If you did not watch this PBS documentary by Ken Burns then you should get it on Netflix. That is what I did and it was great to watch on a snowy day. The documentary is about the rise and fall of Jack Johnson the first black heavyweight champion of the world. What makes the film so great is it depicts a man who just did not give a damn. He lived his life exactly the way he wanted to and simply ignored the social mores and the taboos of his time.
He dated and married a white woman in 1912. All the while having affairs with multiple other white women. He drove fast custom built cars through the streets of Chicago. He dressed fancy, flaunted his money and his gold teeth and partied like a rock star before there were rock stars. He believed the best way to deal with prejudice was to act like prejudice did not exist. In a time when Booker T. Washington purported that Blacks should be like fingers on a hand with whites, separate but able to come together for the good of America, and W.E. Dubois pushed an alternate agenda of social equality, Jack Johnson offered a third way...his way. He did what he wanted because he could. And he dared anyone to stop him. Of course they tried.
Eventually Jack Johnson's interracial lifestyle brought down the ire of white America and like Ali after him, he faced jail time and exile from the country and the sport he loved. All these topics are covered in depth with a glorious array of photos, motion pictures and primary source narration, much of it in Johnson's own word read by Samuel L. Jackson. If you are a fan of boxing history or American history watch "Unforgiveable Blackness".
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