I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915 (Sport and Society)

At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigor and physicality at the center of the construction of manliness. The book uses the stories of black fighters’ lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters. Through these stories, the book explores how the assertion of this working-class manliness confronted American ideas of race and manliness. While other works on black fighters have explored black boxers as individuals, this book seeks to study these men as a collective group while providing a localized and racialized response to black working-class manhood. It was a tough bargain to risk one’s body to prove manhood, but black men across the globe took that chance. The black prizefighter labored in one of the few trades where an African American man could win renown: boxing. His prowess in the ring asserted an independence and powerful masculinity rare for black men in a white-dominated society, allowing him to be a man—and thus truly free. Louis Moore draws on the life stories of African American fighters active from 1880 to 1915 to explore working-class black manhood. As he details, boxers bought into American ideas about masculinity and free enterprise to prove their equality while using their bodies to become self-made men. The African American middle class, meanwhile, grappled with an expression of public black maleness they saw related to disreputable leisure rather than respectable labor. Moore shows how each fighter conformed to middle-class ideas of masculinity based on his own judgment of what culture would accept. Finally, he argues that African American success in the ring shattered the myth of black inferiority despite media and government efforts to defend white privilege. | Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Bring Home the Bacon: The Black Proletariat and the Prizefighter 2. Race Man or Race Menace? Pugilists, Patriarchy, and Pathology 3. Black Men and the Business of Boxing 4. Colored Championship and Color Lines 5. Sambos, Savages, and the Shakiness of Whiteness 6. Following the Color Line: Progressive Reform and the Fear of the Black Fighter Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index |"Many sports history books in which authors analyze race focus on professional team sports. The history of professional team sports does not represent the full scope of the sporting experience, particularly for African Americans, and particularly during segregation. . . . In I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880 1915 , Louis Moore writes about African American male boxers who not only fought but earned a living in the decades before and after the turn of the century." — Journal of African American History "Immensely readable. . . . I Fight for a Living is essential reading for anyone interested in 'the shadow of the black fist' of racism that loomed over the ring well into the twentieth century, and the African-American fight for equal footing amidst the inception of modern boxing."— Slugfestboston " I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood 1880-1915 is a fantastic and necessary contribution to the critical sociology of the race and sports paradigm, advancing conversations on boxing, race, masculinities, labor, and sports cultures. . . . By contextualizing fighting as both labor and a tool to challenge dominant ideologies, Moore broadens scholarly understandings in the sociology of sport and Black studies about the ways in which Black boxers asserted their agency by using sports as a medium to evade a racist job market and their success in the ring to disrupt the myth of Black inferiority." — International Review for Sociology of Sport | Louis Moore is an associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University. He is the author of We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality . "The black prizefighter labored in one of the few trades where an African American man could win renown: boxing. His prowess in the ring asserted an independence and powerful masculinity rare for black men in a white-dominated society, allowing him to be a man--and thus truly free. Louis Moore draws on the life stories of African American fighters active from 1880 to 1915 to explore working-class black manhood. As he details, boxers bought into American ideas about masculinity and free enterprise to prove their equality while using their bodies to become self-made men. The African American middle class, meanwhile, grappled with an expression of public black maleness they saw related to disreputable leisure rather than respectable labor. Moore shows how each fighter conformed to middle class ideas of masculinity based on his own judgment of what culture would accept. Finally, he argues that African American success in the ring shattered the myth of black inferiority despite media and government efforts to defend white privilege."--Amazon The black prizefighter labored in one of the few trades where an African American man could win renown: boxing. His prowess in the ring asserted an independence and powerful masculinity rare for black men in a white-dominated society, allowing him to be a man - and thus truly free. Louis Moore draws on the life stories of African American fighters active from 1880 to 1915 to explore working-class black manhood. As he details, boxers bought into American ideas about masculinity and free enterprise to prove their equality while using their bodies to become self-made men. The African American middle class, meanwhile, grappled with an expression of public black maleness they saw related to disreputable leisure rather than respectable labor. Moore shows how each fighter conformed to middle class ideas of masculinity based on his own judgment of what culture would accept. Finally, he argues that African American success in the ring shattered the myth of black inferiority despite media and government efforts to defend white privilege At its heart, 'I Fight for a Living' is about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era - a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigour and physicality at the centre of the construction of manliness. This text uses the stories of black fighters' lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 12 1. Bring Home the Bacon: The Black Proletariat and the Prizefighter 33 2. Race Man or Race Menace? Pugilists, Patriarchy, and Pathology 55 3. Black Men and the Business of Boxing 76 4. Colored Championship and Color Lines 103 5. Sambos, Savages, and the Shakiness of Whiteness 124 6. Following the Color Line: Progressive Reform and the Fear of the Black Fighter 149 Epilogue 172 Notes 184 Bibliography 216 Index 228 Introduction -- Bring Home The Bacon : The Black Proletariat And The Prizefighter -- Race Man Or Race Menace? : Pugilists, Patriarchy, And Pathology -- Black Men And The Business Of Boxing -- Colored Championship And Color Lines -- Sambos, Savages, And The Shakiness Of Whiteness -- Following The Color Line : Progressive Reform And The Fear Of The Black Fighter -- Epilogue. Louis Moore. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 173-216) And Index.