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Explicating Paul Simon's "The Boxer"
The year is 1896. With the reconstructed South offering no hope of economic advancement, a young black man, the unmarried son of slaves, is convinced by a scurrilous employment agent to leave his native land for New York City, the promise of a good job, and a ray of hope.
With pennies to his name, he takes his few possessions and hops a northbound train, one of thousands of anonymous young black Southerners to migrate to Manhattan in the 1890s.
When he arrives in New York, he is disappointed to find that the employment agent -- one of many sent South to scare up cheap labor -- has hoodwinked him. There is no good job waiting, and worse, racial prejudice is just as bad, albeit different, in the North.
Asking only fair wages, he tries to find a job himself but, because of the color of his skin, is unable to land one. So he goes to the stretch of Seventh Avenue known as theTenderloin -- now the site of Penn Station and the Garment District, then the poorest and most depraved, vice-ridden neighborhood in the city -- and settles down.
The winter comes, a particularly cold winter, and his wardrobe is devoid of a warm coat. In the South he did not need one. On those cold nights he longs for the warmth of the place he was born.
When things are bad, he thinks of the day he met the famous boxer Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion of the world. He was walking in the woods one day, contemplating a move back to the South. He stepped into the clearing and there stood the mighty Johnson, alone.
Johnson is the most renown black man on earth, better known than Booker T. Washington or W.E.B. DuBois. His face is scarred from too many battles in the ring, but there is something inspirational in his countenance. He has fame and wealth, but most of all he has pride. The struggles inside the ring and out have not beaten it out of him.
The young man projected his own predicament on the boxer. Would Johnson leave? No. Johnson would stay to stick it out, and so will he.
Paul Simon's "The Boxer." QED.
By Greg Olear