Maintaining The Color Bar
Ironically, the color bar remained in force even after colored heavyweight title holder Jack Johnson won the world's heavyweight title in 1908, thus ensuring the colored title remained the ultimate prize for all other black boxers.
Once he was the world's heavyweight champ, Johnson (who relinquished the colored title) never fought black opponents, either. He denied matches to black heavyweights Joe Jeanette (his successor as colored heavyweight champ) and Sam Langford (who beat Jeanette for the colored title) and the young Harry Wills (who was colored heavyweight champ during the last year of Johnson's reign as world's heavyweight champ). Blacks were not given a shot at the title allegedly because such top boxing promoters as Tex Rickard believed that a fight between two black boxers would not draw at the gate.
Read more about this topic: World Colored Heavyweight Championship
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