Customer Reviews

Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I knew something of Jack Johnson before I saw this documentary, but Ken Burns tells his story with incredible detail. One of the many revelations for me was the astonishing level of accepted racism that was prevalent at the time. Supposedly reputable newspapers (e.g., The New York Times) and authors (Jack London) are quoted at length, with bigoted excerpts that border on inflammatory. One couldn't imagine hearing something of this nature from today's mainstream media. Just the very idea that a black man/African-American could defeat a white man seemed preposterous to many; so much so that boxers often refused to even fight one. It took Jack Johnson a long time to get a shot at the title; but once he got it, it took white America even longer to get it back. What stands out in this program is the towering figure of Johnson himself.

I couldn't help noticing that Johnson appeared to be the prototype for the modern American athlete. All the brashness, bravado, conceit and over-indulgence that we associate with the "headliners" of today...all this began with Johnson. He seemed to revel in flouting society's conventions. When you think of the arrogance of Ali, the controversy of Jim Brown, the bravado of Namath...Jack Johnson was all this before they were. At the same time, however, I can't help but remember Charles Barkley saying "I am not a role model." Jack Johnson wasn't either, as much as Black America wanted him to be. In the end, he was too loud, too defiant, too controversial. He was too much, really, for the times. But I came away from this program thinking exactly what he wanted his epitaph to be: Jack Johnson WAS a man. No doubt about that.

Five stars.

After the adequate "Baseball" and downright disappointing "Jazz," some of the luster associated with the name of Ken Burns has worn off in the last few years. I couldn't help but wonder, when I saw that this documentary was in the works, if we were doomed to get more of the same from Burns, especially considering the involvement of Stanley Crouch in the project. Thankfully, it appears that Burns has returned to form with "Unforgivable Blackness."

Really, it is about time somebody did a documentary on Johnson. If he isn't the best heavyweight ever, there are only maybe two others that one could put ahead of him. Only Ali can rival him for mastery of the science of boxing, yet Johnson is comparatively obscure these days.

In many ways, this documentary spends relatively little time on the actual sport of boxing itself, which will be an annoyance to boxing enthusiasts. Personally, I would have enjoyed a more detailed discussion of just how great Johnson's defensive skills and the fact that he was rarely a slugger in the ring (Stanley Ketchel notwithstanding), but this might have been boring to a mainstream audience. Mostly, Burns returns to familiar territory --- race relations in an earlier era --- only with a dynamic personal & rebellious twist in the person of Johnson, who was utterly unconcerned with his critics, be they black or white, and who felt no compulsion to work for the betterment of anyone other than himself.

Even though I was relatively familiar with the government's persecution of Johnson via the Mann Act, it was still amazing to see just how many resources the government was willing to expend in order to bring one black boxer under its control. Laissez faire obviously is in the eye of the beholder.

To Burns' eternal credit, even though he clearly sympathizes with Johnson, he also points out that Johnson drew his own color line once he became champion. Burns has been notorious for serious omissions in past projects, and I fully expected to hear nothing about the fact that Johnson repeatedly refused to give Sam Langford (the greatest heavyweight never to become champion --- end of discussion) a shot at the title. However, Burns does discuss, albeit somewhat briefly, the fact that Johnson spurned other black boxers because there was a) no money in it, and b) the various White Hopes were much easier pickings. Thanks to Johnson, a whole generation of very skilled black boxers missed its opportunity to fight for a championship, and this is a fact that simply cannot be ignored. If Burns had omitted this, it would have badly tainted the documentary. Good for him!

The archival footage is especially splendid, even with the silly little sound effects added in. Also, kudos to Burns for including Bert Sugar in his cast of talking heads. One can listen to Stanley Crouch only for so long; better to have someone who has spent his whole career writing about the sport of boxing actually discuss the sport. The voiceover work is, as usual stellar. The music (provided in part by Wynton Marsalis, I guess) is decent enough.

