Joe Gans
prizefighter · 1874–1910
Baltimore lightweight, in 1902 the first African-American to hold a world boxing title. In July 1899, at the height of his rise, he trained on the beach at Ocean City with his manager Al Herford and gave a sparring exhibition to a crowded house in the town on Monday 24 July before fighting at Coney Island that week.
The most famous person the campaign has yet placed at Ocean City in the nineteenth century, and the paper gave him four lines.
In the record (1)
1899 · 1899-07-24
Joe Gans trains on the beach at Ocean City in July 1899 and boxes an exhibition to a crowded house — the one Black man the county paper places in the town all year, and the only one it does not call colored.
From the Ocean City column of the Democratic Messenger, 29 July 1899: "Joe Gans, a celebrated pugilist, with his manager, A. Hereford, who have been sojourning in our city, where Gans was training for a sparring contest which took place at Coney Island last Thursday, gave an exhibition to a crowded house here Monday evening." The manager is Al Herford of Baltimore, who handled Gans for most of his career; "last Thursday" from a Saturday paper is 27 July 1899, and the exhibition at Ocean City was therefore Monday 24 July. Gans — born in Baltimore in 1874, and in 1902 the first African-American to hold a world boxing title — was at this date the leading lightweight in the country. He is the only Black person this campaign has found at Ocean City in 1899 doing anything other than dying, and the paper that used the word "colored" 222 times in the same 165 pages does not use it of him.
The town's Black history in the nineteenth century is a list of absences with two names in it. One of them is a champion prizefighter who filled a hall on the beach, and the county paper gave him four lines between a trout shipment and a honeymoon.
Source · checked 2026-08-11