'America on the Ropes' [10min @ 37:40]

The 1910 heavyweight fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries was remarkable for several reasons. Jeffries, who had retired undefeated five years previously claimed he was still the legitimate champion. Johnson had won the championship in the ring. Jeffries only took the fight because author Jack London and much of the public at large so energetically beseeched him to remove the heavyweight crown from the Black champion's head. The fight itself was terrible in its brutality and significant for its consequences, short-term and long. So maintains Wayne A. Rozen, the author of America on the Ropes: A Pictorial History of the Johnson-Jeffries Fight, which is actually an ambitious and sizeable compilation of cartoons, editorials, and contemporary accounts as well as a chronicle of the bout. Wayne Rozen joins Bill Littlefield from the studios of WSKG in Binghamton, New York.