How it unfolded
To bring down Jack Johnson, who had become the first Black world heavyweight champion by beating Tommy Burns in Sydney in 1908, the undefeated former champion Jim Jeffries came out of a six-year retirement. The press called him the 'Great White Hope,' and even the writer Jack London pushed for his comeback. Promoter Tex Rickard built a wooden arena in Reno timed to the Fourth of July, and with nearly 20,000 spectators packed in, he refereed the fight himself. The bout was scheduled for 45 rounds. Johnson was relaxed throughout, cutting off Jeffries's advances with jabs and talking and taunting him in clinches, and Jeffries's face broke down as the rounds piled up. When Jeffries went down twice in the 15th round, his corner threw in the towel and Rickard stopped the fight. When the result spread by wire, riots broke out across the United States and dozens died, and several states banned screenings of the fight film.
Why it still matters
This was the first time boxing collided head-on with America's race question. Johnson's win showed that sport could become a stage where social order itself was tested, and for more than twenty years afterward, Black fighters were effectively locked out of heavyweight title shots as a backlash. How long it took Joe Louis to reopen that door tells you the weight of this night.