Papa Jack - Hardcover

A biography of Black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson details his boxing career and his extravagant, unconventional personal life, which led to his persecution by the white society of early twentieth-century America

When Jack Johnson defeated white heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries in 1910, it was America's notions of racial superiority that staggered under his blows. Amid riots and lynchings, the search began for the Great White Hope who could put the "uppity" new champion in his place. Here is the startling true story of the most famous-and most hated-black American of his day. "Papa Jack" takes us into a violent and sordid world. It is an astonishing tale of black defiance-and white retribution-set against the dramatic canvas of sports and spectacle in Jim Crow America.