Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of racism.

When Mrs. Brown calls Paul in the middle of the night, weeping because Jack Johnson—the former heavyweight boxing champion who died in a car wreck more than 30 years before—has just died in her bed of a heart attack, the duty-bound teenager treks to Mrs. Brown’s apartment and consoles her until the sun rises; then Mrs. Brown tells him to come by later because Jack Johnson likes to sleep in. Johnson dies several more times over the course of the novel, and it becomes clear that this cycle of death and resurrection is a longstanding feature of Mrs. Brown’s life.

The real Jack Johnson was the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, holding the title for a remarkable seven-year run from 1908 to 1915. His defeat of white boxer James Jeffries, in a 1910 match dubbed “the fight of the century,” sparked racist, anti-Black riots in cities across the country. Johnson’s success in the boxing ring and defiance of racist norms in his personal life—he married a white woman and ran a desegregated restaurant and nightclub in Chicago—made him a target of racist anger, but it also made him a beacon of hope to millions of Black people at a time of intense oppression.