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Private Notes
Follow Jack Johnson's journey from Texas to professional boxing, where, in Jim Crow America, the heavyweight champion was a "white title." In 1908 he became the first African American to earn the title Heavyweight Champion of the World.
When no one could beat Johnson in the ring, the government set out to destroy him in the courts, using his relationships with white women as the excuse to prosecute and send him to jail. Johnson fled to Europe where he remained a fugitive.