All in all, this documentary represents the return of Ken Burns to his earlier form, and I hope continues to produce documentaries of this calibre, although it would be hard to find a story as fascinating as that of Jack Johnson.

I purchased a copy of this DVD at Costco for $14.99, on 10 January, 2005. Kudos to PBS Home Video for making it available for public purchase before the PBS premiere of the film on January 17, and also for making it so affordable.

This is an important and necessary film, and overall, it is Ken Burns' best treatment of the subject of race yet. I have never been quite happy with Burns' classic northeastern liberal interpretations of race in some of his other documentaries, and I'm certainly no fan of Stanley Crouch, but Jack Johnson is such a compelling subject that even Burns can't mess this up. This is an extremely watchable and informative film whose strengths are incremental and long lasting. The film's biggest strong point, perhaps, its thorough basis in well conducted historical research. The performers, particularly Samuel L. Jackson and Billy Bob Thornton, also do a terrific job.

Wynton Marsalis' soundtrack, of course, is terrific as well.

I'm glad that the DVD contains a "deleted scenes" extra feature, something that is standard practice with DVD's these days, but not necessarily with Ken Burns films.

All in all, a superior product, one that deserves wide attention and acclaim.

Blacks could not fight for the world heavyweight championship in the 19th century. The "world's strongest man," it was thought, could not be black: Blacks were not men. That attitude drove race relations to an all time low between 1890 and 1917. Segregation, disenfranchisement and lynching took root throughout the country. Hanging black men was sport.

Which makes Jack Johnson's bravery remarkable. He refused to be a "complacent negro." When Tommy Burns, then-heavyweight champion, refused to give him a fight, Johnson chased him around the world and forced him to accept his challenge for the world title. Johnson knocked Burns out in 1908, then beat Jim Jeffries, "the Great White Hope," in Reno, NV in 1910. White America, by and large, did not approve. Prosecutors later railroaded him on a false count of transporting women over state lines.

Quite a story, huh? Ken Burns thinks so, and he empties his tool box here, pulling out breathtaking cinematography, top-of-the-shelf voiceovers, and superb period photographs. The director gets a big assist from the wealth of film with Johnson. The speedy jabs and sly charisma fly out of the flickering black and white frames, making Johnson one of Burns' more dynamic protagonists.

That's important, because this is pretty grim stuff. The slurs thrown at Johnson made me shiver, as did the casual assumption that blacks like Johnson were beasts. The boxer, to his credit, refused to bow to any of it.

That's a shining example for the rest of us. It's a problem for "Unforgivable Blackness."

Race is Burns' chief concern, and his documentaries show an admirable frankness in tackling the issue. Johnson, from a distance, seems like the race problem personified: An exceptionally gifted athlete, his considerable talents were overlooked because of his skin tone. It would seem, then, that the hatred demolished Johnson.

Except it didn't. In the face of violent abuse, he smiled, insulted his smiters and slipped back into a well-tailored suit. A $50 speeding ticket? Johnson gives the cop $100 and tells him he's coming back the same way. Attacked for dating white women? He dates another, and another and another. Convicted on trumped-up "white-slaving" charges? Johnson leaves the country and tells people he likes Mexico better.

That makes the "Fall" part of Burns' subtitle problematic. As deeply ingrained as racism was, no one ever stripped Johnson of his title. He lost it not because of his race, but because of his age and his refusal to take Jess Willard (his successor) seriously. He was persecuted, and eventually went to jail. But even in prison, Johnson followed his own drummer, and seems to have lived a fairly happy life after his release in 1921. We should all have falls like that.

Burns says a great deal about America's shameful racial attitudes in the early 20th century, but overreaches when he tries push them down on Johnson's shoulders. Johnson shrugged the hate off and stood tall in the ring. His opponents handed their money over and flooded the arena, screaming and spitting and praying that a white man would knock him out. Johnson smiled, dispatched his opponent and had a great dinner on his enemies' cash. He never fell; his fierce individualism made him soar above his contemporaries.

