I’m not much of a boxing fan. I find the sport too messy and too barbaric. But a friend who is the owner of the famed Blue Horizon boxing venue in Philadelphia keeps trying to convince me that once I see a match, I’ll walk away a lover of the sport.
I’m not sure of that, but I do love a good story about the “pugilists” who live for the fight. I came across what I thought was a story of one – but found later that it was two – of them recently while thumbing through a magazine called “Self Defense” from 1929. It was old, torn and tattered around the edges, the pages somewhat brittle, smelling of old paper put away too long without air.
As I cautiously turned the fragile pages, I kept wondering if I’d see any African American boxers in a magazine from a century ago. To my surprise, I came upon two photos of black men, one in an oval inset with a name I recognized: Jack Dempsey. That couldn’t be right, I thought to myself, because Dempsey is white. I assumed that the editors had made a mistake – which they had. The man in the photo was actually Jack Johnson, who was mentioned in the article accompanying the picture.
The second photo showed a white man and black man in a bareknuckle fight. The black man was identified as Molineaux, the “first great American colored fighter,” in a contest against Cribb in England in 1811. I found out later that he was Tom Molineaux, a freed slave who matched skills against English champion Tom Cribb in a fight in London that seemed to have been stolen from him.
Continuing through the magazine, I then found two photos of a black fighter named Joe Gans. The photos, though, were confusing: The caption for one photo identified a “Baby Joe Gans,” so I looked for a baby picture. The man in the photo was much too old to be a baby photo of the man in the second photo. So what gives, I wondered.
I assumed this was another error until I Googled and learned that “Baby Joe” had taken the name of the famous lightweight champion Joe Gans, and he was one of numerous boxers who had done so.
The magazine article told of how manager Cherokee Tom Cox trained Baby Joe, who was working in machine shops in Los Angeles. Born black and Cherokee in Oklahoma, Cox himself had fought Jack Johnson in Kansas City around the turn of the century, according to the article.
The article also included a poem to the elder Joe, along with an illustration of a series of action scenes from several of his fights.
Now intrigued, I wanted to know more about both fighters.
“The Old Master” Joe Gans
Joe Gans was the lightweight champion of the world from 1902-1908. Born in Baltimore in 1874, he began boxing as a teenager and was known for both his power and speed. His adopted name was Joe Gant, but after a newspaper article misspelled it Gans, he decided to keep it.
His prowess and skill as a boxer were known years before Johnson accomplished his feat in 1909 of being the first African American heavyweight champion. (Most of us non-boxing fans are familiar with Johnson, but who ever heard of Joe Gans?).
Gans won the light heavyweight title in 1902 in Ontario, Canada, and many consider him to be the first African American boxing champion. In 1906, he beat Oscar Goldfield in Nevada in a fight that’s considered one of the best. Gans made it through 42 rounds in two hours and 48 minutes. He lost the title in a rematch in 1908 and was never able to get it back.
It wasn’t easy for Gans while on the road, according to one article. He was confronted with racist newspaper articles and was never able to fight men whose skills equaled his. Black fighters could not knock out white fighters, so he was stymied by the culture and his white manager. He fought white fighters to the last rounds and he had to throw some fights.
Gans died of tuberculosis in 1910. He is believed to have contracted it during the time of the 1906 fight, bedeviled by the Nevada heat, white opponents’ insistence that his weight be 133 pounds (which was said to be unnatural for him) and the lengthy fight itself. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.
He won 158 fights (100 were knockouts), had 12 losses, 20 draws and six no-contests for a total of 196 fights.
Baby Joe Gans
Baby Joe Gans was born Gerald Slaughter in El Paso, TX, in 1900 but grew up in Los Angeles. As a child, he sold newspapers on the streets with other black and white boys – several of whom would go on to become champions and make more money than him (especially the white ones), according to a 1930 article in the Baltimore Afro American newspaper. He turned pro in 1923.
“Up through the ranks they have come and today it is no secret that it is just as hard for Gans to book a fight with any of these white fighters as it is for a legless man to win a waltzing contest,” according to the newspaper article.
A welterweight who fought in several classes, Baby Joe was a “shock puncher,” according to the newspaper, cleverly and deceptively landing his hard-as-a-rock punches on an opponent before he knew what was happening. Most his fights were with Nordic or black fighters that didn’t earn him much money.
Baby Joe apparently was making some money, if a newspaper interview with Cox was true. The manager said that Baby Joe had made $100,000, invested in real estate and was living off $1,000 a month in rents.
The “Self Defense” magazine had predicted that Baby Joe would be the only one of Gans’ name-takers to reach the big time. That apparently did not happen, most likely through no fault of his own. Baby Joe was on the fringe of the big times, fighting some of the best white fighters and racking up a string of wins at Madison Square Garden. But in those days, fighting was gangster business, and one newspaper article told the story of gangsters ordering him to lose a fight in 1933 or die, all the time holding a gun on him.
Baby Joe lost the fight, left New York and never returned. Later, he went to Milwaukee to train another fighter (who lost the match and thus, the money Gans was expecting), and Gans didn’t have the cash to return to the West Coast. So he stayed, hoping to get back into fighting to earn the money. Instead, he ended up at the Urban League training black boys for the Golden Gloves. He died of a heart attack in 1959 at age 58, spending 22 years there.
During his career, Baby Joe won 123 fights with 52 knockouts, lost 24 with five knockouts and 11 draws for a total of 159. He boxed 1,194 rounds and his knockout rate was around 32 percent.
