Cross Counter Blow: The cross counter blow is often called ‘give and take.’ It derives the name of ‘give and take’ from one man allowing his opponent an opportunity to land a blow in order to return a more effective one. Cut No. 5 illustrates my opponent landing his left hand upon my jaw, while my right hand has also landed upon his jaw. In order to land my right hand upon his jaw, I was compelled to leave an opening, which he took advantage of with his left hand, consequently I take to give. My object is to land a quicker and more effective blow than he. The blow which lands first in an exchange of this kind will break the force of the other man’s blow as it stops the weight of the body coming towards him. Always bear in mind that it is not necessary to swing with your right hand in order to land an effective cross counter blow. The straight blow, in fact, is much the better, as it is delivered from the shoulder and usually brings better results.
– George Dixon, “A Lesson in Boxing” (1893)
1892 was the single most murderous year of lynching in America. Over a period of twelve months, more than 160 Black Americans were lawlessly hanged, while countless others were shot or tortured to death. And though this reign of terror was pervasive throughout all of America in 1892, it remained most rabid and most dangerous in the American South.
1892 was also the year George Dixon made the decision to go to New Orleans, into the most racist and dangerous state in the union, to fight a white man for the Featherweight Championship of America. But before he undertook this historic fight, Dixon briefly travelled the country with a vaudeville show and took on a title defense against Fred Johnson, who was considered England’s best featherweight challenger.
* * *
In the late morning of January 8, 1892, in Shreveport, Louisiana, a plantation lessee named William Driscoll walked toward a shabby, two-room shack located on his property. From inside the shack, a Black man named Nathan Andrews watched with growing concern as Driscoll approached.
For reasons not clear, Driscoll had come to order Andrews out.
Andrews refused.
In fear for his life, Andrews pointed a rifle through a crack in the doorjamb and shot Driscoll through the arm. As Driscoll lay bleeding, a frantic Andrews left the house through a back door.
But he did not run far.
Within an hour, a small posse found Andrews in a nearby field and returned him, bound, to the plantation. Not long afterward, Andrews was placed in a wagon and taken on the road to the jail in Shreveport. Along the way, an angry mob of fifty men, shouting and jeering, stopped the wagon. One produced a rope. A passerby, a Black man whose name was not recorded, was forced to stop and bear witness.
Andrews was placed astride a white horse and brought beneath the bough of a cottonwood tree. A noose was pulled about Andrews’ neck and tied to the bough. The shouting and jeering increased until a signal was given, and one of the men slapped the horse on the rump. The horse bolted and the rope pulled taut, leaving Andrews hanging in the air.
After Andrews died, the forced witness was allowed to leave to spread the word to other blacks.
No one was charged with the killing.
* * *
On March 8, 1892, The Logansport Daily Pharos reported that George Dixon and Tom O’Rourke, then travelling with a vaudeville show in Indiana, had checked into the Hotel Genesee for the evening. The next morning, when the two arrived at the hotel restaurant for breakfast, a guest complained to the management about a Black man being allowed in their company. Later, at lunch, the manager informed Dixon that he would not be allowed to enter the room. O’Rourke was enraged. He engaged in a heated argument with the manager until the manager relented. The experience was just another humiliation among many that George Dixon stoically faced as he travelled the country. In fact, his wife Kitty would often have to stay in a whites only hotel, while Dixon slept in a blacks only hotel or in the home of a local.
* * *
Some months later, on June 27, 1892, The Boston Globe reported that a Black man named Thomas Bates was taken forcibly from his jail cell in Shelbyville, Tennessee, by two hundred irate men. Bates was in jail for the confessed killing of his wife, whose throat he had cut “from ear to ear.” The mob dragged Bates, kicking and crying, through the dirt street to the base of a gnarled oak tree not thirty yards away. There, with a noose tied around his neck, Bates was hanged.
He died listening to the jeers of the angry crowd.
No one was charged with his killing.
* * *
On the same day Thomas Bates was hanged, George Dixon and Fred Johnson, the English boxing champion, stood opposite each other for their weigh-in before their fight on Coney Island in New York. An inch taller and five years older than Dixon, Fred Johnson had been fighting in England for six years. He was known to be a hard puncher and had risen to the top of the featherweight field with an impressive record of forty-seven wins and three losses.
