Jason Winders - George Dixon: The Short Life of Boxings First Black World Champion, 1870–1908

Sport is an extraordinarily important phenomenon that pervades the lives of many people and has enormous impact on society in an assortment of ways. At its most fundamental level, sport has the power to bring people great joy and to satisfy their competitive urges while allowing them to form bonds and a sense of community with others from various walks of life and diverse backgrounds and interests. Sport also makes clear, especially at the highest levels of competition, both the lengths that people will go to achieve victory and its close connections to business, education, politics, economics, religion, law, family, and other societal institutions. Moreover, sport is about identity developmenthow individuals and groups, irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class, have sought to elevate their status and realize material success and social mobility.

Sport, Culture, and Society seeks to promote a greater understanding of the aforementioned issues and many others. Recognizing sports powerful influence and ability to change peoples lives in significant ways, the series focuses on topics ranging from urbanization and community development to biographies and intercollegiate athletics. It includes monographs and anthologies that are characterized by excellent scholarship, accessible to a wide audience, and interesting and thoughtful in design and interpretations. Singular features of the series are authors and editors who represent a variety of disciplinary areas and adopt different methodological approaches. The series also includes works by individuals at various stages of their careers, both sport studies scholars of outstanding talent just beginning to make their mark on the field and more experienced scholars of sport with established reputations.

This newest volume in the series is a biography of the great Black Canadian boxer George Dixon. Using a wide range of primary and secondary materials, Jason Winders furnishes a fascinating account of the life and boxing career of Dixon, the diminutive Black fighter who fought literally hundreds of bouts during some twenty years in the ring. Recounted here are Dixons most famous matches, including his featherweight championship fight in 1892 against Jack Skelly at the Olympic Clubin New Orleans. Part of a three-day pugilistic festival that also included a lightweight championship fight between Billy Myer and Jack McAuliffe, and a heavyweight championship fight pitting the Boston Strong Boy John L. Sullivan against James J. Corbett, Dixons pummeling of Skelly to capture the featherweight championship enraged the white citizens of New Orleans to such an extent that no interracial fights were permitted in the Crescent City until the next century. Importantly, Winders provides important information about Dixons life outside the ring, despite the fact the talented Black fighter left behind no journals, no letters, no grand autobiographies. Stitching together newspaper accounts and other seldom-used sources, Winders delineates Dixons complex personality and difficulties in navigating the world amid the hardening racial lines of late-nineteenth-century America. Unfortunately, like so many other boxers through the years, Dixons personal life did not always mirror the many successes he experienced in the squared circle.

David K. Wiggins
Series Editor