Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world during the Jim Crow era. The son of slaves, he overcame tremendous poverty and prejudice in a time where black people where considered athletically inferior (lol) and rose to be the undisputed champion of the world, earning the title right here in Sydney in 1908.

Despite his fame and success or perhaps in spite of, he was targeted for being a successful black man and imprisoned (for transporting his wife, a white woman, across state lines for “immoral proposes”). A true pioneer, there can only be one first and it was Jack Johnson.