After the weigh-in, Dixon and O’Rourke made their way to Widow O’Brien’s Road House and “ate a hearty dinner.” Johnson returned to his training camp and made a meal of a plowman’s dinner – muttonchops, toast, and porterhouse steak washed down with a “bottle of Bass Ale and tea.” Johnson told a reporter of the Salt Lake City’s Daily Tribune, “I have come 3,000 miles to meet Dixon, and I do not propose to allow anything to happen to me while in training that might result in my defeat. When I go into the ring, I will be in better condition than I ever was in my life. If Dixon outfights and outgenerals me, he will win, and I will regard him as the greatest boxer of his weight in the world.”
At 7:00 p.m., on the night of the Dixon-Johnson fight, the Police Gazette reported, “Every train and boat running to Coney Island carried large delegations of sporting men.” At 8:00 p.m., John L. Sullivan entered the club, waving. The crowd rose and cheered as he made his way to box seat 42. Not long afterward, his New Orleans opponent, “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, arrived too. An equally deafening cheer was also offered, as he too waved and made his way to box seat 48. He passed Sullivan “without as much as a nod.”
The assembled crowd inside the four-storey, wooden warehouse, known as the Coney Island Athletic Club, swelled to more than six thousand. A large illustration in the Police Gazette shows men in full suits and bowler hats, waving their arms and cheering. Some are smoking cigarettes and others cigars. A large group of men stand beneath a sign stating in bold lettering, “No Betting Allowed.” No doubt the irony of its inclusion was intended; they are furiously betting on the outcome, three to one for Dixon.
After a preliminary bout between two local bantamweights, George Dixon entered the arena in a long bathrobe. He moved swiftly through the crowd to the ring amid great cheers. Behind him followed his seconds, Tom O’Rourke, Maurice Keely, Ed Daly, and timekeeper Mike Bradley. Fifteen minutes later, Fred Johnson entered the arena with his handlers, Charlie Norton, Ben Rowlands, Billy Pilmmer, timekeeper P.J. Donohue, and bottle-holder Benny Murphy. As Johnson stepped into the ring, the crowd roared with enthusiasm.
Referee Al Smith was introduced, and the two combatants shed their robes. Dixon wore a white breechcloth while Johnson wore pale red. The six thousand fans continued to cheer as the referee called the contestants to the centre of the ring. Both fighters listened with care to the instructions. They nodded and shook hands.
At 9:52 p.m., the bell sounded for round one.
Through rounds one and two, the fighters offered little more than cautious probing. In round three, Johnson took the offensive with quick combinations. But Dixon responded to every punch with devastating counterpunches. “The round ended,” noted the Police Gazette, “with Dixon going to his corner smiling, while Johnson appeared nervous.” Johnson adjusted his attack over the next few rounds and was able to land some well-placed blows.
By round eleven both fighters had slowed, showing signs of serious fatigue. Combinations and counterpunches were followed by long clinches in rounds twelve through thirteen.
Finally, in the fourteenth, Dixon saw his opportunity. He struck Johnson with an overhand right on the jaw. Johnson’s legs buckled. He fell forward, hitting the “hard boards with terrible force.” He tried to rise once but fell back to the canvas at the count of ten. The referee, Al Smith, announced that Dixon was the winner.
The appreciative crowd shouted its approval.
“Good for Boston,” John L. Sullivan was heard to yell, “and good for the United States.”
* * *
Though Dixon’s victory was a great achievement, the fight was not without its portents. The Boston Globe described an incident following the fight that revealed a rare example of George Dixon losing his temper in public.
“While fighters have always been found sadly lacking in the art of speechmaking,” The Boston Globe reported, “some of the more famous sluggers had a knack of expressing themselves forcibly in a very few words. Little George Dixon has always been as mum as the proverbial clam. He was as bashful as a schoolgirl when it came to talking about his deeds in the ring. Dixon made only one speech during his long career, and that one might perhaps be called involuntary at that. Despite his color, ‘Little Chocolate’ was second only to John L. in popularity. Even his bitterest enemies never referred to his race or color. But last night, after he had whipped Fred Johnson of England at Coney Island, an angry Briton, who had lost heavily in Johnson’s defeat, went to the featherweight champion and chastised him.” The “angry Briton” had pushed his way through the crowd to Dixon and he accosted him. “You’re a bloody nigger!” the Briton shouted, “and I think you deliberately back-heeled Freddie.”
