Unit 9 · City Rooms and Civic Nights

A prizefight is a fight for money, often a purse put up by backers and a crowd. In Britain in the early 1800s, these fights were fought with bare fists. Crowds gathered in fields outside towns. They often moved at the last minute to escape the police.

Fighters needed a shared paper to settle disputes. The London Prize Ring Rules were written in 1838 and revised in 1853. They set a square ring with ropes. A round ended only when a man went down. So a fight could last for dozens of rounds and for hours.

In the United States, most states made prizefighting a crime in the 1800s. Lawmakers worried about injuries, gambling and rowdy crowds. So fights happened on barges, on islands and across state lines. The sport grew in secret places while newspapers told the story in public.

John L. Sullivan was born in Boston in 1858. He became the most famous athlete in America in the 1880s. He toured the country and offered money to anyone who could last a set time with him. Crowds and newspapers followed him from town to town.

On July 8, 1889, Sullivan fought Jake Kilrain near Richburg, Mississippi. The fight was illegal, so the place was kept secret. Special trains carried fans from New Orleans. The two men fought 75 rounds in the summer heat before Kilrain’s side gave up.

This was the last heavyweight championship fought with bare knuckles. Sullivan was later arrested and fined for the fight. Newspapers across the country had sent reporters. Their long reports made the fight a national event, even though it broke the law.

The Queensberry rules, published in 1867, required padded gloves and three-minute rounds. A fighter who went down had ten seconds to rise. These rules made fights shorter and gave referees a clearer count. Promoters liked them, because a gloved fight looked less like a street brawl.

On September 7, 1892, Sullivan fought James J. Corbett at the Olympic Club in New Orleans. They wore gloves and fought under the Queensberry rules. Corbett, a former bank clerk from San Francisco, won in the 21st round. Sullivan lost his title for the first time.

New Orleans allowed the fight because it was held by a club under the new rules. Gloves helped boxing argue that it was a sport, not a riot. Still, most states kept their bans. The gloved title fight became the model that later laws would regulate.

In the 1880s big city newspapers began to build sports departments. Editors saw that sports news sold papers every day. Boxing was perfect for them. A fight had two names, a date and a winner, and it could be argued about for weeks.

The National Police Gazette was a New York weekly paper. Richard K. Fox took it over in 1877. He filled it with crime stories, pictures and boxing. Fox offered prize money and awarded championship belts. His paper did not just report fights; it helped create them.

This made the press part of the sport. Papers named champions, printed challenges between fighters and hired writers who knew the fighters. A reader in a small town could follow a fight he would never see. The sports page became a public room for a sport that was often banned.

Jack Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1878. For years white champions refused to fight Black challengers for the heavyweight title. This refusal was boxing’s own color line. Johnson followed champion Tommy Burns around the world, demanding a chance.

On December 26, 1908, Johnson beat Burns in Sydney, Australia. He became the first Black heavyweight champion. Many white newspapers called for a "great white hope" to take the title back. Former champion Jim Jeffries came out of retirement to try.

On July 4, 1910, Johnson beat Jeffries in Reno, Nevada, in the 15th round. After the news spread, white mobs attacked Black people in cities across the country, and people were killed. Johnson later lived in Chicago. In 1912 he opened a nightclub there called the Café de Champion.

By 1910 fights were filmed and shown in theaters. The film of Johnson beating Jeffries worried many white officials. Cities and states moved to stop it from being shown. Leaders feared that the pictures of a Black champion would cause more unrest.

In 1912 Congress passed the Sims Act. It made it a federal crime to carry films of prizefights across state lines for showing. The law hit the fight film business hard. A film could still be shown in the state where the fight took place.

The Sims Act stayed in force until 1940. It shows that the government treated boxing pictures as a public danger, not just entertainment. Historians link the law directly to Johnson’s victories. It is an example of censorship, when officials stop people from seeing or reading something.

New York changed its mind about boxing several times. It allowed fights for a few years, then banned them again. In 1920 the state passed the Walker Law, named for state senator Jimmy Walker. It made boxing legal again, this time with a state office to watch over it.

That office was the New York State Athletic Commission, an athletic commission. It licensed boxers, referees, judges and promoters. It required doctors at fights. It could suspend a fighter or hold back a purse. The ban-and-allow cycle gave way to regulation, which means rules enforced by an official body.

Other states copied the idea. By the late 1920s many states had boxing commissions. Boxing had moved from barges and secret trains into licensed arenas. In 1925 promoter Tex Rickard opened a new Madison Square Garden in New York, built largely for boxing.

Commercial radio began in the United States in 1920. KDKA in Pittsburgh went on the air that November. Within months, stations looked for live events that listeners would want. A fight was ideal, because it happened at one time and had a clear result.

On July 2, 1921, Jack Dempsey fought Georges Carpentier of France in Jersey City, New Jersey. Tex Rickard built a wooden arena for the crowd. The fight earned more than one million dollars in tickets. A radio hookup sent a round-by-round account to listeners at gatherings in many towns.

