"Jack Johnson was a pioneer and an American icon because of this. Many people don't know about the first African American heavyweight champion and he was also an inventor...Throughout the history of time, the people that have done things about Jack Johnson, they turned out to be phenomenal and I think we have a phenomenal piece here with all of the things Jack Johnson done," stated Aaron Snowell, who talked about the new movie his working on about the life of heavyweight icon Jack Johnson. Check it out!
PC: Tell us about the new project you have coming up about Jack Johnson.
AS: Well, Jack Johnson is something special. The reason why there is "Boxing Day" is because in 1908, the boxing world crowned Jack Johnson heavyweight champion of the world, and that was the day after Christmas on December 26th, 1908. I'll explain the significance of it all. John L. Sullivan, who was the first American heavyweight champion, who was white, he drew a color line. He said that he would not defend his title against any person of color. And then when [James] Jeffries became champion, he drew the same color line. He would not fight no man of color. However, there had been former slaves in the 1800's that were slaves, fought for titles in England, they lost, but they fought for their freedom as slaves. Now Jack Johnson came along at a time where the world was vastly turning. He was a part of America's breakthrough in terms of a way in from slavery to free people from that bond. So here comes Burns and [Tommy] Burns wins the title, and when Burns wins the title, his statement was, "I'm going to fight all comers for the heavyweight championship of the world." Burns was from Canada. He didn't care where they were from in the world, he was going to fight them. Now Burns wasn't a big heavyweight as we know it today or from that era [weighed 168 ½ the night of the fight with Jack Johnson]. He could be in the super middleweight division today, but at that time, he was the heavyweight champion of the world, so when he made that statement, Jack Johnson was a heavyweight champion of the world, but it was one that blacks had. Jack Johnson and Sammy Langford had those belts at that time. So when Jack Johnson heard his statement, he went to pursue Burns throughout the world when he was defending his title.
It took 2 years, but Jack Johnson finally caught up with Burns in Australia. When he caught up with him in Australia, he was saying things to make the fight. And finally, a promoter over in Australia said he would do it. They built a stadium and everything to host this fight. When they made the fight, Johnson was on a terror. He was colorful, he had character, he had personality. He had all of those things that makes something great. Why I say the world crowned him champion is because there was a new reporter at ringside who was a book novelist and when he seen what Jack Johnson did to Burns, he was taunting him in the ring, playing with him, and just handling him like he was nothing, and then when he knocked him down and was really putting it to him, the police had to come in and stop the fight. When that happened, it echoed all around the world that there was an African American heavyweight champion of the world and his name was Jack Johnson. And that's how he became the first African American champion of the world, from that fight.
So "Boxing Day" is a big holiday around the world, and when Jack Johnson won it on that day, it's the day after Christmas, it was huge! So what happened was Jack Johnson was in a fatal accident in Franklington, North Carolina. We had an opportunity to do a film; my partners in the film are Rob Underhill and Will Williams. We put together a team and we have an actor who is actually a former boxer from Franklington named John Perry, who is playing Jack Johnson. So what we're going to try and do is take away that stigma that Jack Johnson had with the Mann Act. The Mann Act is where you take a white woman across state lines and do immoral things, and that happened from Pittsburgh to Chicago. That's where that act happened. They alleged he had paid for a white woman's ticket, who just so happened to be his wife, and that's where they got him for the Mann Act. When that happened, Jack Johnson paid the bond and he got out on the bond and then he went and fled to Canada and then to England and he went in exile for 7 years. However, Jack Johnson fought a lot of huge fights, and most of his fights were huge. Jack Johnson and Jeffries was huge. There was a promoter named "Tex" who drew Jeffries out of retirement because Jeffries had drew that color line. It made it a big event, if he would lose a certain amount of weight at a certain time. So Jack Johnson ended up beating Jeffries, which was known as the Fight of the Century. It was massive and huge, like when Mayweather fought Pacquiao.