Normally agreeable in the most difficult circumstances, Dixon was visibly enraged. He “turned to his detractor, and, with a look of scorn, disgust and rage combined, said in a whisper that could be heard halfway through the box seats, ‘I am surprised that they don’t teach folks manners in England. I’m sorry Johnson lost, but I had to beat him if I could, because I was defending my title. I’m no ‘nigger’ and never will be. A ‘nigger’ is what people call a no-account member of my race. You can go to hell!” The Englishman reportedly slipped quickly and quietly out of the building.
What role the incident played in Dixon’s mindset as he made plans for his travel to the Deep South is not known. But he certainly must have internalized each of these experiences and tasted a sour centre in the sweetness of his victories in the ring.
* * *
From New York, George Dixon and Tom O’Rourke travelled back to Boston and then began the long trip to New Orleans for the Carnival of Champions. This event would be a turning point in the history of modern boxing. In his biography of the first Black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, author Geoffrey C. Ward wrote that the fight between “Gentleman” Jim Corbett and John L. Sullivan “marked the real beginning of the modern boxing era.” Ward added, “Instead of meeting in secret in a farmer’s field or aboard an anchored off-shore barge, they would fight beneath the electrically illuminated roof of an enclosed stadium as the climax of a three-night ‘Triple Event’ of boxing covered by sportswriters from all over the country.”
The fights for the Carnival of Champions were chosen for their premier drawing power. Not only were the bouts meant to showcase boxing, but they were also meant to provide a prime opportunity for unprecedented gambling. So the organizers looked to the greatest fighters of the day in three major weight classes for their event – heavyweight John L. Sullivan, lightweight Jack McAuliffe, and featherweight George Dixon.
Worthy fights were arranged between lightweights Jack McAuliffe and challenger Billy Myer, and between challenger “Gentleman” Jim Corbett and the American heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan. But the organizers were uncertain as to who would be a strong enough opponent for Dixon. As the Police Gazette later noted, “Who to get for Dixon … was a puzzle for the club officials. He was the only recognized winner of a world’s championship title that America could boast of, and to have a champions’ carnival without the colored wonder would have been like the tragedy of Hamlet minus the personage about whom the story revolved.”
Conscious of creating advantageous betting odds, the organizers looked for a featherweight challenger Dixon had not already beaten. They accepted an offer from a “zealous and too confident backer” to have a fighter named Jack Skelly take on Dixon. Skelly “had been earning laurels as an amateur” and had won numerous amateur titles. To make the fight more attractive to Dixon, a side wager of $5,000 was offered above the purse of $7,500.
Dixon was drawn to the sizable purse, but he would only agree to the fight if the organizers accepted an additional demand – the setting aside of a thousand seats for local blacks to watch the fight. Certainly, the Carnival of Champions organizers would have been conscious of the empowering message they would send to the Black community if they agreed to the condition, and they would have been equally conscious of the ire they would raise among racist whites if they did.
Yet, in the end, they gave Dixon what he wanted.
That the organizers did this says much about the drawing power of George Dixon the boxer and the man at the height of his talent and fame. And in this context, with Dixon’s condition being seen as an open, even defiant, call for dignity and solidarity among the Black community, the Dixon-Skelly fight in New Orleans represented a significant moment in the long march toward civil rights.
* * *
On the first night of the Carnival of Champions, September 5, 1892, Jack McAuliffe easily knocked out Billy Myer in an uneventful fifteen rounds. Despite the lacklustre fight the fans’ enthusiasm was palpable. A Spokane Review reporter wrote, “The excitement which has prevailed in this city has had no parallel. There has been no subject of conversation discussed in any quarter save the event of the evening in which every portion of the civilized world is more or less deeply interested.”
* * *
Jack Skelly, Dixon’s opponent on the evening of September 6, 1892, was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was five feet five inches tall and began fighting in 1888, winning a series of solid but hardly spectacular bouts. In spite of this mediocre record, in the hype-filled preamble to the fight, Skelly was presented to the boxing world as a worthy opponent to Dixon in New Orleans. And in the charged, racist context of New Orleans, many were willing to believe it.
