Editing Jack Johnson (boxer) (section)

==Early life==
Johnson was born on March 31, 1878,<ref name=Aberia/> the third child of nine born to Henry and Tina Johnson, former slaves who worked service jobs as a janitor and a dishwasher.<ref>{{cite web |title=Johnson's Early Life |url=https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness/johnsons-early-life |website=Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson {{!}} Ken Burns {{!}} PBS |publisher=Public Broadcasting Service |access-date=21 February 2023 |language=en}}</ref> His father had served as a civilian teamster of the Union's [[38th United States Colored Infantry Regiment|38th Colored Infantry]]. He was described by his son as the "most perfect physical specimen that he had ever seen", although Henry had been left with an atrophied right leg from his service in the [[Military history of African Americans in the American Civil War|American Civil War]].<ref>Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York:</ref> 

Growing up in [[Galveston, Texas]], Johnson attended five years of school.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG20">Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG20.</ref> As a young man, Johnson was frail,<ref>Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG21</ref> though, like all of his siblings, he was expected to work.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG20"/>

Although Johnson grew up in the South, he said that segregation was not an issue in the somewhat secluded city of Galveston, as everyone living in the 12th Ward was poor and went through the same struggles.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG.21">Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG.21</ref> Johnson remembers growing up with a "gang" of white boys, in which he never felt victimized or excluded. Remembering his childhood, Johnson said: "As I grew up, the white boys were my friends and my pals. I ate with them, played with them and slept at their homes. Their mothers gave me cookies, and I ate at their tables. No one ever taught me that white men were superior to me."<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG.21"/>

<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Roberts |first1=Randy |title=Galveston's Jack Johnson: Flourishing in the Dark. |journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly |date=1983 |volume=87 |issue=1 |page=42 |jstor=30241079 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/30241079 |access-date= September 26, 2023}}</ref> Jack Johnson's mother Tina was a huge influence in Jack's life. When Jack was younger he was known as a coward, and his sister Lucy would protect him. After Jack came home bruised and crying, his mom warned him that if he were to get beat at school, then she would whip him worse at home. Her method was to scare him and for him to learn the lesson that he needed to protect himself. The lesson was received by Jack, as he never lost a fight to a schoolboy again.

After Johnson quit school, he began a job working at the local docks. He made several other attempts at working other jobs around town until one day he made his way to [[Dallas]], finding work at the race track exercising horses. Jack stuck with this job until he found a new apprenticeship with a carriage painter by the name of Walter Lewis. Lewis enjoyed watching friends spar, and Johnson began to learn how to box.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG23">Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG23</ref> Johnson later declared that it was thanks to Lewis that he became a boxer.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG24">Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG24</ref> 

At 16, Johnson moved to [[New York City]] and found living arrangements with [[Barbados Joe Walcott]], a [[welterweight]] fighter from the West Indies.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG24"/> Johnson again found work exercising horses for the local stable, until he was fired for exhausting a horse. On his return to Galveston, he was hired as a janitor at a gym owned by German-born heavyweight fighter Herman Bernau. Johnson eventually saved enough money to buy boxing gloves, sparring every chance he got.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG26">Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG26</ref>

At one point,{{when|date=December 2020}} Johnson was arrested for brawling with a man named Davie Pearson, a "grown and toughened" man who accused Johnson of turning him in to the police over a game of [[craps]]. When both of them were released from jail, they met at the docks, and Johnson beat Pearson before a large crowd.<ref name="Ward, Geoffrey C 2004. PG26"/> Johnson then fought in a summer boxing league against a man named John "Must Have It" Lee. Because [[prizefighting]] was illegal in Texas, the fight was broken up and moved to the beach, where Johnson won his first fight and a prize of one dollar and fifty cents.<ref>Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2004. Print.PG28</ref>