He was the son of former slaves and from 1904 to 1915 Jack Johnson was the best heavyweight boxer in the world. His 1908 victory over the white heavyweight champion triggered a worldwide search for “The Great White Hope” to re-establish the superiority of the white race. But many were outraged by Johnson’s increasingly bold personal life including openly courting, being with and marrying white women. In 1912 he was convicted of an erroneous charge, but he fled the country to avoid prison. Johnson’s story is far more than a portrait of one of the most talented and courageous athletes that ever lived. It is also the story of how a nation was forced to reconcile widely held notions of racial supremacy and social order with one man’s single-minded determination to live his life outside the confines of color lines.