He was the first black heavyweight champion in history (1908-15) & the most celebrated
- & most reviled
- African American of his age. In Unforgivable Blackness prize-winning biographer Geoffrey C. Ward brings to vivid life the real Jack Johnson a figure far more complex than the newspaper headlines could ever convey. Johnson battled his way from obscurity to the top of the heavyweight ranks & in 1908 won the greatest prize in American sports
- one that had always been the preserve of white boxers. At a time when whites ran everything in America he took orders from no one & resolved to live as if colour did not exist. Because of this the federal government set out to destroy him & he was forced to endure a year of prison & seven years of exile. As Ward shows Johnson was seen as a perpetual threat to white & African Americans alike
- profligate arrogant amoral a dark menace & a danger to the natural order of things. Unforgivable Blackness is the first full-scale biography of Johnson in more than twenty years. Accompanied by more than fifty photographs & drawing on a wealth of new material
- including Johnsons never-before-published prison memoir
- it restores Jack Johnson to his rightful place in the pantheon of sporting & social warriors.