I've been a big fan of the work of Ken Burns ever since seeing his THE CIVIL WAR in 1990 on PBS, and have loved both his epic documentaries like BASEBALL and JAZZ and shorter ones like those on Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Abraham Lincoln. If one has seen much of his work, one is aware of two ongoing preoccupations: the history of United States and the role of race in that history. Therefore, a documentary on the boxer Jack Johnson falls very much in the stream of his previous work. Nonetheless, the choice of subject is a tad surprising; Jack Johnson is someone who is known, but not exactly a household name. Before this documentary, my knowledge of Johnson consisted of the fact that he was the first well known African American athlete, flourished a couple of decades before Joe Louis, and was the subject of a highly successful stage play starring James Earl Jones. I didn't even know if any film footage existed of his bouts. In short, unlike Burns's other documentaries, this was definitely going to be a total learning experience. The result was one of the very best, if not the very best, short documentary that Ken Burns has produced.

Amazingly, there is not merely a rich photographic record of Johnson's career, but an amazing amount of film footage. As a result, you can get a wonderful sense of what he was like as a boxer, perhaps the first boxer of whom that can be said. In fact, he might be the earliest major athlete of whom we have significant film footage. Upon reflection, the reason for this is clear. Cameras were not truly portable in 1908-13 and really could only be used from fixed positions. This meant that filming baseball or horse racing, the other two major sports at the time, was close to impossible. But boxing utilized a small area that could easily be filmed. I was fascinated to learn that many of the major boxing matches were filmed for distribution to movie theaters, meaning that well before performers such as Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin became popular, people were going to movie houses to watch boxing. The film and photos reveals a remarkably quick and agile and skilled boxer, a man who looks huge and a bit bulky when clothed-and his obsession with clothes is blatant from early in the documentary to the end, obviously one of the best dressed athletes of all time-but astonishingly lean though muscled when in his boxing gear. The film reveals a boxer who favors a defensive posture, weight back, ready to counterattack, but not one who tends to go at his opponent. With his speed and agility, he will clearly remind anyone of Muhammad Ali, another boxer whose style emphasized defense more than offense. But the racism of Johnson's time refused to make a virtue of his style, describing him as "shifty" instead of skilled, even though his style was exactly that of Gentleman Jim Corbett. The photos of Johnson are especially impressive, showing an astonishing physique. His upper back and shoulders are almost inconceivable for an athlete in an age in which weight lifting played no major role in physical fitness. In watching Johnson, he clearly seems an athlete decades ahead of his peers. One wonders how baseball players of the teens and twenties fare in an age that has pitches like the slider and a battery of relief pitchers, but one can easily imagine Johnson doing well even today. His skills as a boxer are obvious in all the footage that is shown of him.

Although little mention of Muhammad Ali is made in the documentary until the very end, it is almost impossible to watch this film without comparing him constantly to Ali. Though he facially lacked Ali's very handsome looks, his boxing style, his brash insistence on being his own man, and some of the ordeals he goes through bear a striking resemblance to Ali's career. Near the end the film talks of how Ali self-identified with Johnson after his being stripped of his title after refusing to serve in the military. The big difference between the two is the fact that Johnson was very much the party animal, while Ali has always been a much more serious person.

The film is split into two parts, the first half dealing with the rise of Johnson and culminating in his defense of his heavyweight crown against Jim Jeffries, former heavyweight champ and the major "Great White Hope," whom whites hoped would recover the crown for their race. The second half deals with Johnson's "Fall," and centers primarily around efforts to convict him for his sexual relations with white women using the Mann Act. Though one can't respect Johnson's way of relating to women (he was abusive to women and either incapable or uninterested in fidelity), the way the government proceeded against him based primarily on his race is, of course, utterly loathsome. The nadir is his losing to giant Kansas Jess Willard, who beat Johnson in 1915 in Cuba in the 26th round of their match (though it should be pointed out that under today's rules Johnson would have been the clear winner, out boxing Willard through nearly the whole fight until tiring in the 105 degree heat at the end). Johnson's story ends less sadly than one might have anticipated, despite spending a year in prison for his Mann Act violation nonetheless managing to have enough money to maintain his lifestyle until dying at age 68 in a car crash.

