Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack

Part 1

This film by Ken Burns chronicles the life and career of boxer Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion and one of the greatest fighters of the 20th century. Johnson ultimately lost his title in a bout in Cuba in 1915, after fleeing the United States following his federal conviction for allegedly violating the Mann Act, a progressive-era law intended to crackdown on commercialized vice but used against Johnson to create an example against, to quote the prosecutor, "the evils of miscegenation."