Top Contender
Johnson beat former colored heavyweight champ Frank Childs on October 21, 1902. Childs had twice won the colored heavyweight title and continued to claim himself the true colored champ despite having lost his title in a bout with George Byers and then, after retaking the title from Byers, losing it again to Denver Ed Martin. He still made pretence to being the colored champ and claimed the unrecognized black heavyweight title as well. Johnson won by a TKO in the 12th round of the scheduled 20-rounder, when Childs' seconds signaled he couldn't go on. (He claimed he had dislocated his elbow.) The defeat by Johnson forever ended his pretensions to the colored heavyweight crown.
Read more about this topic: Jack Johnson (boxer)
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“In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)