Site Designed and Hosted by KarateWebsites.net

© 2008 - IFAA - Official Black Dragon Fighting Society, All Right Reserved

Growing up in the Harold Ickes Homes near Chinatown, Webb raised pocket money by collecting deposit bottles, scrubbing out Chinatown trash cans, and taking other odd jobs, and on September 4, 1964, he spent part of that hard-earned income to attend the Second World Karate Championship at the Chicago Coliseum. Numerous feats of martial-arts prowess were on display—board breaking, kata (patterns of techniques), sparring—and Webb recalls Keehan, the event’s organizer, stalking the sidelines.

 

Keehan took a moment to chat with Webb and his friends— which impressed Webb not just because they were kids but also because they were black. Keehan became “Steve McQueen cool” to Webb after that. “He was a snappy dresser,” Webb says. “He had a school on Rush Street. We used to go downtown with our various hustles when we ditched school, and we would always run into him.”

 

Chicago had 13 dojos in 1964, and Keehan owned two of them: the Imperial Academy of Fighting Arts at 1020 N. Rush and Chicago Judo and Karate Center at 7902 S. Ashland. They were too far away and too expensive for Webb to attend, but he still pursued martial arts, checking out karate manuals from the bookmobile, studying untranslated pamphlets from Chinatown bookshops, and taking lessons from war veterans and immigrants from Hong Kong. He briefly competed in tournaments but eventually pursued a career in film: he studied photojournalism at NIU, founded the Blacklight Film Festival (a showcase for black filmmakers), and later worked as a producer on the films Daughters of the Dust and The World of Nat King Cole.

 

Webb revisited several old neighborhoods while working on the Cole documentary and ran into some friends from his karate days. One said he’d recently seen Count Dante on the street. So did another. A third said he’d actually talked to Keehan and claimed he was now living on the southwest side. “I said, ‘You’re hallucinating!’” Webb says.

 

He was sure Keehan was dead, but to make certain he pulled Keehan’s death certificate. The self-proclaimed deadliest man alive, it explained, had died in his Edgewater condo from a bleeding peptic ulcer, probably brought on by years of stress and hard living. He was all of 36.

 

Webb’s website includes rare footage of Keehan in action, and he envisions a web documentary that will reflect Keehan’s era as much as the man himself. “It’s the times,” Webb says. “His story embodies every kind of macho popular culture bull crap. It’s got discos and Rush Street and pet lions. . . . You can’t write s*** this good.”

 

“He’s dead and we’re still talking about him,” says James Jones. “He did what he set out to accomplish.”