Radio changed what it meant to follow a fight. A newspaper told you what happened yesterday. A broadcast told you what was happening now. Fighters became voices and names in millions of living rooms. The gate, or ticket money, also grew as fame spread.

Gene Tunney took the heavyweight title from Jack Dempsey in Philadelphia in September 1926. The rematch was set for Chicago’s Soldier Field on September 22, 1927. More than 100,000 people came. The ticket money was more than two million dollars, a record for the time.

In the seventh round Dempsey knocked Tunney down. A newer rule said the standing fighter must go to a neutral corner before the count began. Dempsey did not go at once. The referee’s count started late, and Tunney rose before ten. Tunney won the fight on points.

Newspapers and radio audiences argued for years about the "long count." It showed how a written rule, applied by one official, could decide a championship. It also showed that Chicago could host an event as large as any in the country.

In the 1920s the Chicago Tribune ran an amateur boxing tournament called the Golden Gloves. Tribune sports editor Arch Ward promoted it. The New York Daily News ran its own Golden Gloves. Later the two cities sent teams to fight each other, and the papers filled pages with the results.

In 1930 Bishop Bernard Sheil founded the Catholic Youth Organization, or CYO, in Chicago. Boxing was one of its biggest programs. Its tournaments drew large crowds. The CYO accepted boys of different faiths and races, which was not true of every club in the city.

These programs met in parish halls, park field houses and club gyms. They were town rooms, not school rooms. A teenager could train at night and fight in a newspaper tournament. The same teenager might play basketball for his high school under the IHSA by day.

Joe Louis grew up in Detroit and learned to box at a city recreation center. On June 22, 1937, he beat James Braddock at Comiskey Park in Chicago. He became the second Black heavyweight champion, 22 years after Jack Johnson lost the title.

Max Schmeling of Germany had beaten Louis in 1936. By 1938 Germany was ruled by the Nazi Party, which claimed that one race was superior. The rematch at Yankee Stadium on June 22, 1938, became a symbol of a fight between nations and ideas. Louis won in the first round.

Tens of millions of people heard the fight on radio. Many white newspapers that once mocked Black fighters now called Louis an American hero. Louis held the title until 1949. His career showed how the press and radio could turn a boxer into a symbol for a whole country.

The IHSA was founded in 1900 to run high school contests in Illinois. It added sports such as basketball, track, tennis and swimming. It never ran a boxing state series. For Illinois teenagers, boxing lived in parks, parish halls and newspaper tournaments.

Colleges did try boxing. The NCAA held national boxing championships starting in 1932. In the 1960 tournament, Charlie Mohr of the University of Wisconsin was hurt in a bout and died days later. The NCAA ended boxing as a championship sport after that season.

School leaders gave reasons that echoed the 1800s: the risk of head injury and the link between boxing and money. Schools kept sports they could defend to parents and boards. Boxing remained a town gym and professional sport. It also stayed an Olympic sport, as it had been since 1904.

In 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved into an old mansion on Halsted Street in Chicago. The neighborhood was crowded with immigrants from Italy, Greece, Russia, Ireland and many other places. Families lived in small, dark rooms. Children played in the streets because there was nowhere else.

Hull House was a settlement house. Educated reformers settled, or lived, in a poor neighborhood to work beside their neighbors. Hull House offered classes, a kindergarten, a library, a theater and clubs. In the 1890s it added a gymnasium building.

The gym was used by boys’ clubs, girls’ clubs and adult classes. Basketball, a new game, fit its small floor well. For many children it was their first chance to play a team game indoors, in winter, with an adult who kept order.

The first settlement house was Toynbee Hall, opened in East London in 1884. Young university men lived there to learn about and serve the poor. Jane Addams visited Toynbee Hall in the 1880s. She brought the idea home to Chicago.

Other American settlements followed quickly. In New York, Lillian Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement in 1893, starting with nursing care. In Chicago, Graham Taylor founded Chicago Commons in 1894. Hundreds of settlements opened in American cities by the early 1900s.

Many settlements built gyms or used nearby halls for games. Reformers believed team games taught fairness, teamwork and self-control. Some also hoped games would keep boys away from gangs and saloons. Settlement teams played one another, making early city leagues.

In 1909 Jane Addams published a book called The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. She wrote about the young workers of Chicago. Many left school early and worked long hours in factories and shops. At night they looked for fun in cheap theaters and dance halls.

Addams argued that the wish to play was healthy, not a problem to punish. The problem was that the city offered young people so little. She said a city should provide parks, playgrounds and gyms, just as it provided schools. Play, she wrote, was a public duty.

Her book helped build support for public recreation, meaning free-time activity provided for everyone. Addams later won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She was the first American woman to receive it.

Chicago’s big parks, like Washington Park, were far from the crowded neighborhoods near the stockyards and mills. In 1905 the South Park Commission opened a set of new, smaller neighborhood parks. They were designed by the Olmsted Brothers and the firm of Daniel Burnham.

