One of the most unforgettable scenes in 20th century American literature is the battle royale in the first chapter of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”
The unnamed narrator, a diligent and hopeful Black high school student, has been invited to a gathering of the town’s leading men to recite a speech about how “humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress.” Before he speaks, though, he is invited to take part in a battle royale featuring several of his classmates. He agrees and is issued a pair of boxing gloves.
I was shocked to see some of the most important men of the town quite tipsy. They were all there – bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants. Even one of the more fashionable preachers. … Suddenly I heard the school superintendent, who had told me to come, yell, “Bring up the shines, gentlemen! Bring up the little shines!” …
Everybody fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long. Two, three, four, four one, then turned to fight each other, were themselves attacked. Blows landed below the belt and in the kidney, with the gloves open as well as closed. …
The men kept yelling, “Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out! Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!” … The harder we fought the more threatening the men became.
Ralph Ellison, “Invisible Man”
When I read “Invisible Man,” first in high school and again as an adult, I assumed Ellison had invented the battle royale for literary effect. It was not until recently that I learned these events were in fact regular occurrences around the turn of the 20th century – including in Rochester.
Consider this Democrat and Chronicle headline and sub-headline from the Aug. 2, 1898: “Won a Watch and Stole a Melon; Too Much Temptation for a Colored Fighter.” That was written on the occasion of the first notable battle royale to take place in Rochester. The prizes were a gold watch for first place and a watermelon for second.
This is how the Union-Advertiser began its story:
“No more amusing bout has ever been given before the Rienzi Athletic Club than that furnished by last night’s ‘battle royal’ between four darkey scrappers,” the Union-Advertiser reported. “The crowd was by far the largest which has attended any of the popular price bouts and it is safe to say that another battle royal will pack the house.”
In brief, battle royales were no-holds-barred boxing matches among groups of inexperienced fighters, almost always Black and almost always in front of a white audience. They could be brutal but at the same time were intended mostly as comic relief as the undercard of the main boxing event.
The history Randy Roberts described them in “Papa Jack,” a biography of Jack Johnson:
Their sole function was to reinforce racial stereotypes. Like the blacks in minstrel shows, blacks in Battle Royals conformed to white expectations. Blindfolded or tied together, blacks were made to look more comical and less dangerous. It was difficult to take seriously one whose masculinity and dignity were so totally compromised. Emasculated before each other and the white audience, the black youths were given painful lessons about the nature of caste.
Randy Roberts, “Papa Jack”
The spectacles originated in the antebellum South, where slaveowners used them to identify and recruit men who could fight against other enslaved people in matches organized for gambling purposes. After the Civil War they evolved to serve as a “de facto boot camp for black boxers,” according to Colleen Aycock and Mark Scott in their biography of Joe Gans, a famous early Black boxer who, like Jack Johnson, got his start in battle royales.
“Potential boxers needed to attract attention,” they wrote. “For black boxers in particular, one way of getting noticed was to sign up for a battle royale. The reality of limited educational and professional opportunities at the time meant that boxing offered someone like Gans the rare opportunity to fight his way out of poverty and attain ‘visibility.’”
The same was true in Rochester for the Smith brothers. Their family came from Culpepper, Virginia, in 1929, and the brothers soon established themselves in the west side fighting scene.
Several of the brothers went on to gain renown on the local boxing scene. Adolph Dupree wrote about them in “Roots/Routes,” his 1984 history of Black Rochester:
Although classified as amateurs in the early part of their careers, the Smith Brothers were able to earn money for their family by participating in “battle royals” – a fight to the finish among several boxers in the same ring at the same time – picking up coins tossed into the ring by boxing patrons at smokers, banquets and other affairs.
Adolph Dupree, “Roots/Routes, Part III,” in about…time magazine, Sept. 1984.
An apparent distinction for Rochester-area was that battle royales sometimes included white fighters as well, usually Italian, Irish or other ethnic minorities.
A photo accompanying Dupree’s article shows five of the young Smith brothers alongside three white boys. All eight are described as “Battle Royal participants.”
Here is a description from a fight in Geneva in 1906, attended by about 800 people:
A battle royal which produced much merriment was between three white youngsters from Rochester, Welch, Noris and Riley, and a huskey boxer named Smoke. … It went the limit with no decision, ending with all three white boxers hitting the negro all round the ring.
Democrat and Chronicle May 30, 1906
The same combative interracial dynamic existed outside the boxing ring as well, of course.
“When we first got (to Rochester) there weren’t hardly no colored people at all,” Hank Smith said in 1978. “Any time you hit the street you had to fight; those kids would call us (n-word) in a minute.”
In 1912 the New York State Athletic Commission formally outlawed battle royales. It found them to be overly dangerous for the fighters involved and “a detriment rather than a help” for the growth of the sport.
That ruling seems to have had little effect in Rochester. In fact, most of the newspaper citations I could find for battle royales take place after 1912.
- A 1922 Knights of Columbus event featured “five husky sons of Ham mixing it up.” (D&C 11/22/1922)
- A battle royale in Webster in 1924 lasted more than an hour. (D&C 8/4/1924)
- Five Black boys fought in front of more than 1,500 Rochester-area American Legion members in 1930. (D&C 2/5/1930)
- A 1932 boxing match included an intermission with a “free for all slugging bee between a flock of colored lads.” (D&C 12/27/32)
- The six Smith brothers all paid their battle royale dues after their arrival in Rochester in 1929, 17 years after such bouts were formally banned. (Dupree; D&C 1/21/1936)
The last mention I could find come from a 1936 Democrat and Chronicle story about the Smith brothers: “(They) got into the fight racket via the ‘battle royal’ route. They used to throw seven or eight colored boys into the ring and let ’em go at it.” Conservatively Rochester had battle royales for at least 34 years, from 1898 to 1932.
Another demeaning spectacle was the barrel fight, where Black boxers fought while all standing within a large barrel. I haven’t found evidence of such a fight taking place in Rochester.
It was uncommon for newspaper stories about battle royales to include the fighters’ names; more often they were simply referred to by their race. This was part of a dehumanizing effect that also sometimes included blindfolding the fighters (as in “Invisible Man”).
“Use of the blindfold at these bloody events was popular perhaps because it evoked the relationship a lynch-mob has with the victim,” Aycock and Scott wrote. “Hoods over a face during a lynching help to hide identities, dehumanizing the event.”
It is also important to place battle royales within the broader context of minstrel-like entertainment that thrived in Rochester and other cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Traveling professional musicians often featured “coon songs” in their repertoires, while both professionals and amateurs were likely to blacken their faces to perform minstrel burlesques. Even philanthropic events could take on a minstrel sheen: a 1921 parade for the city’s orphans included a watermelon-eating contest for Black children.
In “Invisible Man,” the narrator finally is allowed to give his speech but struggles to get his words out with his mouth full of blood.
“I closed my ears and swallowed blood until I was nauseated,” he says. “The speech seemed a hundred times as long as before, but I could not leave out a single word.”