Highlights Archives
Wisconsin Historical Images Marks Milestone
A rare photograph of the globe-trotting, larger-than-life African American prize fighter Jack Johnson at a 1912 auto race in Milwaukee has become the 20,000th image added to our online collection of Wisconsin Historical Images. Johnson was the controversial but undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at the time he drove to Milwaukee from his home in Chicago to watch the Vanderbilt Cup race on October 2, 1912. The photograph shows Johnson in the center of a group of men standing around a race car, probably Johnson's, and reveals a hint of the flamboyant swagger for which he was known — and widely resented, particularly by his white contemporaries.
A Historical Society researcher recently discovered that the maverick boxer appears in the photograph, part of a longstanding collection of work by former Milwaukee Journal photographer J. Robert Taylor, after viewing the 2004 Ken Burns Public Broadcasting System documentary, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Intrigued by the documentary and familiar with the J. Robert Taylor Collection, illustration researcher John Nondorf pulled the photograph for closer inspection. Scanning it at high resolution revealed a key to the photo's content. A boy in the picture wears a cap that identifies the occasion — perched on the cap is a sign promoting the sale of race programs for the Vanderbilt Cup. Additional research confirmed the date of the race as October 2, 1912, and a search of the following day's edition of the Milwaukee Journal confirmed Johnson's presence. Beneath a headline reading, "Jack Johnson is Auto Bug," a reporter writes: "Jack Johnson, champion heavyweight of the world, was a visitor in the city yesterday, driving up here in a powerful racing car and taking in the races. Johnson was given a reception when recognized by the crowd in the stands."
To confirm that Jack Johnson is the man pictured in the center of the photo, archivist Dee Grimsrud sent a copy to Geoffrey C. Ward, who collaborated with Ken Burns on the PBS documentary and who wrote the book that serves as a companion piece to the film. Ward confirmed that Johnson is the man in the photo, which now joins a collection of online images documenting the auto racing scene in Milwaukee in October 1912.
This isn't the first time that a bit of judicious historical sleuthing has identified other famous characters pictured in the Society's photo collections. Digging through largely undocumented collections of various sorts has uncovered previously unpublished photos of Ansel Adams on a 1960s photo shoot in California and of CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow on a 1957 fishing excursion in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Historical Images provides a rich pictorial view of Wisconsin and United States history. The online images represent only a fraction of the images in the Wisconsin Historical Society's photo archives, which comprises 3 million 19th- and 20th-century photographs, paintings, posters, advertising material, ephemera, and political cartoons.
:: Posted March 24, 2006
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