Jack Johnson was a pioneer and an American icon because of this. Many people don't know about the first African American heavyweight champion and he was also an inventor. He invented an everyday tool when he went to jail; when eventually he turned himself in. It's an everyday tool; it's an adjustable pipe wrench that he had a patent for. Most of us probably use that tool almost everyday and didn't realize he was the one who invented that tool. And also, Jack Johnson may be the first African American to be a race car driver. At the time, after the fight with Jeffries, he challenged a very rich man named [Barney] Oldfield, who was into race car driving, and Oldfield had a bunch of fancy race cars and he also had a deal with Ford at the time where he would put together motors and stuff with Mr. Ford, inventor of the Ford car. When Jack Johnson challenged Oldfield, it was something huge because he was coming off of the huge fight with Jeffries and now to challenge Oldfield, who was very wealthy. Johnson ended up losing, however he did race. American Motors Association were the ones who sanctioned race car races and they said if Oldfield would carry out that race, they would take his license from him and they would cancel the race and it wouldn't be sanctioned and he would be fined for racing Jack. They raced, Jack ended up losing, but the mere fact that he raced, most people at the time were riding horse and buggy; Jack Johnson was driving fancy cars at the time. So this is why this story and this movie that we are doing is important because it will educate a new age of young people about a great African American heavyweight champion. Now the reason why I said that is, as many heavyweight champions that I've trained, as many African American champions that I've trained, if it wasn't for Jack Johnson, most of us would not have had the opportunity to practice the trade that so many of us love in boxing. He opened doors when doors were closed. When he beat Jeffries, riots broke out all around the world over the result of this fight. It was something on the cutting edge of change. I first learned about Jack Johnson from Muhammad Ali. When I was around Muhammad Ali, Ali would always talk about him all the time on a constant basis. Jack Johnson meant a lot to Muhammad Ali, so when you understand that, for somebody as great as Muhammad Ali to give Jack Johnson his due and talk about how clever his style and his grace of boxing and his power and his character. When they were calling him all kinds of foul words, Jack Johnson never lost his cool. You never heard about Jack Johnson losing his cool. He was a very cool person.
PC: This sounds like a film where you really had to research some things and get a lot of hands on deck to create.
AS: Yes! What we are doing with this film is showcasing his great accomplishments. He shot war bonds for the United States government in the 1900's. There were so many great things that Jack Johnson did. His style, where you see him moving gracefully and the way he had certain techniques and punches, he had a punch he called the "Anchor Punch," and his fancy cars he drove. You see a lot of these young fighters now, when they make it, they want to drive a fancy car. Well Jack Johnson was one of those guys who drove fancy cars. He was on the cutting edge of a lot of things, such as television. When he came along, the first thing that was filmed was two cats boxing. Boxing set the stage for film. People don't know that, so most likely Jack Johnson was the first African American to be filmed. And also those fights that were on film of Jack Johnson and Jeffries and Burns and all of those guys, they stopped all of that stuff from being shown. They didn't want to show an African American man beating up on a white man, so a lot of those tapes were stopped from being shown. A lot of those films now are in the National Archives for great moments, not only for films, but also for sports. John Perry, the actor we have playing Jack Johnson in the film, looks a lot like Jack Johnson and he was a former boxer.
PC: Obviously the barriers he broke through and the significance of him becoming the first African American heavyweight champion are important, but something had to grab you and make you want to move forward with this project. What was that?
AS: It's the history of boxing. My passion and love is for boxing and when an opportunity comes up to cover something like this, you take it. Where he passed is where my mother grew up and I have a lot of relatives that live where he died in the accident. A lot of them wanted me to do this a long time ago. We had a great opportunity with, "The Jack Johnson Story, The Night it Happened!" The Franklin County Tourism Authority, we have received grant funding to bring this alive and let people know about the accident and what happened. We are also working with colleges in order to have an educational piece that's also entertaining and that's so that the new generation will get to fall in love with Jack Johnson. As I said, the pardon, Bush had pardoned Jack Johnson. He was born in Galveston, Texas. When George Bush was President of the United States, he had put together a pardon to pardon Jack Johnson of the Mann Act, however, it went down to the senate and it stalled. So John McCain and Harry Reid brought the bill back up. Mike Tyson was pushing it for awhile. They went down and reformed the bill and it came up through the senate and it's on President Barack Obama's desk. It's in his hands in order to give that man a pardon of that Mann Act. So there is a combination of following facts. You know when something is in it's time, it's hard to beat, like a championship fighter. I believe this is the time and the hour now of all of the things that are put together; the things that people are doing in the community there. My family is from there, my mother was born and raised there, and I was born there. My relatives are helping to push this thing so we can get it done. Hopefully when the short film, the documentary, and the motion film is all finished, it's going to be archived and we're going to have a gym that holds all of his memorabilia from the film that we collected where people can see the model of the car and hit a button and watch the documentary and learn about him and things like that in a boxing gym. And that gym would be for kids to be tutored and mentored for life challenges, and that's a good thing because that's what Jack Johnson was about. The thing with the "Cotton Club" in New York with Count Basie and everybody famous, well Jack Johnson used to own that club. He sold it to the guy who changed the name of it to the "Cotton Club." But that club was Jack Johnson's first. And then in Chicago, in that business area, Jack Johnson had the first business in what was known as that Black Wall Street area in Chicago. So Jack Johnson did so much and it's just thrilling to have that opportunity to present that to the people. He was also a world traveler too. He spent time in France during that exile period. He wrote his own autobiography, he did plays; he had plays written about him. Muhammad Ali and James Earl Jones during 1969 and '70, they did a play called, "The Great White Hope." It was about Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali showed James Earl Jones about boxing and different moves that Jack Johnson did. They pulled it off. So throughout the history of time, the people that have done things about Jack Johnson, they turned out to be phenomenal and I think we have a phenomenal piece here with all of the things Jack Johnson done.
