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Africanists speculate that the roots of JHR may be found in the fighting systems that slaves brought with them to the Western Hemisphere during the colonial era (Daniel Marks, correspondence, 2005; Newsome, no date). These methods survived into the present by being taught in prisons, where they remained a black method of defense, in a country in which racist courts and penal laws created a system of de-facto slavery.

Proponents of a pretwentieth century origin for JHR have found intriguing references in the historical record. In 1733, a South Carolina newspaper notice offered a reward for the capture of a runaway slave who was a “famous Pushing and Dancing master” (Rath 2000,

109–111). A century later, Henry Bibb, who ran away from slavery in nineteenth-century Kentucky, reported that male slaves were sometimes forced by their masters to fight. During these contests, “The blows are made by kicking, knocking, and butting with their heads; they grab each other by their ears, and jam their heads together like sheep” (Bibb 1850/1969, 68; see also: Wiggins 1977). During Reconstruction in South Carolina (1868–1876), reference to “knocking” arose during the trial of African American Paul Harris. Harris was charged with assault and battery. The attack was labeled “knockin’” and was described as consisting of strikes to the eyes, kicks to the shins, and a head-butt to the belly of the plaintiff (Gonzales 1922). An article in the Brooklyn Eagle (November 23, 1902) describes several episodes involving an African American farm worker who achieved notoriety in rural Louisiana as a street-fighter by use of his skill at head-butting. Decades later, attention was drawn to a style that John Gwaltney described as “Knockin’ and Kickin’.” Among other references to this style, Gwaltney wrote that, circa 1980, Jackson Jordan, Jr. “still gives occasional lessons and demonstrations . . . in knocking and kicking” (Gwaltney 1980, 94). Yale student Christopher J. Kouri (1992), through interviews with Gwaltney and his own field research, added to the historical record descriptions of an African American fighting style labeled knocking (striking, probably with the head) and kicking.

Although an indisputable route from the antebellum rural South to the contemporary urban Northeast may be impossible to establish, proponents of organic ties between a continental African art, JHR, and the 52s contend that an African-descended art survived during bondage in the South and was subsequently perpetuated in the Northeast in urban settings. The need to fight in ethnic ghettos kept the art alive in diluted, but still viable, forms. Advocates (Daniel Marks, correspondence, 2003; N. V. Herivea, correspondence, 2005) further suggest that immigrant West Indian and Filipino populations added to the mix in the 1950s, followed by contact with Brazilian capoeira during the 1970s and 1980s.

-Thomas A. Green, 52 Hand Blocks/Jailhouse Rock in Martial Arts of the World

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