Unforgivable Blackness by Geoffrey C Ward

Unforgivable Blackness by Geoffrey C Ward

He was the first black heavyweight champion in history, the most celebrated-and most reviled-African American of his age. In Unforgivable Blackness, the prizewinning biographer Geoffrey C. Ward brings to vivid life the real Jack Johnson, a figure far more complex and compelling than the newspaper headlines he inspired could ever convey. Johnson battled his way from obscurity to the top of the heavyweight ranks and in 1908 won the greatest prize in American sports-one that had always been the private preserve of white boxers. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled just to survive, he reveled in his riches and his fame. And at a time when the mere suspicion that a black man had flirted with a white woman could cost him his life, he insisted on sleeping with whomever he pleased, and married three. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy him, and he was forced to endure a year of prison and seven years of exile. Ward points out that to most whites (and to some African Americans as well) he was seen as a perpetual threat-profligate, arrogant, amoral, a dark menace, and a danger to the natural order of things.

Unforgivable Blackness is the first full-scale biography of Johnson in more than twenty years. Accompanied by more than fifty photographs and drawing on a wealth of new material-including Johnson's never-before-published prison memoir-it restores Jack Johnson to his rightful place in the pantheon of American individualists.

From the Hardcover edition.

Geoffrey C. Ward is the author Before the Trumpet: The Young Franklin Roosevelt and A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. A former editor of American Heritage, Ward has also written a number of documentary films for public television, including The Civil War, Huey Long, The West, and Thomas Hart Benton (all with Florentine Films). He is a frequent contributor to Audubon, MHQ, Smithsonian, and other magazines.

Ken Burns, founder of Florentine Films, is one of the most celebrated documentary filmmakers working today. He has produced and directed a number of award-winning films, including Huey Long, Brooklyn Bridge, The Statue of Liberty, The Shakers, The Congress, and Thomas Hart Benton. He was a producer, director, cinematographer, and co-writer of the PBS series The Civil War.

Ric Burns is a producer and writer of The Civil War and was educated at Columbia and Cambridge universities. He is currently producing and directing a documentary history of Coney Island.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375415326
ISBN 10	0375415327
Title	Unforgivable Blackness
Author	Geoffrey C Ward
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House Australia
Year published	2004-10-01
Number of pages	492
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.