The documentary has all the professionalism that one has come to associate with Ken Burns's films and has the additional virtue of a remarkable score by Wynton Marsalis, who featured so prominently in his JAZZ series. Many of the commentators were familiar from previous documentaries, including Stanley Crouch, Gerald Early, and George Plimpton, while Keith David, who did the narration for JAZZ was narrator here as well.

I strongly recommend this documentary. It is Burns's at his best on a topic that will interest just about anyone and not merely boxing fans. It deals with a major American figure who deserves to be better known. In debates about the greatest boxers who ever lived, Johnson is often mentioned for his superb defensive skills, but hopefully after this fine effort he will be remembered as a truly great all around boxer and perhaps even the very best.

On a personal note, I live only about six blocks south of Graceland Cemetery, which I have for some reason never bothered to visit, despite being the resting place of many famous Americans. But seeing that Johnson is also buried there just might be enough for me to go seek out his resting place and pay my respects.

Great job! With an amazing inclusion of actual fight films and newspaper clippings from the era, this is a fine documetary on Mr. John Johnson (aka Jack), the world's first black heavyweight champion. All of the major issues are covered, and the 4 hours goes by quite quickly as an example of good history and good storytelling.

The film doesn't get to this, but the title comes from a 1914 article by NAACP cofounder Dr. WEB DuBois about "Unforgivable Blackness" being the real reason why Johnson was so controversial. See the film, get a history lesson, and you'll understand why.

"Jack Johnson is a dandy" as the title of his 1927 autobiography states. This film is as well. This film reflects his life in a balanced way. It shows his early life, his quest for the heavyweight title, his personal life during those years, and race relations in America during the early 20th Century. It also shows the hypocritical quest against him by use of the Mann Act, his defeat and his life after boxing. Whether you like him or not, you have to admit he was a social rebel who challenged American segregation, racism, and oppresion on an individual level the way The NAACP, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, SNCC, The Black Panther Party and others challanged American society as a whole.

Jack Johnson believed that any man, including a Black man had a right to live his private life as he chooses. This included dating, having consensual sex, and marrying a woman of their choice regardless of her color, race, religion, national or ethnic background. He also felt that this applied to others as well. Yes, he was a true rebel and an inspiration to those of us who agree with him. I recommend that you read his autobiography as well.

Being a fan of Ken Burns work since his revolutionary documentary series
"The Civil War" and owning that series on DVD as well as "Baseball", "Jazz",
"Mark Twain", "The War" and his brother Ric Burns' riveting series on the history
of New York City, I was very interested to hear back in 2004, that he was working
on a series chronicling the life & times of the long forgotten defiant, courageous
and always controversial first african-american heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson.
The two nights that this series aired on PBS, I found myself glued in my seat in
amazement as I watched Jack Johnson's story being brought to life in vivid detail!
Ken Burns always uses a great synergy of visuals (picture stills and archival footage),
music (from Ragtime to Jazz to Spirituals), and brilliant narrations by various actors
and actresses to bring his subjects vividly, and in some cases, painfully to life!

Jack Johnson was an anomoly of his times to say the least...
The son of former slaves from Galveston, TX who was born in the late 1870's.
He was a very articulate, proud, strong, defiant, confident black man in a time when
that alone could get you killed for sure!
The climate of racism was so virulent back in his times that blacks couldn't
even look a white person (man or woman) in the eyes or walk on the same sidewalk
as they walked by, for fear of it being percieved as uppityness or defiance to the
strict Jim Crow social order of white supremacy!
Burns uses actual writings of prominent white figures of the times who express
the most ugly hate-filled racial tirades right out in the open and nobody thought
it to be reprehensible or offensive in the least!
It was just the general consensus of the times. He also uses cartoons published
in newspapers of the times along with printed articles to paint a picture of how it was
in the late 19th and early 20th century, when Jack Johnson's story unfurls.
Blacks were being lynched and burned left and right all over the country weekly in
untold numbers and nothing was being done about it by the laws or any other
institutions of the day. Blacks were considered one the same level as animals.