When the Dixon-Skelly match was set some months earlier in the Saint James Hotel in New York, Tom O’Rourke and Billy Reynolds argued for four hours over one pound in the weight limit. It was assumed by both that Skelly would be the heavier man, so they settled on 118 pounds. Yet when the two were finally weighed in New Orleans, it was Dixon who came in at 118 pounds, while Skelly weighed 116½ pounds. All present noted that Skelly was physically fit and presented a fine-looking boxer. But despite the efforts to play up Skelly’s strength and skill, it was George Dixon who remained the prohibitive favourite by five to one among the “sports” as fight day approached.
And the betting was heavy.
On the night of the Dixon-Skelly bout, the local newspapers recorded that the evening was comfortably cool. As well, they noted the sky was clear and “the streets [around the Olympic Club] were free from mud and water, and everybody appeared to be in a humor to enjoy the sport.” Policemen were stationed throughout the area to keep “a sharp watch for the light-fingered gentry who have come here in considerable numbers from Boston, New York, and Chicago.” As the enormous crowd waited to enter, they talked loudly and passionately about the McAuliffe-Myer fight from the night before, and they argued about the relative fighting merits of Skelly and Dixon.
At 7:00 p.m. on September 6, the thousands of fans entered the Olympic Club in New Orleans. The venue was well designed for the affair, and people found their seats with ease. High in the gallery, behind Dixon’s corner, noted The Boston Globe, were the seats that had been “set apart for the colored men.”
“In one way this was the most interesting contest of the two,” said The Boston Globe, comparing this fight to the Sullivan and Corbett match scheduled for the next evening. “The color line is just as closely drawn in the ring as it is socially here. Many of the Orleanians have sought to criticize the club officials for making a match between a colored man and the white fighter who was deemed his inferior. The matter caused fully as much talk as the [heavyweight] match between Sullivan and Corbett.”
At 8:00 p.m., the modern electric lights, installed just for the event, malfunctioned and oil lamps were lit in their place. The representatives of both fighters expressed their concerns about the dimness of the venue. However, the electric lights were finally restored, and all was in good working order.
The reporter for The Boston Globe noted the crowd was not as large as it had been the night before. “All the visiting patrons were on hand,” he speculated, “but the local patrons who, it was apparent, did not care to see the white man knocked out by a Negro, a thing they firmly expected. The effect of such a result, they believed, would make the negro simply unbearable.” Then the reporter added, “It would be a local calamity.”
At 8:15 p.m., both George Dixon and Jack Skelly arrived, and each was shown to his dressing room. The Boston Globe reporter was granted entry to Skelly’s room, where he found the fighter being prepared by his seconds. On the wall, the reporter noted a “beautiful embroidered set of colors” which had been given to Skelly by his backer. In one corner of the “colors” was the American flag, and below that, the “harp of Ireland.” The initials O.C. were embroidered on the flag for the New York Olympic Club, and a “dart piercing Cupid’s heart” had been added as well.
Skelly noticed the reporter looking at the banner. He walked over from his cot and pointed at the heart. “That’s the thing I care for more than the others,” he said. “Flags don’t cut any figure when a case of love is involved.” He explained to the reporter that he was fighting to make money for his impending marriage.
In the hall, Captain Barrett of the police entered the ring at 8:30 p.m. He first inspected the ropes and then looked over the crowd. Satisfied that all was as it should be, he left. Soon afterward, local dignitaries arrived and found their seats, while “colored waiters” walked among the patrons nearest to the ring, serving ice water. Spectators looking for beer made their way to the clubhouse. High above, in the galleries, more fans milled about and found their seats. The rumble of conversation grew as the minutes passed.
Upstairs in his dressing room, George Dixon was being rubbed down for the fight. Tom O’Rourke “was as attentive to Dixon as though he had been his own son.” When the rubdown was finished, Dixon stood. O’Rourke adjusted Dixon’s light-coloured trunks. Then he “folded up the colors which Dixon wore in England in his fight with Nunc Wallace and tied them around his waist.” Dixon looked relaxed and ready. He smiled at O’Rourke.
“Do you expect that this will be a long fight?” a reporter in the room asked Dixon.
Dixon’s smile grew wider and he winked. “I hardly think that’s a fair question,” he said. “I’m going into the ring to do the best I can. But I can assure you that the fight won’t last very long, if I get this fellow where I want him.”
