Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson — the Galveston Giant — is one of those figures where the more you learn, the more your jaw drops. Born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas, this son of a formerly enslaved man clawed his way to the world heavyweight championship in 1908, becoming the first Black man to hold that title at the absolute peak of the Jim Crow era. That alone is staggering. His 1910 bout against James J. Jeffries, hyped as the "fight of the century," was so charged that his victory sparked race riots across the country — which tells you everything about how threatening his excellence was to the social order. He was flamboyant, defiant, and utterly uninterested in shrinking himself for anyone's comfort. The International Boxing Hall of Fame inducted him in 1990, and a 2005 book about his life won the Anisfield-Wolf Award. He died in 1946, but his shadow stretches across every athlete who ever refused to stay in their lane.

Name (English)

Jack Johnson

Name (Japanese)

ジャック・ジョンソン

Reading

じゃっく・じょんそん

Born

March 31, 1878 – June 10, 1946

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Tiger

Origin

Galveston, Texas, United States

Height

184 cm

Occupation

boxer

Awards & achievements

• 2005 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
• 1990 International Boxing Hall of Fame

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BD%E3%83%B3%20(%E3%83%9C%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B5%E3%83%BC)

Tags

• Texas
• boxer

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.