Boxing

In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible “professor of boxing.” The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a...

Here is Peter Jackson, a free-born Black tradesman and boxer from the island of St. Croix who KO’d the white boxer Tom Leeds in the thirtieth round to win the Australian Heavyweight championship in 1886. Most white fighters refused to get into the ring with Jackson. “Gentleman” Jim Corbett was one...