In Skelly’s dressing room, one of the attendants discovered that Skelly’s trunks had been forgotten. After some minor confusion, Jack McAuliffe, the lightweight who had won the fight the night before, quickly found a replacement pair. “I’m mighty glad to get these, Jack,” said an appreciative Skelly, “and if I do as well with them as you did, I’ll be the happiest man on earth.”
“Why, you will simply punch holes in this fellow,” a smiling McAuliffe said. “He’s never been punched, and you’ll make him feel the gaff.”
* * *
At 9:01 p.m., George Dixon entered the ring before nearly ten thousand people and took the same seat that McAuliffe had taken the night before. The “colored spectators” registered their approval with deafening applause. A moment later, Skelly entered the ring also to the vocal approval of the crowd. He smiled and waved as he took his stool in the ring.
At 9:07 p.m., Dixon and Skelly were called to the centre of the ring to hear instructions and to shake hands.
Less than a minute later, the bell sounded and the first round was underway.
Each fighter moved about the ring with caution, until the nervous Skelly made his move. He threw a roundhouse right swing at Dixon’s jaw. At that same moment, Dixon let loose a sharp left to Skelly’s mouth. Both punches landed, and the fighters clinched.
Referee Duffy separated them.
Again, Skelly took the charge, with a right at Dixon’s head. But Dixon deftly sidestepped, and the swing went wide. Skelly followed with another punch, only to be met with a quicker right counterpunch to the mouth. Skelly leaned in and clinched again. Using a free hand, Dixon pounded at Skelly’s ribs. When they pulled away, Skelly caught Dixon weakly in the jaw. The two danced around each other, sparring lightly for the remainder of the round, though the strength of Dixon’s talent and tactics was clear.
In round two, Skelly, wary of Dixon’s counterpunches, danced away as Dixon tried to get in. But Dixon was quick, stepping forward and throwing a straight right. Skelly ducked under it and leaned into another clinch.
Dixon broke away and attacked, but missed with both punches of a head combination. The two backed away, dancing and sparring. Dixon noted how Skelly guarded his head, so he changed tactics. He moved in but directed his attack at Skelly’s stomach and ribs. Then he stepped to the right and swung a hard left that connected with Skelly’s gut. Skelly slumped, and the crowd groaned. And before Skelly could correct his defenses, Dixon returned with another right to the ribs.
Skelly was stunned.
Before Skelly could move, Dixon delivered yet another left to the stomach. Skelly moved to counter, offering a feeble jab to Dixon’s face. Then the two fell into another clinch. When they broke, Skelly regrouped and offered more disciplined, effective punches, ending with a quick combination to Dixon’s face.
Dixon countered with a left to Skelly’s face, but Skelly ducked under the punch and turned his right shoulder forward, catching Dixon on the ear. Dixon countered with a left to the stomach and a right to the neck, to which many in the dismayed crowed yelled, “Foul!” Dixon stepped back and motioned an apology. Skelly curtly nodded. Dixon returned to the attack, throwing a left to Skelly’s chest, which grew “rapidly rosy and puffed” from Dixon’s repeated punches. Skelly retreated. Dixon pressed. At the bell, Skelly’s nose began to swell.
Skelly came out sharply at the round three bell, pushing Dixon back to the ropes. But Dixon would not be caught in the corner and he danced away, throwing a left hand to Skelly’s ribs and a right to his jaw, which soundly rattled him.
Skelly dropped to a knee but rose quickly.
Dixon pounced and delivered two more punches before the overwhelmed Skelly leaned forward and clinched. When the two broke apart, Dixon shot two rights to the ribs, forcing Skelly back. Dixon, in pursuit, levelled a left at Skelly’s jaw and a right to his ribs. Skelly countered with two good strikes to Dixon’s head, but Dixon shrugged the blows off, delivering yet another shot to Skelly’s ribs.
Despite Skelly’s efforts to slow the pace, Dixon relentlessly attacked Skelly’s ribs, heart, and jaw. And each time Skelly clinched to avoid more blows, Dixon offered more punishment to his ribs.
Only the bell ending round three saved Skelly.
In round four, Skelly repeated his tactic of round three, charging at Dixon. But Dixon kept his distance, waiting for chances. When he saw an opening, he stepped in and struck a left-hand blow to Skelly’s stomach. Skelly countered with a weak jab that missed. He tried to corner Dixon, but Dixon would have none of it, dancing away at the last moment, delivering yet another blow to Skelly’s chest.
