The Wayward Woman by Antoniazzi Barbara;

Author:Antoniazzi, Barbara;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Unforgivable Blackness”

The phantom-like John Frankling—the black man who supposedly bragged about his wifely purchases at the white slave market—was probably a figment of racist propaganda, but he still managed to tip congressional uncertainties in favor of a freedom-restricting federal bill. The real-life Jack Johnson,[88] of Galveston, Georgia—the first African American heavyweight champion in the history of boxing—never bought himself a wife, but he nonetheless, married four times, three times to white American women.[89] This detail alone could suffice to explain how Johnson’s symbolic impact called for retaliation on the part of moral crusaders who, on this occasion, found themselves allied with federal prosecutors in Chicago. In 1913, Johnson was sentenced to prison for a supposed violation of the Mann Act in a legal decision that the U.S. Congress eventually recognized, though not until 2009, as a “racially motivated conviction prompted by his success in the boxing ring and his relationship with white women.”[90] The fact that Johnson, a son of freed slaves, was technically indicted for practicing white slavery provides the exemplary completion of the transformational process involved in such a metaphor, the end point of a reversed logic turning the black slave into a black slave holder. Johnson’s vicissitudes are illustrative of the ways in which the white slavery scare not only redefined white womanhood and criminalized blackness, but also supported a racially based ideology of white male power that conflated whiteness, physicality, and masculinity. This particular notion of white masculinity was threatened less by Johnson’s matrimonial choices than by his groundbreaking athletic career, a parable whose ascending phase represented a hard blow to racial segregation in the sporting world. On the other hand, the descending phase of Johnson’s story, starting with his indictment, epitomizes the criminalizing potential of the Mann Act. The Mann Act was applied when all other attempts to contain a non-servile, successful black man had failed.

At the end of Reconstruction, professional and amateur sports emerged as a significant presence in American cultural life and developed throughout the age of racial segregation. In the interpretation of Jackson Lears, the “quest for physical vitality which spread among the sedentary middle and upper classes”[91] surfaced like a counterweight to the volatile circumstances of modernity that made the achievement of manliness at once more elusive and more urgent. The fascination with weightlifting, bodybuilding, and prizefighting reflected the reassertion of white manhood against the enervating impact of uncertain times.[92] At the turn of the century, boxing was still in its infancy and a largely illegal enterprise; yet it was followed obsessively by men of every class and had begun to develop its modern aesthetics. Jack Johnson’s boxing style was disturbingly modern for his time: swift and intelligent, he picked off his opponents’ blows and only punched with a clear aim. When boxer Jim Colbert had displayed the same defensive technique a decade earlier, he had been praised as the cleverest man in prize fighting. In contrast, in Johnson’s case these stylistic features were derided in the press as the mark of the lazy, deceitful black man who carried into the ring the “cowardice” typical of his race.

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