The Fight of the Century

The Fight of the Century On July 4, 1910, in a makeshift wooden boxing arena in Reno, Nevada, a white man named Jim Jeffries climbed into the ring to fight a black man named Jack Johnson, and the nation held its breath. Taking place in an era of Darwinian thought and murderous racial anxieties, the outcome of the “Fight of the Century” caused the death of dozens of Americans and sparked the first nationwide race riot in American history. Bibliography: Jack Johnson, My Life: In the Ring and Out (Chicago: National Sports Publishing Co., 1927). Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (New York: Free Press, 1983). Jeffrey Sammons, Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990). Geoffrey C. Ward, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (New York: Random House, 2004).