Enter into this suffocating stew of racial hatred, a tall, athletic, well-built,
bald-headed, gold-tooth-wearing black man out of Texas who was good with his fists
and equally adept at expressing his mind verbally!
He dressed to the nines in the high fashion of the times, drove the newly invented
automobiles like a bat out of hell, looked any white man or woman in the eye when
he addressed them, and most unbelievable and offensive to white sensibilities of the times,
he had the nerve to date, embibe, carouse and even MARRY white women who were beuatiful
and desirable to white men!---In other words, Jack Johnson was a full on SPORTIN' MAN,
who did & said just what he wanted without any fear of white retribution!
He was like an alien lifeform to both whites (who reveiled him and yet were
strangely intigued & amazed by his nerve!) and submissive blacks who lived their
whole lives in fear and had been beaten down in their spirits by the system of the times,
who saw Johnson as a loud, obnoxious, selfish peacock and a troublemaker who brought
down the wrath of the whites on them! You either loved Jack or hated him!--No middleground.
And he didn't much care which!--So Jack Johnson was man who stood alone, which was
both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.
I could go on and on about the brilliance of this documentary and the unprecented
details and dynamic highs and lows of Jack Johnson's journey, but I wouldn't want
to spoil the experience for those who haven't seen it yet!
Bottomline, this is stellar documentary work and one of Ken Burns' best ones so far!
If you don't have it already, get it, because this will be an enriching and educational
addition to your DVD collection for you, your children and grandchildren to enjoy,
irregardless of race or socio-economic background.
This is TRULY an American Story!

Ken Burns' documentary of the life of Jack Johnson is somewhat long but very informative about the meaning of Jack Johnson's life, and even purports, at certain level, that he is one of the most important figures of the first two decades of the 20th Century.

The documentary relies mostly on still photographs a few, rare videos of Jack Johnson both in and out of the ring - along with interviews of boxing experts, biographers, and others who have studied the life and significance of Jack Johnson as the first black heavyweight champion. Burns did an excellent job of taking the material he had and weaving into a tapestry.

Following is my summary of Johnson's life from my review of the companion biography of the same name by Geoffrey C. Ward -

Jack Johnson was the boxing world heavyweight champion from 1908-1915. And he was the first black heavyweight champion, which dominates the story of his life inside the ring and out. Johnson became heavyweight champion at a time when boxing was just barely out of the bare knuckle era, and while more organized as a sport, was still a rough and tumble and often illegal activity. Boxing, even as it is today, was often surround by unsavory characters. During that era throwing fights for money or to set up matches wasn't uncommon. Johnson learned his craft literally starting from the bottom up in local tough man or boxing contests and his skills eventually lead him to the top of his sport.

What make Johnson's story so interesting are two things - race and his profligate lifestyle. Race played a key role in his life even though he himself ignored race and didn't let it interfere with how he behaved or what he did. He often sported white women on his arm and eventually married a white woman, and did not defer to anyone, black or white. This made him an even more incendiary figure for the race conscious press and America at the time. Many white heavyweights wouldn't fight Johnson - most notably Jim Jefferies who held the title at a time when Johnson was the obvious deserving opponent for a shot at the champion. Eventually Jefferies retired and "conferred" his title on Tommy Burns, a bulked up white middleweight. Johnson chased after Burns and through the pressure of the press he eventually landed his title shot and dominated his lesser opponent, winning the heavyweight championship of the world.