Skelly and Dixon clinched. They broke. Dixon struck Skelly on the nose, and Skelly responded with a left to Dixon’s temple, only to have Dixon throw a punch to his stomach and two quick strikes to the now visibly bruised ribs. Skelly tried a swing at Dixon’s ear. He connected, but weakly, and was then stunned by a Dixon left to his mouth. Skelly staggered, his hands held high to protect his face. Dixon took the opening and punished Skelly in the stomach and ribs.
So it continued until the bell.
Finding a second wind, Skelly bounded from his corner to start round five. The two fighters jabbed and probed until Dixon found his target with a hard right on Skelly’s ribs. They fell into a clinch. As they broke, Dixon offered a weak shot to Skelly’s jaw, to which Skelly, perhaps confused, pulled into another clinch. When again they broke, Dixon was sharper with his delivery and landed a straight right hand on Skelly’s nose and mouth. Skelly began to bleed, and staggered into a clinch for a moment. But Dixon was quick to break and throw a terrific left to Skelly’s jaw. Skelly turned away from the punch only to catch Dixon’s right above the left eye. A gash immediately opened and blood “flowed freely.”
Skelly was now desperate and threw his arms around Dixon’s neck. But Dixon danced back and offered another shot to Skelly’s eye, widening the cut and increasing the blood flow, which now ran down Skelly’s face, neck, and chest. Dixon would not let up and delivered another right to the jaw and left to the neck. Skelly fell back against the ropes, holding his hands near his face, making feeble efforts to counter, until finally the bell rang.
* * *
While the fight progressed in New Orleans, police in Atlanta, Georgia, were busy cutting down the bodies of three Black men – John Ransom, Jack Walker, and Bill Armer – who had been lynched on a tree limb that reached out over a road. The locals would later say the killings were the result of a “race war.” Though the story was never clear, a party of twenty or thirty armed and masked men had entered the home of Jack Walker and dragged the three into the street, where they were beaten, tortured, and hanged.
No one was charged with the killings.
* * *
At the start of round six, Dixon charged the bloodied and bruised Skelly, throwing quick combinations. Skelly made a good series of parries and counterpunches. Then, to the cheers of the crowd, he took charge and forced Dixon back into a corner. Dixon slipped to the side, offering a shot to Skelly’s stomach for his troubles. Skelly threw a punch at Dixon’s eye. Dixon responded with a hard right. Skelly ducked, only to catch a Dixon left uppercut full on the mouth.
Skelly backed up with Dixon in pursuit. He hit Skelly in the neck with a right as Skelly countered with a left to the jaw. Dixon was unfazed. He shot back with a left over Skelly’s guard, causing a new gash to open below the eye. Skelly tried a left to Dixon’s nose, but Dixon countered with a thunderous left uppercut to Skelly’s heart. Skelly fell back only to have Dixon press on, landing an overhand right that snapped Skelly’s head back. The two then clinched in a “bear hug.”
When they parted, Dixon stepped forward with a left to Skelly’s neck. Skelly struck Dixon with a left to the ear. Dixon reeled.
The crowd roared.
Dixon recovered and landed two hard lefts to Skelly’s nose. Skelly stepped closer and delivered a left and right combination to Dixon’s head, while Dixon managed a close-in jab at Skelly’s nose. The two fell once more into a clinch until the bell rang. Though Skelly had shown more life in the round, he bled profusely. Dixon, observed many, still looked no worse for wear.
Skelly was unsteady as he came up for round seven and clinched at the first opportunity. When they parted, Dixon landed a left-hand jab to Skelly’s jaw, then struck at his ribs and jaw. Skelly defended well until Dixon landed a stinging right hand to his eye. Skelly reeled and nearly went down. Dixon followed with a right to the jaw and a left uppercut to the chest. Skelly wobbled then dropped to his knees. He rose unsteadily only to have Dixon knock him down again with a right to the jaw. Once more Skelly rose and clinched. When they parted, Dixon caught Skelly on the right ear. Skelly was so groggy and disoriented by the bell that Captain Barrett of the New Orleans Police stepped to the ringside prepared to stop the fight.
Skelly refused, and the fight continued.
