| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Dir. by Ken Burns. Prod. by David Schaye, Paul Barnes, and Ken Burns. Florentine Films and WETA Washington, D.C., 2005. 220 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314; 800-531-4727; http://www.shoppbs.org/)

Television producer Ken Burns and author Geoffrey C. Ward have previously created four PBS historical documentaries. A recent portrayal of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, attracted a phenomenal 13.7 million viewers. (Ward's book, with the same title as the film, was published in 2004.) Boxing's popularity remains well below that of professional football, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) racing, baseball, and golf; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though sometimes banned by state laws, it periodically received great public attention. Despite few extant close-up pictures, Burns shows how boxing's physical brutality exceeds that of any other sport, with athletes confronting each other unshielded by protective uniforms and helmets. He utilizes sources such as Jack London's words (sold to the New York Herald for twenty-five cents each) and archival photographs from newspapers and magazines, along with grainy newsreels, to provide audiences, whether at home or in the classroom, coveted ringside seats. America's racial conflict shares the spotlight with boxing history.

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