This eventually lead to one of the most pivotal heavyweight boxing matches in history - and certainly the most pivotal fight of Johnson's career - a match with former heavyweight champion Jim Jefferies. Jefferies was obviously reluctant to come out of retirement to fight the new champion but pressure from friends and many in the press and boxing world, who didn't want to see a black man hold the championship, more or less forced his hand. The fight eventually took place on July 4, 1910 in Reno, New Mexico. Thousands were in attendance but millions throughout the country waited for the result. Johnson dominated Jefferies through much of the fight, eventually knocking him out in the 15th round. Johnson's win legitimized his title as heavyweight champion. Unfortunately, it also touched off violence against blacks throughout the country.

Jefferies utter defeat also lead to a search for a "great white hope" to defeat Johnson. Eventually, Johnson was beaten by a huge but less skilled Jess Willard in Havana, Cuba on April 5, 1915. Johnson probably lost as much because of age, he was around 37 at the time, and the rather unfortunate events in is life from the time of the Jefferies victory to his match against Willard in Cuba. During that time he appears to have spent most of his money, married a white woman who eventually committed suicide, and married another white woman against the violent protests of her family. This led, in a rather convoluted way, to his fleeing the country with his new wife in tow after being brought up on charges of violating the Mann Act. During all this time, and the only reason to mention the ethnicity of his wives, was the vilification Johnson received in the press across America and the hatred he engendered among some, including those in law enforcement, who wanted to bring him down. Thus, Johnson had to go through convoluted negotiations and travel arrangements to even defend his title again Willard in Cuba. Eventually, Johnson decided to come back to America but had to face a jail sentence, which he served. After getting out of jail, broke because he spent most of his money, he mostly earned a living through boxing exhibitions and similar activities.

Johnson's lifestyle some would call raucous. He made a lot of money for his era and he spent it freely on clothes, cars, and the women he kept as companions some of which were prostitutes or former prostitutes. One can look up to Johnson for not letting racism stand in the way of living his life the way he wanted to live it and kowtowing to no one. One could also look askance as his philandering, spendthrift way of life, but who are we to really judge? Undoubtedly Johnson brought some of his problems on himself. Also undoubtedly he was treated unfairly because of the era in which he lived in. Had Johnson lived today he might get some negative press, but more likely he would have a legion of fans who willing to overlook some of the things he did in his private life.

Cars were relatively new invention in early 1900's and Johnson loved cars and bought several of them. He often liked to drive fast. This too eventually caught up with him as, while speeding, he swerved to miss a truck and rammed his car into a tree. He died in 1946 after an adventurous 68 years.

I looked forward to Ken Burn's 'Unforgivable Blackness', the bio of boxer Jack Johnson. He was a man I admire very much-another 'salmon against the tide'. Burns does a magnificent job of presenting the life of Jack Johnson the human being in the racist society of the U.S. in the early 20th Century.

Johnson literally rocked American society because he was very good at one of the few professions Black Americans were allowed to excel at in the 1900s: boxing. Reaching the pinnacle of pugilism made Johnson an icon; evil for whites, and mostly good for blacks-with some reservations. Because of his notoriety, Jack Johnson's personal and sexual behavior became the real focus of his life. White society found a single scapegoat to justify it's own hypocrisy, and a standard bearer for the true basis of America's institutionalized racism: a black man having sex with white women.

Burns spends little time on the mechanics of Johnson's boxing skills; just what made him so much better than his contemporaries? Boxing purists will no doubt be dismayed at this omission. Burns concentrates primarily on the social impact of the great boxer in addition to his personal travails. As one watches the documentary unfold, it becomes clearly apparent that Jack Johnson's one true transgression was the fact that he was ahead of his time. Modern American professional athletics is well stocked with individuals along the Johnson line-whether they know it or not.

With 'Unforgivable Blackness' Ken Burns has done it again. He has given America another good look at itself, in all it's clarity and discomfort. Jack Johnson's life was something too many Americans would like to forget, to consign to the past with statements like 'We are better than that now'. Burn's film shows us how much the past and present are connected, and history is to be clearly seen as the basis of the modern world. Jack Johnson still lives among us today-even though many didn't know it until they saw this documentary.