) to consider the voices, lives, stories, and contexts for Jewish New Englanders across the 20^th century and into the 21^st. I remember chatting with Michael about this project when I interviewed at FSU back in the spring of 2005, but to be honest I had no idea just how many different layers he would find to his focal subjects and their stories and histories. This book remains a model of oral history for me, among its many other significant meanings.

2)      New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America (2011): I had the great good fortune of getting that FSU job, and thus of being Michael’s colleague as he pivoted to his third book project and a much more overtly historical frame. But Michael weds his broad historical topics and themes (such as the development of Puritan religious ideology, in direct conversation with other religious and communal perspectives such as the era’s Jewish Americans) with intimate engagement with individual voices and lives (often through rich close readings of letters, journals, and other primary sources), making this compelling book both a personal and a regional and national history (as well as a pioneering Jewish Studies analysis of these early American figures and stories).

3)      A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History (2018): I’m sure it will come as no surprise that Michael once again pivoted to a new disciplinary lens for this most recent book, which analyzes a series of seminal Jewish American literary works and authors through the geographical and symbolic frames of land and home. Those frames, among many other aspects of the book, do connect it very fully to his prior works, however, creating a series of through-lines across which Michael has been building his own many acres of Jewish Studies real estate throughout this multi-decade career. I won’t pretend to be an expert, but for this AmericanStudier at least you can’t tell the story of 21^st century Jewish Studies without a prominent spot for the works and perspective of Michael Hoberman.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Jewish Americans (or scholarly works) you’d highlight?