PC: When can we expect to see the finished product?
AS: We're looking into this coming year [2016]. We have been filming and interviewing and in 2016, a lot of the stuff from the short film to the documentary to the motion film will be released. And here is something unique that we have, we have eyewitness accounts, people that are living that are in their 90's now. They were young when the car accident happened, but we have eyewitness of the accident who have never been interviewed.
PC: That's amazing!
AS: Yes it is and it was nothing but a blessing. What we did, we worked with the police and we interviewed the sheriff and the Chief of Police; Sheriff Winstead and Chief John Green of the local police to make sure that the people were not fabricating anything. We wanted to be able to hold people responsible for what they were saying. We have something great and I think not only the boxing community, but the general public is going to enjoy something that they didn't know about Jack Johnson. Most of the time, when you hear about Jack Johnson, you think of something to do with racism, you think about him having all of these white women around him and marrying white women and he was at one point married to a black woman. His first wife was black. They got a divorce but yeah, he was married to an African American woman. Another thing that a lot of people don't know is the only reason why Jack Johnson turned himself in at the time was he got home sick. He was down in Mexico and he did exhibitions down in Mexico City to raise money, and he dedicated those exhibitions in Mexico City to his mother. And the only reason he turned himself in down in Texas is because he had missed his mother. Jack Johnson was born in slavery. His parents were in slavery. Both his mother and father were former slaves and he loved his mother dearly. I have a unique picture of Jack Johnson at Christmas time hugging his mother and his wife at the time, who was Caucasian, and his manager at the time, "Little", and his two siblings by a Christmas tree. And if you go to "The Jack Johnson Story: The Night it Happened" on Facebook, that Christmas card is up there. We're on to something great and we would just like to thank you for taking the time here to talk about the great heavyweight champ Jack Johnson when he echoed around the world and the world crowned him the first African American heavyweight champion of the world, and I like to thank you for the opportunity that you've given me here today and talking to me about "The Jack Johnson Story: The Night it Happened!" We have Bobbie Richardson, who is a state representative in that area who is supporting this film. She went out on a limb for us, and also G.K. Butterfield, who is the Senator from that area and who is also supporting the film. So we have a lot of support. 17 out of the last 25 heavyweight champions have signed on to the Jack Johnson story. Also, the Las Vegas Boxing Hall of Fame with Steve Lott, Shelly Williams, and their historian have signed on to the project. And we have Louisburg College and St. Aug College, one in Louisburg, North Carolina and one in Raleigh, North Carolina, they signed on to the project as well. The reason why the college signed on is because during segregation, St. Aug had the first African American Hospital and nursing school. And that's where they took him because during segregation, they wouldn't let him go to the white hospital nearby, so they had to drive him an hour from there to the Raleigh Hospital, which was St. Agnes Hospital. We have a great piece and it's controversy that we are going to bring up about the accident with the eyewitness account and what we know. Where he was at and where he came from and what he was doing at the time. And we are going to reveal all of that information. We also have a world-renowned gospel signer, William Hunter, who at the end will be singing "God Bless America!"
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