The police captain looked uncertain as Skelly left his corner for round eight. Dixon smiled at Skelly, who lunged and missed with an awkward swing. Dixon stepped aside and managed a quick left to Skelly’s head before the two clinched. When Skelly broke, he rushed at Dixon, but Dixon sidestepped and countered with a sharp uppercut. Dixon pushed Skelly back and delivered a right to the neck and left uppercut to the ribs. Skelly sank into the ropes, helpless. Dixon pressed on, delivering one combination after another. Somehow, Skelly found the strength to slip away. Dixon followed, forcing him again into the ropes. Skelly managed to defend against the blows, but his arms grew heavy. Dixon caught Skelly with a left to the jaw, and Skelly dropped to the canvas. Again, he rose. Dixon feigned with a left and then shot a right blow to the jaw. Skelly fell again to his knees, then he rolled heavily away to his back.
His head hit the canvas hard.
He was out.
Some in the crowd cheered, while most offered their vocal disgust. Afraid of reprisals, Dixon quickly made his way to his dressing room.
* * *
Two burly policemen stood outside Skelly’s dressing room where, inside, two physicians attended to him. He was covered in red marks on his body, and his nose was “swollen to almost twice its natural size, and the bridge was fractured and bleeding.” When Skelly found the strength, he spoke with the reporter from The Boston Globe. “I want you to send something to New York for me. I am very sorry for my friends who bet on me, and I will do anything in my power to square up with them. I fought as well as I could, but it did not take me long to find out that I had underestimated Dixon’s pugilistic ability. I do not believe that I ever hit Dixon, now that I come to think of it. He was entirely too fast for me.”
With tears in his eyes, Skelly shook his head.
“I would never have entered this fight,” he continued, “if it had not been that I wanted to get enough money to start in shape, as I am to marry, but now I don’t know what I will do. I shall never forgive myself for making this match, not because I was whipped, as that does not bother me a bit. As far as the pain and that sort of thing goes, I can stand that very well, but I know a great many of my friends in Brooklyn, who could not well afford to risk their dollars, backed me for friendship’s sake. That is the bitter pill for me.” His seconds helped dress him, then Skelly had a bottle of ale, which helped him “regain his spirits.”
* * *
The papers that covered the fight noted the angry racism. “White fans winced,” wrote the reporter for the Chicago Tribune, “every time Dixon landed on Skelly. The sight was repugnant to some of the men from the South. A darky is alright in his place here, but the idea of sitting quietly by and seeing a colored boy pommel a white lad grates on Southerners.”
The comments in other papers were subtler. “What with bruises, lacerations, and coagulated blood,” wrote the reporter for the New Orleans Times-Democrat, “Skelly’s nose, mouth, and eye presented a horrible spectacle. Some even turned away their heads in disgust, at that face already disfigured past recognition.”
And the New Orleans Daily Picayune did not miss the larger significance of what Dixon had done that evening. “It was a mistake to match a negro and a white man,” read the paper, “a mistake to bring the races together on any terms of equality, even in the prize ring. It was not pleasant to see a white man applaud a negro for knocking another white man out.”
The Times-Democrat agreed. “We sincerely trust that this mistake – for it was a mistake and a serious one to match a negro with a white man – will not be repeated,” ran the editorial on September 8, 1892. “For among the ignorant negroes the idea has naturally been created that it was a test of strength and fighting power of Caucasian and African … which give negroes false ideas and dangerous beliefs … And the white race of the south will destroy itself if it tolerates equality of any kind.”
Four days later, the same group that had organized the boxing festival, the Olympic Athletic Club, decided to suspend bouts between Black and white boxers – a ban that would last a generation.
A year after the fight, the Police Gazette noted on September 30, 1893, “Nearly every time Dixon has been pitted against a champion, no matter whether foreign or native, the majority has named Dixon the loser, probably through prejudice, owing to his color, yet he has won.”
The northern Black press was also well aware of the fight’s significance. “Dixon has given a favorite Dixie prejudice a black eye,” reported the Cleveland Gazette. “It is all right to see a white man whip another in the south, but to pay one’s dollars and a number of them, too, to see a Hamite ‘whip the stuffing out of’ a white man, even if he is a northerner, and then give the former an ovation, is something more than the average southerner can or will stand.” With pride the paper added, “My! But how heavy Dixon’s victory must have sat on their delicate stomachs!”
