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Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)

Posted By: MirrorsMaker
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)
DVDRip | MKV | 718 x 480 | x264 @ cd1 - 1321 Kbps; cd2 - 1190 Kbps | 213 min | 2,60 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps | Subs: English (embedded in MKV)
Genre: Documentary

The story of Jack Johnson is huge. The first black Heavyweight Champion of the World, 1908 to 1915, he was rowdy, smart, rebellious, and proud. He was also resilient in the face of unrelenting racism. And, as Stanley Crouch observes in Ken Burns' Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, "There is nobody like Jack Johnson, because, first thing, when Jack Johnson was fighting, he could have been killed at any of his major fights. There were people out in the audience who were probably willing to murder him. He knew it, they knew it, everybody in the world knew it."

Talented and world-famous as a young man, as well as essentially unbeatable, Johnson was champion when (official, as opposed to underground) boxing was a wholly white province, when the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Jack London, all editorialized as to natural orders, in which African Americans were humble and inferior, and Caucasians were honorable, strong, and always right. And yet, as courageous and frankly brilliant as Jack Johnson was, his story is frequently forgotten in the wake of more recent flashy sports and other celebrities.

IMDB - Won 3 Primetime Emmys

What a perfect documentary. What a master Ken Burns is. Unforgivable is the story of the indestructible Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, whose legendary style downed even the toughest white contenders inside the ring, and sent almost every white American into a frenzy of racial contempt for him, outside the ring.

Jack Johnson is such a rich subject; it seems we could never tire of him. He was the rags to riches American dream. He was the champ who repulsed an entire generation of whites - refuting their fundamental belief that blacks were by nature inferior beings. He was the pioneer that paved the way for future black athletes, who had formerly been relegated to Negro leagues. And he was the social trailblazer as well, integrating with whites in unprecedented and often dangerous ways.

Now Burns has reconstructed his life in and outside the ring through this wonderful collection of photos, interviews, film reels and archival documents. In short, I've seen no other documentary that so pungently depicts the black struggle to be accepted, and indeed, free in America.
IMDB Reviewer
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Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)