Jack Johnson speaks in Harlem Church

One hundred year ago today … Jack Johnson gave an address during afternoon Sunday service at the New York Baptist Tabernacle in Harlem, which was located near Madison Avenue at 125th (or possibly 127th–reports differ) Street. The $1 admission fee per person was intended to support the church’s outstanding mortgage payments; when the Internal Revenue Bureau got word that a celebrity was making a public appearance, it levied a ten percent amusement tax–from which religious institutions would normally be exempt.

Note: we feature Jack Johnson, his impending release from Leavenworth, in our post for December 27, 1920. 

Johnson spoke about race relations, but also addressed the controversial topic of his marriage to Lucille Cameron, who was white.

The Times gave a detailed report, including lengthy quotations from the speech.

"This book teaches you to be fair minded." said Johnson. Pointing to the Bible as he spoke in the New York Baptist Tabernacle, 127th Street and Madison Avenue, "and to be sympathetic to others in their trouble. I have always tried to live by the Bible's teachings. as my mother told me to do. Is there anyone here who has done more, any one who has really lived up to the Golden Rule? If there is one here without sin, let him rise. 

"The Bible teaches us to go into the bottomless pit. if need be, and get out the one who is sinking there. All the dirt that has been done me was done by those cowards with prejudiced minds, those hypocrites who kneel and pray on Sunday and commit slander the rest of the week. Cut me open, and you will find written upon my heart that I have never done wrong to my fellow men." 

After referring to attacks by what he called “underhand and hypocritical" newspapers,' Johnson read from the Bible the words "Thou shalt take unto thyself a wife." " It doesn't say what kind of a wife," he went on,“ Chinese or white or green or black or any other kind. I took to myself a wife, just as the Bible told me to, and just because she was a college woman people were down on me. I suppose if I had married! some woman of the streets it would have been all right, I'm sure I've lived up to all the rules any husband should live up to." Johnson then spoke of the race problem, said he hoped the Ethiopian race would come to have equal rights with White men, and urged his hearers to “ forget and forgive." 

"You who are religious, follow this hook," he cried. "Never carry malice, remember that you must crawl before you walk; and may God bless you all." The audience of 100, mostly women, followed Johnson's talk with murmurs of 'approval, sympathetic cries of " yes, yes,' and an occasional hand-clap.

“SERMON IN CHURCH BY JACK JOHNSON,”  New York Times, 1 August 1921, p. 6.

According to the Tribune, “there was a strong sentiment among some of those present that Johnson would have done better if he had not brought up the subject of his marriage…. ‘Of course all our people resent the fact loat Johnson married a white woman,’ the deacon who acted as Spokesman said. "There were plenty of wonen of our own race for him to marry.”

(“Negro Church Puts Jack Johnson in Pulpit; Charges $1,” New York Tribune, 1 August 1921, p. 13.) 

Before his church speech, Johnson took in a few innings of Black baseball at Ebbets Field, where the Bacharach Giants were playing the Indianapolis ABC’s (“Baseball Results,” New York Age, 6 August 1921, p. 6.).

– Jonathan Goldman, July 31, 2021

TAGS: race, African American history, church, religion, Harlem Renaissance, sports, boxing, Black celebrity, interracial marriage