What James Earl Jones can teach us about activism and art in times of crisis

The death of James Earl Jones forced me to reflect on the top of an era.

Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier and Jones were giants in my industry. They were black artists whose rise to stardom occurred within the turbulent Sixties once I was a toddler. All three were politically energetic, although each of them operated in a markedly different way.

In 1967 More than 150 riots fueled by racial tensions occurred in US citiesMany Americans feared that the nation would implode due to racial conflict, and President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to research the causes of the racial unrest.

At this time, Jones was an actor with growing fame on television and on the stage. He had appeared in “Danton's Death“ on Broadway and was in the NBC series “Tarzan”, amongst other projects.

Jones was confronted with an issue that troubles many artists then and now: What should an artist do in difficult times?

He didn’t give rousing speeches, like BelafonteNor did he personally hand over money to student activists in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, as Poitier had done.

Instead, Jones decided to work on a play a couple of boxer.The great white hope“, written by Howard Sackler on the Arena Stagea Washington-based theater company throughout the growing regional theater movement.

Embodiment of Black Power

Why would an actor who desires to make a difference play a boxer while cities are burning across America? If he's not willing to risk his life, shouldn't he not less than work on a play concerning the civil rights movement, racism, or police brutality?

However, “The Great White Hope” was not a straightforward, sentimental sports drama. Sackler based the play’s protagonist, Jack Jefferson, on the boxer Jack Johnson, who became the primary black heavyweight champion of the world in 1908.

African Americans celebrated Johnson wildly, who won the title just 45 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In the face of virulent Jim Crow racism, Johnson was seen as a person who, if given a good likelihood, could beat anyone.

In his book “A Beautiful Spectacle: African American Theater, Drama, and Acting in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927”, theatre historian David Krasner argues that Johnson’s victory was one among the important thing events that fuelled the Harlem Renaissance, the black mental and cultural movement that galvanised jazz music, the poetry of Langston Hughes, the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and the sculptures of Augusta Savage.

Johnson's confidence was infectious: if a black man could easily beat a white man within the boxing ring, there was no reason why black artists and writers couldn't create groundbreaking works and, like Hurston, explore their lives and histories and grow to be champions of black culture.

The play is written in three acts and follows Jefferson and his fictional white lover Eleanor Bachman from 1908 to 1915. After Jefferson wins the title, the couple is persecuted by the federal government, partly due to their interracial romance. Officials eventually arrest them as they leave Ohio under the person acta law supposedly passed to stop prostitution but often used to intimidate interracial couplesThe government tells Jefferson that they are going to drop the costs if he agrees to offer the fight to an inferior white boxer.

Jones won a Tony Award for his portrayal of a black man filled with talent, confidence and strength whose biggest problem was that he simply refused to follow his own path.

A special sort of fighter

Boxer Muhammad Ali was also a giant fan of Jones' performance.

Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title in 1967. because he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and refused to start out the war after being drafted. When Ali saw The Great White Hope, he felt like he was looking within the mirror.

“Just change the time, date and details and it’s all about me!” Life magazine quoted him as saying.

It's strange to think how historical events could be reduced to emotions like fear, love, jealousy, and righteousness. But James Earl Jones by some means managed to interact a black boxer who loved a white woman in conversation with someone who couldn't bring himself to fight in Vietnam.

Jones probably realized that acting on a stage seen by only a number of thousand people would do little to finish the Vietnam War, racial inequality, or police brutality.

But I believe Jones wanted to alter the culture. He wanted to alter the country's understanding of what it means to fight – and what a freedom fighter is.

Is a fighter someone who knocks out his opponent? Or someone who follows his heart? Is a fighter someone who takes up arms on the behest of his government? Or is a fighter someone who’s willing to risk his livelihood for his values?

Sometimes activism could be so simple as creating art to one of the best of your ability – or as WEB Du Bois wrote“to put the world in order through beauty.”