John L. Sullivan and the Color Line
A scathing editorial critique of prizefighter John L. Sullivan’s racist rhetoric regarding boxing rival Peter Jackson.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
John L. Sullivan, with that brutal frankness that is generally associated with gross stupidity, declares that he 'was brought up to believe that negroes, or "niggers," as we call them, were intended by the Lord as inferiors.' John’s views are those of an exceptional ignoramus and lunkhead today. Sullivan is an Irish-American who has vindicated the principle of home rule by slapping the faces of women who have angered him when in his cups; cuffing newsboys of tender years, beating his own wife brutally and whipping a horse so outrageously as to cause his arrest for cruelty to animals. This great hulking white brute thinks that a negro has no right in the prize ring. Jackson is regarded by Sullivan as an upstart and intruder; a creature whom nature intended for the lowest class of workers, and not for the noble calling of a professional fighter. It is a grim satire on the Democratic theory, 'This is a white man's government,' to find its most earnest defender a notorious prizefighter.
“It is a grim satire on the Democratic theory, 'This is a white man's government,' to find its most earnest defender a notorious prizefighter.”
This editorial provides a rare, albeit biting, historical glimpse into the racial barriers within the boxing world of the 1890s. It stands as a sharp critique of the pervasive white supremacist attitudes that dominated the era's professional sports culture.
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