Shadowboxing

The Rise and Fall of George Dixon

Steven Laffoley

• Publisher: Pottersfield Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781989725870
• eBook ISBN: 9781989725887
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

George Dixon (1870-1908) was the finest boxer of his generation and arguably among the finest boxers ever. His accomplishments in the ring were extraordinary: the first Black boxing champion, the first champion of multiple weight classes, and the first champion to lose and regain the title. He defended his title more than any other champion and fought in an unprecedented 800 bouts. Making these achievements even more astonishing, George Dixon publicly fought and beat hundreds of white boxers in an age when Black men were murdered for simply being Black.

Sam Austin, the larger-than-life sports editor at America's first tabloid newspaper, the Police Gazette, described George Dixon as "The Fighter Without a Flaw." Said Austin, "The fact cannot be disputed that the greatest fistic fighter, big or little, that the world has ever known is George Dixon."

Yet, despite these extraordinary accomplishments and this effusive adulation, George Dixon died a beggar, in the alcoholic ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital, alone and forgotten.

So who was George Dixon? What motivated this genuinely modest man, born in Africville, Nova Scotia, to achieve what no other Black man had achieved before him? What strength of character earned him true greatness? And what made him lose it all?

Before Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, before Sugar Ray Robinson and Jack Johnson, before Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, before all the great Black boxing champions of every age and every weight class, there was George Dixon. He was the first. He was the greatest. And this is his story.

Part I

The Rise

Round One

I was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1870, and when [I was] about eight years of age, my parents moved to Boston. I received a public school education, having attended a Halifax school for two years. When about fourteen years of age I secured employment with a Boston photographer, and while there engaged, I first began to learn how to spar. I witnessed an exhibition one night at the Boston Music Hall, which was given by two local athletes, and the next day I purchased a book on boxing from which I gained much valuable information.

– George Dixon “A Lesson in Boxing” (1893)

In the early hours of January 6, 1908, George Dixon lay awake on his narrow bed in the alcoholic ward of Bellevue Hospital. One imagines that the ward was dimly lit and quiet at that hour, with perhaps some coughing or mumbling interrupting the silence. Almost certainly, lying in his bed and looking at the ceiling, Dixon understood that he was gravely ill, maybe even understood that he was dying.

What did he think about?

We don’t know, of course. But one imagines that he gave some thought to those events that shaped his life, recalling the faces of family and friends and remembering thrilling moments in the ring. So, too, he may have recalled his childhood, when he ambled along the railroad tracks that cut their way through the small community of Africville, Nova Scotia.

It is the first irony of many with George Dixon that so little is known about his personal life despite the many thousands of words written about him in hundreds of newspapers over the years. Even the exact location of his birth remains uncertain. In a 1938 essay about George Dixon, Nat Fleischer wrote that Dixon was born at “Letson’s Lane, between Gottingen and Brunswick streets, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.” More than fifty years later, tennis player and author Arthur Ashe claimed Dixon’s birthplace as “Leston’s Lane in Halifax.” Likely, Leston’s Lane is merely a misspelling of Nat Fleisher’s Letson’s Lane, but the error says something about how the uncertain facts of Dixon’s early life became clouded and confused over time. In either case, no map of Halifax shows either a Letson’s Lane or a Leston’s Lane in that block of the city. Then again, a small back lane in a city block that was mostly dirt and grass would not likely have warranted an official naming on a map.

Other biographical essays emphatically offer Dixon’s birthplace as Africville, Nova Scotia, the small, Black community within Halifax that hugged the shore of Bedford Basin, just two and a half miles north of what might have been Dixon’s Letson’s Lane birthplace. We simply do not know for certain. Suffice to say that George Dixon was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and spent his formative years in Africville.

* * *

Though Africville’s exact origins are also unclear, the community is said to have begun in 1838, when William Brown, a descendent of slaves, settled on the north shore of the Halifax peninsula, overlooking Bedford Basin. Brown was not alone for long, though. More families took up residence and soon established a community.

Eight original families were said to have settled in Africville during those years. Their surnames were Brown, Carvery, Arnold, Hill, Fletcher, Bailey, Grant, and Dixon. The first seven of these families all traced their ancestors to Hammonds Plains and Preston, other Black communities in Nova Scotia. But the Dixon family ancestry was less certain. No doubt, they too had some family connections to the other Black communities in the province. In any case, George Dixon’s ancestors, and likely George himself, resided just above the railroad tracks, looking out over Bedford Basin. An 1878 map shows two lots, side by side, both owned by the Dixon family.

