I am reading about the first Black heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson right now. His story is featured in a bus tour that I am leading in November as part of the Black/Inside exhibition. Anyway, as part of my research, I stumbled upon an editorial (PDF) published in the Los Angeles Times on July 6, 1910. It was published after a series of riots left over 25 black people dead after Jack Johnson won a highly promoted fight against a white undefeated former heavyweight champion named James K. Jeffries. Jack Johnson, an unrepentant black man, had defeated America’s “Great White Hope.”

The L.A. Times criticized the post-fight riots in the editorial but the part that really stands out is the section titled: “A word to the black man.” I think that it is instructive to look back at history in order to understand our current circumstances. It won’t come as a shock as you read the words below that the editorial writers of the L.A. Times were racists. After all, they were simply products of a racist society in 1910. Still, the words are jarring and deeply vexing all the same.

Do not point your nose too high. Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly. Do not be puffed up. Let not your ambitions be inordinate or take a wrong direction. Let no treasured resentments rise up and spill over. Remember you have done nothing at all. You are just the same member of society today you were last week. Your place in the world is just what it was. You are on no higher plane, deserve no new consideration, and will get none. You will be treated on your personal merits in the future as in the past. No man will think a bit higher of you because your complexion is the same as that of the victor at Reno. That triumph is the personal asset of Arthur Johnson, a negro to be sure, but not the particular person who stands in your own shoes.

Remember that if it did establish the fact that, man for man all through the two races, yours was capable of being wrought into the best pugilists (which is not the case), even then there would be no room for becoming swollen with pride. That would not justify you jumping to the very illogical conclusion that you are “on top.” You are no nearer that mark than you were before the fight took place. You must depend on other influences to put your race on higher ground, and you must depend on personal achievement to put yourself on higher ground.

Never forget that in human affairs brains count for more than muscle. If you have ambition for yourself and your race, you must try for something better in development than that of a mule.

As for the white man who attempts to insult you because of the fair victory won by one of your race from one of the white race, you can well afford to ignore him and respect yourself. The fact that the man’s skin is white does not make him more or less brutal or cowardly. He is no credit to the white race and would be none to any race. Such conduct is more than foolish. It is asinine. No savage fresh from the jungle could manifest more brutish traits of character than this. White men who are men worthy of the name will not join in any fresh crusade against your race, already too long and too cruelly persecuted.

Do not dwell too much on matters of race, particularly when it relates to the characteristics in which the dullest of the brute creation is superior to all men of all races and colors. Think rather of your own individuality, of your personal achievements. Be ambitious for something better than the prize ring. Cultivate patience, grow in reasonableness, increase your stock in useful knowledge, try for new things which distinguish man from the beasts that perish and leave no results of life behind them. Endurance is part of Johnson’s good qualities which stood him in good stead; hopefulness and good nature are others. Try to emulate this member of your race in these qualities. Their possession will do you more good and count for more in behalf of your race than it would if a black man would “knock out” a white man every day for the next ten years.

Translation: Don’t think that you are all that just because a black man beat a white man in the boxing ring. You aren’t. Don’t look to flex your collective muscles; develop yourselves as individuals and be sure not to be angry or to threaten white people with violence.

It’s quite amazing to read these words in print, no? Because the government could not stop Johnson from beating up on white people in the ring, they decided to persecute him outside of it. He was prosecuted for violating the federal Mann Act, which prohibited transporting a woman across state lines for “debauchery.” He was convicted mainly because the women in question were white. President Obama has the power to pardon Jack Johnson posthumously. He’s been asked many times to do so. We are still waiting.