Tony Prignits -- of Lake County, Illinois -- remembers his granddad well. His grandad, Fred Drummond, is the boxer on the left in the photo held by Prignits. Drummond is posing with Billy Wells, the British heavyweight champion. This photo was one in a series used to illustrate a how-to book on boxing
"His face looked like a steamroller ran over it," Tony Prignits said of his granddad, Fred Drummond, former heavyweight champion of Kent, England.
"And he had great big ears and he was always smoking a pipe," Prignits added. "He bore the marks of a prizefighter. Back in his day, they used 4- to 6-ounce gloves; not much protection."
Prignits, 69, recalls, when he was a kid, sneaking up behind his granddad and flicking his ears and running off. His granddad would be reclining in a chair in the living room, in a house in London. He'd get up and take chase, but he had a crippled right foot that he dragged behind him and Prignits easily escaped. The crippled foot was a detriment to Drummond's professional boxing career.
"This man was a big bruiser, but he was a popular guy in his day," Prignits said. "Everybody knew him."
Prignits recalls men tipping their hats to his granddad when he was out strolling the streets of South London.
Harold Alderman, who was named recently a Member of the Order of the British Empire [MBE] for his historical work chronicling the sport of boxing in Britain, wrote that Drummond's bad foot and his strong dislike of training "handicapped his career." He fought mainly for money and he would get in the ring with anybody, including Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion from Galveston, Texas, the son of slaves.
In 1908 Drummond toured London and France between May 28 and July 9 acting as Johnson's sparring partner, appearing in 29 boxing exhibitions with Johnson. And in 1911 -- from Oct. 9 through Oct. 14 -- he had six exhibition bouts in the Pavilion Theatre in Newcastle. On Oct. 23 of that year, Drummond sparred Johnson at the Hippodrome in Leeds, England.
Prignits, a retired butcher who volunteers his time training boxers at the DBB Boxing Club in Waukegan and at The School of Hard Knocks Boxing Academy in Crystal Lake, said he strongly supports a presidential pardon of Johnson, who was convicted of violating the Mann Act.
According to Eric Weiner, in a piece he wrote for National Public Radio, the country was terror stricken by the media hype regarding "white slavery" that could be perpetrated by the thousands of immigrants that were pouring into the country during the early 20th century.
Weiner wrote:
Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion, was among the first to be charged under the act. In 1913, he was accused of ostensibly transporting a prostitute from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Johnson was convicted and given the maximum sentence: one year and one day. Critics, however, believe that Johnson's case was racially motivated — the "prostitute" was his white girlfriend.
In 1944, Charlie Chaplin was prosecuted under the Mann Act in a case stemming from a paternity suit involving the actress Joan Barry. Some believe the case was motivated by Chaplin's left-of-center political views. He was ultimately acquitted, but his image in the U.S. never fully recovered.
In 1959, singer Chuck Berry was convicted under the Mann Act of transporting across state lines an underage Apache girl who was arrested on a prostitution charge weeks later. He ended up serving 20 months in prison on a variety of charges.
Prignits supports Johnson's pardon, saying it would correct an old wrong.
"Absolutely I support the pardon," Prignits said. "You should be able to be with the person you want to be with. Color doesn't matter."
Johnson, who was born in 1878, passed away in 1946 and is buried Graceland Cemetery on Chicago's North Side. Drummond was born in Old Ford, London, in 1874 and he passed away in 1953.
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