George Godfrey left the Bog district of Prince Edward Island, Canada, when he was just a teenager. While working in Boston, Massachusetts at a meat market, he was introduced to John B. Bailey, a prominent “black sparring master” (1). Within five years, under Bailey's part-time tutelage, Godfrey won boxing's Colored Heavyweight Championship and quit his job at the market. The sport of boxing afforded Godfrey enough earnings to support his wife and six children; moreover, boxing offered Godfrey continued economic opportunity after leaving the Bog district. Godfrey's narrative introduces Louis Moore's readers to the cross section of sport, economic independence, and black manhood at the turn of the twentieth century.

Louis Moore's I Fight for a Living examines the role of boxing for black men as they struggled to establish their economic independence and define manhood on their terms between 1880 and 1915. As Moore notes in his introduction, both Godfrey and Bailey represented black men using “their mastery of athletics, their fit bodies, and their eventual ownership of gymnasiums to prove that they, and by extension black men, were fit for citizenship” (1). Relying heavily on secondary sources, Moore investigated the media coverage and personal lives of an array of black boxers that contested white hegemony in and outside of the sport. Moore conveys this premise to readers through his focus on both the physical and business aspects of boxing in relation to the broader social norms and expectations placed on black men.

As the United States’ economy shifted from preindustrial to industrial, native whites and immigrants alike stymied economic opportunity for black men. Moore builds this narrative throughout multiple chapters by examining the circumstances of individuals as representative of the broader economic plight that black men faced. As a result, Moore supports the notion of a race man, an individual held up as representative of an entire race and culture. Such men uplifted the black community with hope for equality as they expressed pride, dignity, and ideal masculine values; however, white communities often portrayed and criticized such individuals as menacing and violent. This topic was integral enough to the historiography that Moore spends an entire chapter explaining the perils and triumphs race men have faced when immersed in the era's sporting culture.

A black boxer's attempt to define black masculinity within the sporting culture, according to Moore, intersected “between Victorian respectability and sporting manhood” (46). Black boxers considered “acceptable” by white society grounded themselves in middle-class attributes, such as fiscal responsibility and patriarchy. However, such respectability competed with the sporting culture's virtues that lured men out of their homes for such vices as gambling and drinking. This culture made boxing a lucrative business not only for the venues, boxers, and managers but those placing side bets. Black pugilists often used side wages to increase their potential earnings and those of the black community who gambled on them. As a result, successful black boxers held up as representative of the larger black community delicately navigated public expectations against the sporting culture. Moore shows that such a culture posed a threat to a race man because “great prize fighters who proved black superiority in the ring became ostracized figures in a battle for racial uplift if they failed outside the ring” (48). Moreover, most black boxers relied on white managers; if they were independent or had black managers, they dealt with white business owners and city leaders. Moore explains that this structure challenged black fighters not only to ensure fair earnings but because successful black fighters were the catalyst for restrictive legislative and business rules aimed at mitigating their influence.

White owners, managers, and promoters often controlled every aspect of the sport, from who fought to how much prize money was given. Moore carefully constructs for readers an understanding of how even though the business structure within boxing was racist and worked against black fighters, many still triumphed. Perhaps Moore summed it up best when he wrote that black boxers “understood the central importance of their black bodies in the business of boxing and used that knowledge to get the most from the sport, their manager, and athletic clubs” (68). White control over the sport provided an unbalanced sense of security, so when black prizefighters succeeded in and out of the ring, it threatened white hegemony. In Moore's analysis this led to backlash and confrontations that ranged from vigilante violence to specific legislation aimed at controlling black men's access to the ring. To illustrate this point, Moore utilizes the uplifting and yet tragic story of Jack Johnson as the epitome of white fears of both black manhood and economic prosperity.

In positioning the muscular white male body as a sign of white dominance perpetrated in newspaper reports across the country, Moore sets up the iconic clash between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries as a battle that defined white and black manhood. In doing so, Moore encapsulated the book's premise that black masculine identity was constructed through the sport of boxing between 1880 and 1915 and that it was perceived as a threat to white identity. Although Johnson flaunted his wealth and was criticized within the larger black community at times, his skill set in the ring threatened whites’ perceptions as the dominant race. Jeffries, a former champion, was brought out of retirement to save white dignity from Johnson. After Johnson's defeat of Jeffries, Moore asserts that rather than accept Johnson's equality as a man and boxer, white politicians and boxing executives restructured the sport so black fighters were kept from competing with whites. Such a move gradually made boxing less and less lucrative and forced many young black men back into the discriminatory labor market. By the end, readers are connected back to the introduction's premise that boxing afforded opportunities to define black manhood and gain economic independence, outside of white terms. However, Moore leaves readers with the understanding that the smothering impact of racism and bigotry continued to relegate black men to second-class citizenship.