| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Thomas R. Hietala. The Fight of the Century: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. 2002. Pp. 375. $39.95.
W. E. B. Du Bois was eerily on target when he wrote, in 1903, that "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." One hundred years later, without either Du Bois's genius or clairvoyance, we can safely say that the problem of twentieth century sport has also been the problem of the color line. From Moses Fleetwood Walker at the end of the nineteenth century to Jackie Robinson in the mid-twentieth century, from Major Taylor to Jesse Owens, from Paul Robeson to Marion Motley, from Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton to Michael Jordan, and from Charlie Sifford to Tiger Woods, the history of American sport has largely concerned the emergence, integration, and legacy of African-American athletes, their struggles to compete and to win, and their battles to move beyond playing into coaching positions and board rooms.	1
No sport was more important to this process than boxing. In 1968, during the age of Muhammed Ali, African-American activist Eldridge Cleaver wrote, in Soul on Ice, that "The boxing ring is the ultimate focus of masculinity in America, the two-fisted testing ground of manhood, and the heavyweight champion, as a symbol, is the real Mr. America."	2
Certainly during the twentieth century four black heavyweight champions—Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Ali, and Mike Tyson—have dominated the discourse about race and sport. All, as Cleaver asserted, became more than athletes and boxers; they became racial and ideological symbols, imbued with enough cultural baggage to sink the Titanic. Thomas R. Hietala traces the careers and meaning of Johnson and Louis. In particular, he strives to give a social and racial context for the two boxers' careers.	. . .

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