Each park had a field house. It held indoor gyms for men and women, showers and baths, a library branch, and meeting rooms. Outside were ball fields, running tracks and playgrounds. Visitors came from other cities to study them. President Theodore Roosevelt praised them.

The field houses made the city itself a sponsor of play. Neighborhood teams practiced and played basketball in their gyms. In 1934, Chicago joined its 22 separate park districts into one Chicago Park District. It still runs field houses across the city.

By the early 1900s many reformers agreed that cities needed places to play. In 1906 they founded the Playground Association of America. Its leaders included Luther Gulick, Joseph Lee of Boston and Jane Addams. Its first president was Gulick.

The association urged cities to build playgrounds near schools and homes. It also urged them to hire a trained play leader for each playground to run games and keep order. It held national meetings. In 1907 it met in Chicago, where visitors toured the new field houses.

The movement changed city budgets. Before it, play space was a gift from charities. After it, many cities paid for playgrounds with tax money, like schools and libraries. Outdoor hoops on playgrounds put basketball within walking distance of city kids.

Luther Gulick ran the YMCA training school in Springfield where basketball began. In 1903 he became director of physical training for New York City’s public schools. That year he helped found the Public Schools Athletic League, or PSAL.

The PSAL organized contests for boys across the city’s schools. Basketball was one of its sports, because a school gym or even a hall could hold a game. In 1905 a Girls’ Branch was formed. It favored dance and games inside schools over public contests between schools.

The PSAL showed that a city school system could run sports for thousands of children. It was supported by wealthy donors as well as the city. It became a model for other cities. It also shows how the same reformers moved between the Y, the playground and the school.

Many YMCA branches in the early 1900s did not admit Black members. Black communities built their own branches. In Chicago, the Wabash Avenue YMCA opened in 1913 on the South Side. Its building was paid for partly by the businessman Julius Rosenwald and by Black donors in Chicago.

Edwin Bancroft Henderson was a Black teacher from Washington, D.C. He learned basketball in a summer course at Harvard. Around 1904 he began teaching the game to Black students in Washington’s segregated schools. He also organized teams and a league among Black schools and clubs.

Henderson is often called the grandfather of Black basketball. The Black Ys and school leagues he helped build gave players rooms, coaches and schedules. Those were the rooms that white-run leagues refused to open to them. Later Black pro teams drew many players from them.

In 1923 Robert "Bob" Douglas founded a Black professional team in Harlem. He named it after the Renaissance Casino, a ballroom where the team played its home games. Fans came for basketball and stayed for dancing when the game ended. The floor served both.

The Rens were barred from the white pro leagues of the time. So they spent much of each season barnstorming, or touring for a share of the gate. They played white teams and Black teams in towns across the country. Many hotels and restaurants refused them, so they often slept and ate on their own team bus.

In 1939 the Chicago Herald-American newspaper held the first World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago. It was open to Black and white teams. The Rens won it. In 1963 the whole team was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

In 1918 Eddie Gottlieb and friends in Philadelphia started a team linked to the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. The team was called the SPHAS. It began as a club for young Jewish men in a mostly immigrant neighborhood. It grew into one of the best pro teams of the 1930s.

The SPHAS often played on Saturday nights in a hotel ballroom, with dancing after the game. Their fans came from the neighborhood. Gottlieb later helped found the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors. His career shows how a neighborhood club could turn into a business.

In Chicago, Abe Saperstein began managing a team of Black players from the South Side in the late 1920s. It became the Harlem Globetrotters, even though it was from Chicago. The team barnstormed across the Midwest. It won the World Professional Basketball Tournament in 1940.

In the early 1930s college basketball was played mostly in small campus gyms. Ned Irish, a New York sportswriter, saw that fans were turned away at the doors. In December 1934 he rented Madison Square Garden for a doubleheader, two college games on one night.

More than 16,000 people came. Irish held many more doubleheaders. Teams traveled from across the country to play in New York. In 1938 the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association started the National Invitation Tournament, or NIT, at the Garden.

The Garden turned college basketball into a big-city show sold to the public. The NCAA started its own tournament in 1939. For years the NIT was seen as the more important of the two. The game had moved from the settlement gym to an arena built for boxing.

Outdoor hoops spread with the playground movement. City parks and schoolyards put up metal poles and backboards. String nets wore out fast in wind, sun and snow. Many cities hung a chain net, which lasted for years and made a sound players recognized.

An outdoor court was free and open most hours. No one needed a club membership or a ticket. Players made their own rules for who played next and how long a game lasted. A player’s name could spread across a city through word of mouth alone.

In Harlem, a parks worker named Holcombe Rucker started a summer tournament around 1950. He wanted to keep young people busy and pushed them to stay in school. The Rucker tournament later drew college and pro players to a small park court. It showed that the open court could become an institution too.