This small, but growing, community was sometimes called Campbell Road, and sometimes Seaview, but almost certainly, from the start, it was also known as Africville, though the name appears for the first time on a petition from 1869. The first tangible record of people residing in Africville appears in 1848, when the community formally established its church. Thereafter, in its early history, Africville appears sporadically in recorded references to city construction and land use, with Africville notably acting as the location for industrial and civic sites that no one wanted nearby.

In 1853, Rockhead Prison was built, and in 1854, the Intercontinental Railway laid its tracks right through Africville. In 1858, the city’s “night soil” – its sewage – was located there. And in the 1870s, an Infectious Diseases Hospital was built on land just overlooking the community. Later, the city dump and a slaughterhouse found their place adjacent to Africville.

Over the years, as the north end of Halifax developed, the city council refused to provide services to Africville – no water, sewerage, paved roads, or lights. By 1954, the discrepancy between nearby neighbourhoods and Africville was stark. Noted the city manager at the time, “The area is not suited for residences, but, properly developed, is ideal for industrial purposes.”

Despite this relentless racism, Africville grew to be a vibrant, close-knit community of eighty families, or some four hundred people, for more than two hundred years. Then, in 1968, in the name of urban progress, the city offered a meagre compensation of $500 to Africville families who could establish legal title to land, and then razed Africville to the ground. Today, only the railroad tracks that run outside a grassy park named Seaview, the namesake of the church that once stood there, remain as a physical reminder of the Africville community. Only recently, after years of refusing to accept responsibility for the destruction of Africville, has Halifax begun to make amends. On July 29, 2011, the city renamed the Seaview Park land Africville Park. Coincidentally, this event occurred on the 141st birthday of George Dixon.

* * *

On a midsummer’s day, on July 29, 1870, somewhere in or near Africville, Nova Scotia, George Dixon was born. One biographical essay suggested that Dixon was the son of a Black mother and an itinerant, white British soldier (which was the cause, claimed the essay, of newspapers referring to Dixon as a “mulatto”). But nothing beyond the statement itself supports this.

Dixon’s parents were both from Africville. His mother was Maria Turner, who was thirty-three at the time of George’s birth, and his father was Charles T. Dixon, who was forty-one. George had at least one brother, named James Henry Dixon, born two years earlier, on May 8, 1868. Charles would outlive George by seven years, dying on August 2, 1914. Given Maria’s age when George was born, it is conceivable that George and James had other siblings.

Little more is known for certain about George Dixon’s ancestry. In 1906, former heavyweight champion “Gentleman” Jim Corbett mentioned George’s heritage in his syndicated newspaper column called “Corbett’s Gossip of the Fighting Game.” In his March 24 column, Corbett wrote, “Little credence is placed in the claim that heredity has a great deal to do with the character and nerve of a prize fighter. But in the case of George Dixon, you find an exception, which is not often spoken of. Dixon was one of the colored fighters who was never charged with being in the least bit yellow [cowardly]. It was said of him that he was the nerviest little fighter the world has ever seen. But Dixon always claimed that his fighting blood came from his grandfather, who was a white man of Irish ancestors. He did not have a drop of colored blood in him. Dixon was later married to a white woman and most always associated with white people.”

Jim Corbett, like many white boxers of the age, often belittled the accomplishments of Black fighters, who he routinely accused of being “yellow.” When a Black fighter’s skill was reluctantly acknowledged, it required some racial redefinition.

That said, Dixon did appear to have had an Irish grandparent. Nat Fleischer notes that “[Dixon] was what is termed a quadroon, his grandfather having been white.” Even Fleischer, who was a great fan of Dixon, was not immune to the racism of the day. When talking about Dixon’s boxing prowess, he noted, “George himself was nearly white.” To what degree Dixon identified with his Black and white ancestry is not clear, though he was always comfortable with people of any colour or ethnic background. Of course, he was well aware of being Black in a deeply racist society. And when it mattered most, Dixon always asserted his African and Africville heritage with great public pride.

* * *

One of the few tangible tales of George Dixon growing up in Africville is found in a February 1891 Boston Globe interview with Dixon, who was by then a boxing champion. In most interviews, Dixon said little about his accomplishments and even less about his personal life. However, he was unusually conversant for this interview, talking about both his childhood and what motivated him to become a boxer.

“This colored lad, whom the sporting men of the world are backing as a winner,” noted the article, “was born on July 29, 1870, at Halifax, which is also the birthplace of his parents. When going to school, he made a practice of visiting a man named Bailey, who received the illustrated papers from the United States, and Dixon would sit with him for hours listening to stories of fights and fighters. Dixon took such a deep interest in the subject that at last he got the notion that he wanted to be a pugilist himself. After leaving Bailey’s house, Dixon would go home and for hours, he would fight imaginary opponents.”

