1. Chalky Wright's maternal grandfather, Caleb Baines Martin, was a runaway slave from Natchez, Mississippi, who fled to the Arizona Territory shortly before the Civil War.
29 Facts About Chalky Wright
1. 2.
Chalky Wright bought cattle from Colonel Henry Hooker and established a dairy ranch on the property, making him the first African American ranch owner in Southwest Arizona.
3.
Chalky Wright supplied dairy produce to Fort Grant and surrounding settlers.
4.
Around 1918, Clara Chalky Wright moved her children to Colton, California.
5.
Chalky Wright began his professional boxing career at the age of 16, boxing for the San Bernardino Boxing Club.
6.
Chalky Wright's first fight took place on February 23,1928 against Nilo Balle, who he defeated in four rounds.
7.
Chalky Wright began fighting on the East Coast of the United States in 1938, losing a knockout to Henry Armstrong.
8.
Chalky Wright began winning again, and by 1938 was moving up rapidly in the ranks.
9.
The modest crowd of 4,000 booed the decision for Chalky Wright, favoring the younger, whiter, and more regional Italian Bartolo from Boston.
10.
Chalky Wright drank freely of whatever his palate called for.
11.
On September 11,1941, Chalky Wright dethroned reigning New York State Athletic Commission's world featherweight champion Joey Archibald with a TKO in the eleventh round in Washington, DC, taking the featherweight title, as recognized by the NYSAC and Maryland.
12.
Chalky Wright had kept his left jabbing and hooking to the face of his opponent and his rights to the body were equally punishing.
13.
Chalky Wright successfully defended the title against former champion Harry Jeffra gaining a tenth-round technical knockout on June 19,1942 in Baltimore.
14.
Jeffra was floored for a count of nine in the ninth, and his defeat looked in inevitable, as Chalky Wright continued to bang away at him after he arose for the rest of the round.
15.
Chalky Wright did most of his work from the fifth round on, and clearly had the edge in the eighth through fifteenth.
16.
Chalky Wright lost his title in a fifteen-round unanimous decision before a crowd of 19,000, Willie Pep, eight years his junior, on November 20,1942 at Madison Square Garden.
17.
Chalky Wright finally retired March 9,1948, after losing to Ernie Hunick when he did not answer the bell for the fourth round.
18.
In January 1954, Jet magazine reported that Chalky Wright claimed he had written his autobiography, Me and You, under the pen name "Jay Caldwell".
19.
In October 1954, Chalky Wright opened a bar in Los Angeles called the "Knockout Lounge".
20.
Chalky Wright claimed that all of the bartenders were ex-boxers.
21.
Chalky Wright eventually became her live-in bodyguard and chauffeur for a time.
22.
Chalky Wright won the suit and Confidential published a retraction.
23.
Chalky Wright's head was submerged underwater and the tap was running.
24.
Rumors of foul play and suicide immediately began to surface as Chalky Wright was scheduled to testify in the high-profile libel suit against Confidential magazine.
25.
Chalky Wright then struck his head on the tap, which rendered him unconscious, and he drowned.
26.
Investigators noted that Chalky Wright had attempted to stop himself from falling by grabbing a towel rack which was found pulled from the wall.
27.
Chalky Wright was buried in Lincoln Memorial Park in Carson, California.
28.
Chalky Wright was inducted into the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame in 1976 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1997.
29.
In 2012, Chalky Wright was inducted into the Colton, California Sports Hall of Fame.