Years later Dixon’s defeat of Skelly in the Deep South was still remembered as a racial upset. “Some of the old-timers tell about the time George Dixon, described as the whitest Black man who ever stepped inside the ropes, knocked out Jack Skelly in New Orleans,” began a short article in the January 24, 1916, edition of The Day, published in New London, Connectcut. “It was along about the seventh round that Dixon, after he teased Jack from the start, slipped over the sleep punch. Tom O’Rourke saw it coming and was ready for it, for almost before the referee had finished the count over Skelly’s prostrate form, O’Rourke pulled the smoke through the ropes, rushed him away from the crowd and wasn’t seen in New Orleans again for several moons. It is likely the mob of southerners would have given Dixon some rough treatment if they had located him that night.”
* * *
On the third night of the Carnival of Champions, September 7, 1892, John L. Sullivan fought Jim Corbett in a match that, for all its hype, was decidedly one-sided. Sullivan at thirty-three was slow and overweight after months of overeating and excessive drinking. From the eighth round on, he wheezed audibly and struggled desperately to keep up with the defensive-minded Corbett. Corbett easily countered all of Sullivan’s clumsy lunges with sharp, well-placed punches, until finally John L. Sullivan, the first heavyweight champion of the gloved era, simply collapsed in the twenty-first round.
He had lost the fight.
It was a painful end for the first giant of modern boxing. After the knockout count, Sullivan struggled to the ropes, and then to his feet. He looked to the crowd and delivered a heartfelt, impromptu farewell. No doubt, Dixon, who had fought the night before, witnessed the fight and listened to Sullivan’s speech. “Gentlemen,” said the exhausted John L. to the crowd, “all I have to say is that I came into the ring once too often. And if I had to get licked, I’m glad to say, I was licked by an American. I remain your warm personal friend, John L. Sullivan.”
The crowd cheered the champion’s farewell.
“Sullivan was morose,” reported The New York Times the next day, “and had been imbibing enough to make him sleep till noon and render him stupid all the afternoon.” The result of the match was tinged with irony. The Carnival of Champions had inaugurated a new era for boxing by legitimizing the sport, while at the same time it finished the career of its first great practitioner.
While fans busily lauded the new champion, “Gentleman” Jim Corbett, John L. Sullivan was left nearly alone. After the fight, he returned to his dressing room where he “threw himself on a lounge and broke down entirely. His self-control was gone, and in a moment he was blubbering like a child.” His seconds and attendants did their best to cheer him. But Sullivan was inconsolable, beaten emotionally as well as physically. “His upper lip was bruised and swollen to twice its natural size,” noted The New York Times. “There were splotches of red where Corbett had sent home that clever, vicious left, and the nose was cut and bleeding. It was a repulsive face. The sneer around the corner of the mouth was gone, and the countenance had lost its ferocity.”
Sullivan wept openly as he spoke to the reporter. “I did not feel him but once,” John L. said. “The punishment did not hurt me early in the night. It was only in the last round that he troubled me. When he smashed me in the face, then I felt as though I was falling backward off a bridge into water, and after that I don’t remember anything.”
Sullivan could say no more and again began weeping. When he pulled himself together, he turned to one of his backers in the room. “Charley,” he said, “I’m sorry you backed me and lost your money.
“Never mind, John,” answered Charley. “I don’t mind the money. It’s gone, and what’s gone is lost. Nobody can lick you but Corbett, and you are better than [Charlie] Mitchell. When the Englishman wants to fight you, my money is at hand.” A waiter then entered the room and handed Sullivan a brandy.
“It only loosened his tongue,” said the embarrassed New York Times reporter, “and made him sob more.”
Whether George Dixon visited John L. Sullivan that night is unrecorded. But he must have been aware, as few others possibly could have been aware, of the crushing weight of disappointment and loss that Sullivan felt. And perhaps, standing as he did at the pinnacle of his boxing career, Dixon made the briefest note of how quickly the fall can come.
* * *
In late October 1892, a young Black man named Allen Parker was arrested and charged in Monroe County, Alabama, with “burning a gin house and fifteen bales of cotton.” When Parker asked what evidence there was of his guilt, the deputy sheriff said he had a “witness.” So the sheriff bound Parker and carried him in a wagon to the Monroeville jail. Two miles from the town, twenty men took the sheriff by surprise and held him down while others elicited a confession from Parker. The terrified Parker was then tied to a tree and hanged, not far from where, two weeks earlier, four other Black men were hanged for an alleged murder.
No one was charged with any of the killings.