Visitors
Drawn to Jack Johnson’s Grave in Chicago
Chicago
Tribune, January 25, 2005
By Robert K. Elder
CHICAGO (KRT)—Since Ken Burns’
film “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson” aired
last week on public television, the former African-American heavyweight
champion has received new visitors at his final resting place in Graceland
Cemetery.
“We’ve been receiving a number of calls, maybe 20,”
says Aki Lew, cemetery administrative manager. “There is a little more
public awareness of him. (Previously), unless you were a boxing fan, you might
not know who he was.”
Burns’ documentary may be changing that, but those
trying to find his grave might have a tough time locating it.
“There is a large upright stone that says `Johnson,’
but Jack Johnson is in an unmarked grave, at the foot of (his first wife)
Etta’s grave,” Lew says. Linda Haywood, Johnson’s great-great-niece,
says the large stone monument was his intended headstone.
“That was supposed to identify him, that big headstone
there,” says Haywood, a seamstress in the Ashburn neighborhood. “Once that
was placed there, (the family) thought that was sufficient enough.”
Johnson, who was married three times, died in a car crash
in 1946. He bought the Graceland plot in 1912 for family burials, after the
death of his first wife, Etta, who has a small stone at the foot of the large
monument that reads, “Etta, beloved wife of Jack A. Johnson.”
The 1967 prizewinning play loosely based on Johnson’s
life, “The Great White Hope,” was made later into a 1970 movie starring
James Earl Jones. In the fall of 1969, the theatrical touring company starring
Brock Peters went to Graceland Cemetery, which occupies parts of Uptown and
Lake View, intending to place a headstone on Johnson’s exact burial site.
But the boxer’s relatives objected.
“My aunt felt that it was a cheap publicity stunt,”
Haywood says. “They didn’t have his memory’s best intentions at
heart.”
Haywood says the cast even bought a headstone that
included the nickname “Li’l Artha,” which further appalled his
relatives.
“The family, at the time, found (it) extremely
offensive.
“They didn’t even ask us, didn’t show us any
courtesy,” Haywood says.
Now, with Burns’ film and a possible ESPN movie in the
works, Haywood says her family has talked about giving Johnson a more
distinct, individual headstone.
“We have future plans to do so,” Haywood says.
“We also have to get headstones for other members of
the family, probably 10 or 12 of them.”
Though Haywood considers it inconsiderate that neither
Burns nor biographer Geoffrey C. Ward ever contacted the family, she still
found the four-hour documentary “mind-boggling.”
“I was just amazed that this man who was my uncle was
so famous and flashy. I was always told about him when I was a little
child,” Haywood says. “I was just blown away. That’s a very good, proud
feeling.”
Johnson’s eternal neighbors in Graceland Cemetery other
Chicago luminaries, include architects Louis Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, retailer Marshall Field and several mayors.
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