Floyd Webb was an 11-year-old aspiring martial artist when he first met John “Count Dante” Keehan at the first World Karate Tournament that Keehan organized at the Chicago Coliseum in 1964.
At the time, “if you were black or Hispanic, you couldn’t learn martial arts,” due largely to prejudice among instructors, says Webb, who owns production company e22.creative.
John Keehan helped change that. He trained Chicago’s first generation of black and Hispanic martial artists.
“Almost everybody involved in martial arts in this city is somehow connected to Count Dante as a student of a student,” Webb says.
Now that he has won a copyright lawsuit and secured the investment, Webb hopes to finish his documentary, “The Search for Count Dante,” this year.
Webb reconnected with Keehan’s story while doing research on the South Side for the 2005 BBC documentary “The World of Nat King Cole.” He learned that despite Keehan’s notoriety among martial artists, he was buried in an unmarked grave and parts of his personal history were largely unknown.
Webb set out to change that, interviewing Keehan’s family, students, admirers and rivals, and collecting rare footage and images of Keehan and his ?60s martial arts milieu.
Keehan led a colorful, short life
