THE Fourth of July, most everybody knows, is a special date in the US calendar. It was on this day in 1776, near the beginning of the war, that the thirteen original colonies of the United States declared its independence from London and unleashed war against their colonial master.

For the indigenous peoples and African slaves, of course – many of whom sided with the British – the Fourth of July has always held different meaning, one pregnant with revulsion at the despicable hypocrisy of a nation founded by psychopathic racist killers holding itself up as a beacon of freedom and human progress.

One man who experienced this hypocrisy throughout his life was Jack Johnson. After years of being denied the chance to fight for the heavyweight title, he finally did so against Tommy Burns in Australia in 1908.

Two years later on the Fourth of July, he defended his title against former champion Jim Jeffries in Reno, Nevada in a match that was billed the “Fight of the Century.”

Jack Johnson by this point was the most hated man in white America and probably the most revered in black America.

His defiance of racial etiquette, his refusal to scrape and bow at the altar of white supremacy, marked him out as the most controversial cultural icon in this forsaken land for most of his adult life.

Jim Jeffries, who’d previously retired in 1905 rather than give Johnson his shot at the title he himself had held since beating Bob Fitzsimmons in 1899, was anointed as the great white hope by none other than famed novelist Jack London.

Thus this was less a fight for the heavyweight title and more a contest of racial virtue and pride in which the superior stock of the Anglo-Saxon race was expected to overcome and confirm the inferiority of its black African counterpart.

As it turned out, Johnson as a fighter was levels above Jeffries and the result over fifteen painful rounds for the white challenger was never in doubt.

As Jack London, sitting ringside, described it: “Once again has Johnson sent down to defeat the chosen representative of the white race, and this time the greatest of them all.” London, it’s worth pointing out, considered himself a socialist. So much for the brotherhood of man then.

Jack Johnson’s story was the stuff of legend both in and out of the ring. Born on March 31 1878 in Galveston, Texas, he was destined to have a profound impact not only on the sport of boxing but US society as a whole.

Being a black man in the US in the late 19th and early 20th century was to be guaranteed a life of menial work and second, even third class citizenship. In the South, where the lynching of blacks was a regular occurrence for even the most minor of infractions of a racial code as rigid as it was cruel, it could also mean a death sentence.

The third of nine children to parents who were former slaves, it was while working on the docks as a labourer in his early teens that Johnson discovered his talent for fighting.

There he would take on fellow workers and local challengers in specially organised match-ups for money offered in return for a good fight by others spectating.

As mentioned, his significance in the social and cultural history of the US was rooted in his unflinching defiance of the racial hierarchy that underpinned the nation’s dominant cultural values.

In Jack Johnson this racial hierarchy bumped up against a proud and defiant black man who refused to accept his prescribed station. He openly cavorted with white women, dressed like a dandy, and was the epitome of flamboyance outside the ring.

In many respects he foreshadowed the arrival of Muhammad Ali, another black heavyweight champion who was destined to have a considerable social and cultural impact and who cited Jack Johnson as an early inspiration.

Despite his experience of growing up and living as a black man in the US at a time of racial apartheid in all but name, Johnson was unprepared for the wave of hatred that was triggered against him for the "crime" of winning the heavyweight title in Australia against Burns in 1908.

The heavyweight title was deemed the exclusive property of the white race and the newly crowned champion was met at home not with praise or congratulations but instead venomous anger.

Boxing then as now was a mirror of society at large, and what this mirror reflected at the turn of the 20th century in the US was a mainstream society disfigured and scarred by its legacy and history of racial oppression and barbarity.

In this context, Jack Johnson was the uppity black, the runaway slave, the recalcitrant and rebellious field hand. He was a threat to a status quo that relied upon black communities existing in a state of fear and terror rather than pride and confidence.

Prior to facing Jeffries in 1910, the champion had been forced to fight a series of white contenders as a racist boxing and sports establishment set out to find someone to reclaim the title.

Of the series of fights that followed, his encounter with Stanley Ketchel in 1909 has gone down in history.

The fight lasted 12 hard rounds and ended when Ketchel connected with a right to the head that succeeded in dropping Johnson to the canvas. As he got back to his feet, Ketchel moved in to finish him off.

However, before he could unleash another punch, he was met with a right hand to the jaw that knocked him spark out. According to legend, the punch was so hard that some of Ketchel’s teeth ended up embedded in Johnson’s glove.

One year later, in the immediate aftermath of his Fourth of July victory over Jim Jeffries, race riots erupted across the country, in the course of which 23 people were killed.

In black communities there were also celebrations. Johnson’s victory was deemed so significant it was celebrated in prayer meetings, enshrined in poetry, and forever preserved for posterity in black popular culture.

No matter, dogged by an establishment that was determined to put him in his place, Jack Johnson’s personal life saw him tried and convicted for violation of the Mann Act, prohibiting the transportation of women across state lines for immoral purposes, in 1912.

Also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act, this was a piece of racist legislation designed to attack interracial relationships. Johnson was fined and sentenced to prison by an all-white jury.

Yet, defiance running through his veins, instead of meekly accepting his sentence he skipped bail and fled to Canada – and from there across the Atlantic to France.

For the next seven years he remained outside the US, moving between Europe and South America. He continued to defend his title, though only sporadically, until finally losing it to Jess Willard in Havana in 1915 in a fight that went 26 rounds before Willard KO’d him.

Returning to the US in 1920, Johnson was arrested and sent to prison to serve out his sentence. It was only in May 2018, after a long campaign, that he was finally awarded a posthumous pardon — and this by of all presidents Donald J Trump.

Jack Johnson was married three times, on each occasion to a white woman. At his funeral in 1948, a reporter asked Irene Pineau, his third and last wife, what she’d loved about him most.

“I loved him because of his courage,” she replied. “He faced the world unafraid. There wasn’t anybody or anything he feared.”

John’s book – This Boxing Game: A Journey in Beautiful Brutality – is available from all major booksellers.