Given that Bailey was a familiar surname among the founding families of Africville, the story rings true. However, whether or not the “illustrated papers” were, indeed, the catalyst for Dixon becoming a boxer is less certain. Dixon would later offer other reasons for his interest in boxing.

We do know that Dixon spent at least his first eight years in Africville. And his story of Bailey supports his memory of Africville as a close-knit community of four hundred people. We can easily imagine George playing on the rocks near the water of Bedford Basin or swimming in the ocean on a hot summer’s day. So, too, we can imagine George Dixon walking along Africville’s dirt lanes, kicking at stones, or following a frog into the grass. No doubt, on Sundays, the young George Dixon went with his family to the Seaview church, where he listened in silence to the preacher or sang along with the choir. And given his rumoured return visits to Halifax over his lifetime, and his lifelong pride at being from Nova Scotia, these were likely happy years.

* * *

Sometime between 1878 and 1887, Maria and Charles Dixon moved their family to Boston. Such a move was common enough for people throughout the Maritimes, where family connections to New England were deep and the lure of better pay was strong. In 1893, George Dixon wrote in “A Lesson in Boxing,” “I was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1870, and when [I was] about eight years of age, my parents moved to Boston.” That said, Nat Fleischer wrote that Dixon’s “parents moved to Boston in 1880.” And in an 1891 interview with the New York Sun, Dixon suggested that his family moved to Boston even later. “In September, 1887,” the Sun article noted, “[Dixon’s] father removed with his children to Boston and went to live on Knapp Street.” Knapp Street still exists, a short alley of brick apartment buildings just south of the Boston Common.

Whenever the move actually took place, Dixon would remember well those early years in Boston, where he “received a public school education.” It was while at school in Boston the event occurred that may have drawn him into fighting. “In the school which he attended,” reported The Boston Globe after an interview with Dixon, “there was a fellow named Johnson, weighing about 100 pounds, who was the local bully. All the boys were afraid of him, and finally they asked Dixon, whom they had heard talking about pugilists, to fight Johnson. Dixon weighed only about 75 pounds, and was but 15 years old, but when a small purse was put up, he agreed to meet the bully. The battle was fought with bare knuckles in a barn, and Dixon won in three rounds. The fight was a fierce one, and both of Dixon’s eyes were nearly closed and his mouth was terribly swollen. When he returned home he did not receive a very kind welcome, nor was he complimented upon his maiden victory. On the contrary, his mother gave him a severe whipping and made him promise he would not fight any more. Dixon would have kept that promise had his mother lived, but when she died, a short time after, his mind again turned to fights and fighters.”

Though a compelling tale, this story may be little more than apocryphal or at least an amalgamation of stories, since it does not quite fit with the facts. Dixon’s first professional fight occurred in Halifax, in 1886, when Dixon was fifteen or sixteen. His opponent’s name was Young Johnson. The article’s description of a fight in a barn seems to fit the more rural Halifax than the urban Boston at the time. No matter the exact details, a school-initiated fight probably took place. And Dixon, who was quite small and likely the target of some teasing, almost certainly earned a reputation for standing up to bullies. And in defending himself, he would have discovered that he was pretty good with his fists.

* * *

The earliest known photograph of George Dixon was taken when he was fourteen or fifteen. It is a portrait of a young George, finely dressed in a white shirt and checked tie under a dark vest buttoned to the top. Over the vest, Dixon wears a heavy black jacket with a white handkerchief folded into the left breast pocket. Dixon’s hair is neat and cut short. He looks playfully away from the camera, his head tilted slightly to his left, his body turned to the right. What stands out most in the picture is the brightness of his eyes and the warmth of his smile. The quality of the portrait suggests that it may have been taken at the studio in Boston where Dixon apprenticed. “When about fourteen years of age,” Dixon would later remember, “I secured employment with a Boston photographer.” The photographer was Elmer Chickering.

Chickering was born in Vermont in 1857. As a young man in his early twenties, he discovered a talent for the emerging art of photography, so he moved from Vermont to Boston and set up a studio on West Street. Not long after, he married another photographer, R.M. Wilson, and together, they built their photography business. Sometime in 1884, Chickering hired a young George Dixon to do odd jobs around the shop and then began teaching him the trade.

It was an exciting time. As the studio’s business grew, it was common for local sports figures to have staged pictures taken. Baseball players, jockeys, and boxers – reflecting the three most popular sports of the day – routinely appeared at Chickering’s studio for portraits. Boxers were p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Before the Bell
• PART I THE RISE
• PART II THE FALL
• After the Bell
• Afterword
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Books by Steven Laffoley