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Tension was building across the country in 1910. Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was set to fight James Jeffries. White people nicknamed Jeffries the "Great White Hope”.
Johnson's win was about more than boxing. It was seen as Black folks "stepping out of line" and was a threat to the racially defined social order. It also pissed them off that Johnson openly dated white women. Johnson knocked Jeffries out, and soon after, violence erupted. Weeks of violence were called "race riots," but they were really anti-Black-fueled attacks.
A Black man in Houston expressed joy about Johnson's win and had his throat slashed. In West Virginia, an angry white mob lynched a Black man driving the same expensive car Johnson drove. The attacks didn't stop there.
Enraged that they couldn't beat Johnson inside the ring, they worked overtime to destroy him outside it. The Mann Act, a law designed to prevent human trafficking, was used to punish Johnson's interracial relationship, sending him to prison for 10 months. Anti-Black violence and criminal legal loopholes aren't a thing of the past. They affect the criminalization and mass incarceration of our people today.
No matter who you are, our victories threaten the system, but this should never stop us from fighting for what matters to us: a new world where our people can thrive.