The Great White Hope

The Great White Hope
Book cover of the play
Written by	Howard Sackler
Characters	Jack Jefferson Eleanor Backman Goldie Tick Pop Weaver Dixon Clara Cap'n Dan Al Cameron Mama Tiny Scipio
Date premiered	1967
Place premiered	Arena Stage Washington, D.C.
Original language	English
Subject	Pugilism; racism
Genre	Drama
Setting	years before and during WWI

The Great White Hope is a 1967 play written by Howard Sackler, later adapted in 1970 for a film of the same name.

The play was first produced by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre in October 1968, directed by Edwin Sherin with James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander in the lead roles. The play won the 1969 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Subsequent touring companies of the play featured Brock Peters and Claudette Nivens in the lead roles.

The play is based on the true story of Jack Johnson and his first wife, Etta Terry Duryea. The controversy over their marriage and Duryea's death by suicide in 1912.

While the play is often described as being thematically about racism, this is not how Sackler viewed his work. Though not denying the racist issues confronted in the play, Sackler once said in an interview, "What interested me was not the topicality but the combination of circumstances, the destiny of a man pitted against society. It's a metaphor of struggle between man and the outside world. Some people spoke of the play as if it were a cliché of white liberalism, but I kept to the line straight through, of showing that it wasn't a case of blacks being good and whites being bad. I was appalled at the first reaction."

In a comment, reflecting on both the racist theme dealt with in the play and Sackler's notion that the play is about a man fighting society, Muhammad Ali, greatly impressed with James Earl Jones' performance in the play, apparently commented to the actor, "That's my story. You take out the issue of white women and replace it with the issue of religion. That's my story!" Ali was fighting being drafted into the army at the time on grounds of being a conscientious objector.