About Crossing the Color Line: Stanley Ketchel’s Challenge for Jack Johnson’s Heavyweight Crown by Vernon Gravely
On November 26, 1908, Stanley Ketchel made pugilistic history when he stopped Billy Papke to become the first two-time middleweight champion. Exactly one month later, Jack Johnson also made history when he beat Tommy Burns to become the first black man to wear the heavyweight crown. Immediately following Johnson’s victory, the sporting world began clamoring for someone to win the title back for the white race. Most people turned to Jim Jeffries, the former champion who had retired undefeated in 1905. However, Willis Britt, who had guided his younger brother Jimmy to two lightweight title shots and took Battling Nelson to the top of the lightweight ladder, had another idea: What if the world’s first two-time middleweight champ fought the world’s first black heavyweight champ? All Britt had to do was steal Ketchel away from his manager, line up a series of fights that would have the sporting public take him seriously as a heavyweight contender, then chase Johnson until he agreed to a fight. Impossible? Most sports aficionados thought so. After all, no ordinary manager would be able to pull off such a feat. But, Willis Britt was not an ordinary manager.
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Author Bio:
At the age of eight, I heard “Day Tripper” and my life was changed. I decided, at that point in time, that when I grew up, I would become a Beatle. I eventually realized that there were only four openings for that profession, and they had all been filled long before I entered this atmosphere. So, as I entered my teens, I turned to writing. After getting a Master’s degree in English, I taught writing for several years. When the pandemic hit, and I became unemployed, I started writing again for my own pleasure. I cranked out one book (Promise Unfulfilled: The Brief Life and Bizarre Death of Actor Robert Morris), published in July 2020, and now I have cranked out another. This one is about a couple of boxers who fought each other in 1909. I have also dabbled in documentary filmmaking; I wrote, produced and directed Death of a Champion, Birth of a Rule: The Tony Marino Story, about the bantamweight champion whose death in 1937 resulted in the creation of the three-knockdown rule in the sport of boxing.