Jack London, Jack Johnson, and the Fight of the Century — The Public Domain Review

Jeffries did eventually agree to emerge from his Burbank alfalfa farm to face Johnson. In 1910, London was back in the United States and provided copious pre-fight commentary, about a dozen articles in all, each covering a different aspect of the upcoming contest. In one, he described the men separately; in another, he described them in tandem. He dissected their ring tactics, analyzed their character, and estimated their “abysmal brutishness”. London’s racialized discourse is at times bewilderingly inconsistent, contradictory, and sometimes downright bizarre. He wrote, for instance, about “protoplasmic vigor” and the effects of “cell generation”. London did not forget the one-sided beating he had witnessed in Sydney, yet through some racist gymnastics, he portrayed Johnson’s talent as a liability. Johnson was more “boxer” than fighter: too smart, too stylized, and even too affable a person to remain champion. In the pages of the The Spokesman-Review, London harks back to The Call of the Wild, portraying Jeffries as “still red of fang and claw”, more “Germanic tribesman and warrior” than civilized, modern man. London has reversed the usual racial stereotypes of savagery and civilization, and yet Johnson still comes out the worse for it.