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Black Life in the Sacramento Valley (1919-1934) (36 pages)
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Page: of 36
Black Life in the Sacramento Valley Page 24 of 37
to 1934,
(1925 photo, courtesy of Northern California Center for Afro-American History and Life Collection)
10. A BOXING MATCH
Henry Herriford was well respected by all the students in our peer group. Some light-skinned black kids
tried to impress whites that their families were as good as theirs, by imitating whites and holding
themselves to be the upper class. But Henry and I always attempted to prove that physically, we were
the equals of everybody.
Our fights always developed out of someone striking us first, or calling us nigger or some other
derogatory name. We of course referred to ourselves as colored or Negroes. If someone called us black,
and the detractor was in our age group, he had a fight on his hands. The racial insults were plentiful until
Henry and I established ourselves as warriors who fought cleanly and with a sense of purpose.
Boxing was a popular sport in Chico; it attracted most of the male population, and some women. We
would always try to find some way to crash the gate, because we did not have the tariff charged to the
boxing devotees.
One night when I was 17, I was standing around the entrance when the boxing promoter, Eddie Mead,
came up to me. One of the fighters for the opening bout had gotten sick, and he was desperate. He said,
"Hey, Thomas, do you want to make some money?" He had probably seen me fight in the street and
thought that I handled my hands pretty well-a view which I shared with him.
He offered me $10 to fight the four-round curtain raiser against Harold Lightfoot, a white boy who
attended high school with me. I'd seen Harold a lot, and thought I could whip him. I didn't know that he
had been training to be a professional fighter.
Henry, who was standing with me and yearning to get in to see the fights, said, "Take it, Thomas. You
can lick that guy." I agreed, with the stipulation that Henry would be admitted as my second.
Mead hustled us into the dressing room, where he found some dirty trunks and a jockstrap slightly
cleaner, and I changed my clothes. Henry and I marched down the aisle to the ring.
The referee was an educator from Oroville who judged fights on the side. He was the brother of a former
world lightweight champion, "Battling" Nelson, who had knocked out the great black lightweight
champion Joe Gans. Gans was sick with tuberculosis at the time, and had no business fighting, except
for the pride of being champion and the need for money.
Nelson explained the rules to Harold and me, and then the bell rang. I charged him, and was greeted
with a number of sharp left jabs as he danced away from me. I tried to land a roundhouse right, but
Harold continued to dance, jab and retreat. Soon I found that lack of training was causing me to run out
of gas.
In the second round, Harold stopped dancing and went to work. He landed a right in my belly, and I
went down. Being both arm-weary and heavy of foot, I decided to stay down.
http://www.cmonline.com/boson/freebies/blackhistory/fleming2.html 12/28/04