{"id":52411,"date":"2017-03-13T15:34:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T15:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=52411"},"modified":"2017-03-13T15:38:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T15:38:43","slug":"teaser-documentary-on-leone-jacovacci-1920s-black-italian-boxer-who-took-a-swing-at-fascism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=52411","title":{"rendered":"Teaser: Documentary on Leone Jacovacci \u2013 1920s Black Italian Boxer Who \u201cTook a Swing at Fascism\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teaser: Documentary on Leone Jacovacci \u2013 1920s Black Italian Boxer Who \u201cTook a Swing at Fascism\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Shadow and Act: On Film, Television and Web Contents of Africa and Its Diaspora<\/a>
\n2017-03-12<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nLeone Jacovacci<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

Leone Jacovacci<\/a> (a.k.a. John Douglas Walker and Jack Walker) was born in 1902 in the village of Pombo<\/a> in the then Belgian Congo<\/a> (now Democratic Republic of the Congo<\/a>), the son of an\u00a0Italian man and a Congolese woman. He was raised in\u00a0Italy<\/a> which was rough for him, given that he was bi-racial, and as a result, in his late teens, found himself in\u00a0England<\/a> where he reinvented himself as John Douglas Walker, added a couple of years to his age, and enlisted in the 53rd Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment<\/a> of the British Army.<\/p>\n

After being discharged, he took up amateur boxing and was mostly successful, bouncing between England and France<\/a>, racking up victories. In 1922 he returned to Italy, pretending to be an American named Jack Walker until he found it too burdensome to maintain the fake persona (he occasionally slipped and spoke fluent Italian). His surprising confession in 1925 that he was Italian presented complications in a nation that was then ruled by Benito Mussolini\u2019s<\/a> National Fascist Party<\/a>…<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the entire article and watch the trailer here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leone Jacovacci (a.k.a. John Douglas Walker and Jack Walker) was born in 1902 in the village of Pombo in the then Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), the son of an\u00a0Italian man and a Congolese woman. He was raised in\u00a0Italy which was rough for him, given that he was bi-racial, and as a result, in his late teens, found himself in\u00a0England where he reinvented himself as John Douglas Walker, added a couple of years to his age, and enlisted in the 53rd Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment of the British Army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,28,8,842],"tags":[26450,2530,1797,26449,26448,26447,26451,11481,7222],"class_list":["post-52411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-europe","category-media-archive","category-videos","tag-benito-mussolini","tag-boxing","tag-italy","tag-jack-walker","tag-john-douglas-walker","tag-leone-jacovacci","tag-national-fascist-party","tag-shadow-and-act","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52414,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52411\/revisions\/52414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}