West Africa
Battling Siki of Senegal
Richard West
Dakar The news of the death of Georges Carpentier has reached Senegal — where I am making a BBC film and writing a book — and caused great interest. The French boxer had outlived by almost exactly fifty years an extraordinary fighter, who beat Carpentier and broke his career, in September 1922. This was a Senegalese, born Louis Fall and called by his promoter 'Battling Siki'. He knocked out Carpentier in the sixth round at the Buffalo Stadium in Paris to become the first African world boxing champion and now a revered, if dubious, black racial hero. This week, at Saint Louis in Senegal, where 'Battling' was born, an all-African boxing tournament will be held in his memory; the Club Battling Siki has been formed in his honour, whose patrons include the President of the Senegal and sporting officials from all over the world; the black boxing world champion, Muhammed Ali was asked to come to the Senegal to acknowledge the fame of his predecessor but apparently failed to reply. The story of 'Battling', who was murdered in the United States on December 15, 1925, tells much of the sadness confronting Africans who win fame among white men. It tells much of the vanity of French colonial theory that contrived of the Senegal, the westernmost point in West Africa, a special department of France, where educated blacks would " be assimilated with whites of metropolitan France. It tells much of the modern fraud by which legally independent African states seek to create national heroes as proof they are not still in thrall, financially and politically, to the old colonial rulers.
'Battling' was born on September 16, 1897 in a fishing suburb of Saint Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River, where Frenchmen from Brest, Bordeaux and Marseilles had established R flourishing trading town in the seventeenth century. Because of this ancient activity, the inhabitants of Saint Louis, both black and white, had come to enjoy the privileges and the duties of French citizenship; they sent in a memorandum of protests in 1789 to the revolutionary congress.
As the French extended their West African empire in the final years of the nineteenth century, the Senegalese of Saint Louis and other coastal settlements preserved their French privileges. In June 1914, a black Senegalese called Blaise Diagne won an electoral battle at Saint Louis to become a delegate to the French Assembly and later a minister in the French government, for which he performed the service of rallying scores of thousands of Senegalese soldiers to fight and die for France on the western front. By 1922, when 'Battling' fought Carpentier, Blaise Diagne was Deputy Minister of the Colonies, under Pierre Laval, then a socialist, later the notorious ruler of Vichy France.
Like Blaise Diagne, 'Battling' based his career on the patronage of the Europeans; but as a poor man, his progress was less easy. Saint Louis, on an island near to the river mouth, was at that time the capital of the Senegal and of all French West Africa and a prime port of call for tour liners and ships heading further along the
coast. When ships moored at Saint Louis, the passengers tossed coins for the African boys to fish from the waters; 'Battling' was one of these divers. Either he was an extraordinary diver, or he had some special trait of character arid pysique, for 'Battling' won the attention of a particular tourist, a Dutch lady singer. She resolved to adopt the boy, then aged twelve, and took him back to her villa on the south of France. Shortly after 'Battling' arrived in Europe, his Dutch protectress died or absconded: the versions of his story vary on many points. At any rate 'Battling' was left to his own devices — a boy among men, a black among whites. He was strong for his age and his weight, and therefore began his career as boxer with one of the many itinerant troupes that would set up a ring in any village or town, and challenge all comers to last so many rounds for so much a bet.
'Battling', or Louis Fall as he was still then known, became quite a skilful lightweight boxer and also learned to read and write. He might have made a career, had it not been for the outbreak of war in 1914. His countryman, Blaise Diagne„ was calling on all Senegalese to enlist, with the promise (later betrayed) that France would reward this patriotism by granting more rights to black Africans. Young 'Battling' went to the Front, was several times wounded and won the Croix de Guerre, before being demobilised and obliged to work in Paris as dishwasher and street-sweeper — the jobs of modern Senegalese who try their luck in France. However he had a special skill as boxer.
Almost nobody in the French boxing world expected 'Battling' to win on September 24,1924 against the revered Georges Carpentier, who (fighting as a heavyweight) had narrowly failed to master the great Jack Dempsey in America. This match in Paris, his home ground, against an obscure African mediumweight, was seen by Carpentier as a kind of diversion for which he did not even bother to train. Indeed it is believed by some boxing historians and all Senegalese that 'Battling's' promoter 'Pa' Levy instructed him not 'to hurt' Carpentier, perhaps even to throw the fight in the fourth round.
The prospect of rain bothered Carpentier more than the prospect of 'Battling Siki'. If the cloudburst came before a decisive knockout, there could be demands for money back from the 60,000 spectators assembled in Paris's outdoor Buffalo Stadium. After a tentative, dull first round. Carpentier seemed to be on the point of beating 'Battling', who was probably a less able boxer. A right hook sent 'Battling' to the ground for the count of eight. But from the third round onward it seems that sheer fitness gave 'Battling' an ever-growing ascendancy over Carpentier, who was dizzy and out of breath. In the sixth round, 'Battling' bashed Carpentier round the ring and then knocked him out. Or so it. seemed to the crowd.
The referee Henri Bernstein said that 'Battling' had won by a trip and therefore awarded the fight to the semi-conscious Carpentier. Some of the crowd applauded but most apparently booed. Among them was Blaise Diagne, not only a fellow countryman but a friend of 'Battling Siki', and one with
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