December 9-16, 2004

book quicks

by Andrew Milner

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
By Geoffrey C. Ward
Knopf, 512 pp., $26.95

Nearly a century before Terrell Owens appeared with Nicolette Sheridan, heavyweight champion Jack Johnson flaunted his white wives before Jim Crow America. Most people today know about Johnson (1878-1946) only through The Great White Hope, the fictional play and movie starring James Earl Jones. Ken Burns examines the heights and depths of Johnson's actual life in the upcoming PBS documentary Unforgivable Blackness, and Burns' regular collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward has written an authoritative accompanying biography of America's first black sports superstar.

Johnson, the son of two ex-slaves, beat Tommy Burns in Australia in 1908 for the heavyweight crown; one newspaper predicted, "This battle may in the future be looked upon as the first great battle of an inevitable race war." As it turned out, when Johnson successfully defended his title two years later by beating ex-champ Jim Jeffries, no fewer than 11 people were killed in post-fight race riots throughout the country.

Johnson married three white women when interracial marriage was illegal in most of America. While driving in an open car through Cincinnati, Johnson was punched in the head by a white pedestrian, whose explanation was, "Because I don't like him." Johnson would be convicted in 1913 for violating the Mann Act (a 1910 law Ward implies was enacted solely to get Johnson) and fled the country to avoid imprisonment. He lost his title in a Havana bout to Jess Willard in 1915, returned to the United States in 1920, and tried boxing comebacks until his 50s. Much would be made of the fact that the next great black heavyweight, the quiet and discreet Joe Louis, was Johnson's polar opposite.

Ward doesn't shy away from describing Johnson's self-destructive behavior (having driven his first wife to suicide, he remarried only three months later; he was forced to make ends meet in old age by chatting with customers at a Times Square flea circus), but he also quotes from Johnson's memoirs and contemporary interviews to reveal a surprisingly thoughtful, observant man. "The real Jack Johnson was both more and less than those who loved or those who hated him ever knew," Ward contends. "All his life, whites and blacks alike would ask him, "Just who do you think you are?' The answer, of course, was always "Jack Johnson' — and that would prove to be more than enough for turn-of-the-century America to handle."

Wilt: Larger Than Life
By Robert Cherry
Triumph Books, 416 pp., $24.95

Wilt Chamberlain dominated the pre-Jordan NBA the way the Beatles dominated the charts in mid-1964. Chamberlain scored 100 points against the Knicks on March 2, 1962 — last year, the average NBA team scored 93 points a game. That season he averaged 48.5 minutes played per game, sitting out exactly 8 minutes and 33 seconds for the entire year. In his final season, at age 36, he made 72.6 percent of his shots from the floor. And then there's the other Chamberlain stat: the 20,000 women he claimed to have had sex with.

Chamberlain, biographer Robert Cherry writes, "liked to keep himself a mystery. He did not have one friend who knew the whole picture: he compartmentalized his friends more than most people, as they all attest." It's to Cherry's credit that his portrait of Chamberlain is as well-rounded as it is.

We are presented with Chamberlain at his most and least mature. A friend and track Olympian described his visit to her family's home: "[He] sat on the floor of our dining room and played this Cabbage Patch board game with Laura, our 6-year-old. And, of course, Laura told us later that he tried to cheat." Another friend recalled, "He played cards [...] and he cheated — not because he wanted to get something over on someone, he was just having fun. He was not a thief or anything. He'd tell you, "You're not going to win. I'm going to beat you in whatever I do.'" However, we also see Chamberlain befriending the terminally ill granddaughter of former teammate Paul Arizin, and we more fully understand his rivalry with Boston's Bill Russell.

Though Chamberlain was already a national celebrity while at Overbrook High, he was still awkward around the ladies. "I don't remember him ever having a date," a neighborhood friend says. "He wasn't the girls' first choice around Philly when he was growing up." To say he made up for lost time is the understatement of the century, but Cherry notes Chamberlain's ambivalence; he once said that "the greater achievement would be to make love to the same woman a thousand times."

While Cherry is no great stylist, and the book needs a bibliography and footnotes, he keeps the story moving and has an excellent ear for anecdote. Given that Chamberlain was double- and triple-teamed throughout his basketball career, Cherry does a fine job handling him all by himself.