US CONGRESSMEN SEEK POSTHUMOUS PARDON FOR BOXER JACK JOHNSON

Jack Johnson will forever be known as the first black heavyweight champion in boxing history.  His treatment once he won the title—including arrest and imprisonment on a dubious, racially motivated charge—was symptomatic of the cultural backwardness of his time.  For some time now, many have sought a posthumous pardon for “The Galveston Giant” and now US Senator John McCain and Representative Peter King are taking their fight for justice to President Barack Obama.  Oddly for a President who ran with the promise of and became a symbol of racial equality, his administration has yet to provide a response.

Johnson won the world heavyweight title in 1908 after battering Tommy Burns in Australia.  From that point forward, promoters sought white challengers that could beat him—in the process coining the now familiar term ‘great white hope’.  After dispatching with several contenders he soundly defeated Jim Jeffries, who had come out of retirement to face Johnson.  The fight set off race riots nationwide though further legitimized Johnson’s status as the rightful heavyweight champion.  He would eventually lose his title at age 37 to Jess Willard in Havana, Cuba.

Much of Johnson’s problems stemmed from his lifestyle, which was an anathema in those racially intolerant times.  Johnson, to use a bit of modern terminology ‘lived large’ and enjoyed his fame and fortune in a manner similar to today’s superstar athletes.  More problematic for Johnson was his fondness for white women which was a huge social taboo at the time.  He was married three times and had countless other relationships with white women, which was nothing short of scandalous in the early 20th century.
 
Johnson married a prostitute named Lucille Cameron, the second of his three wives.  A number of southern ministers demanded that Johnson ‘be lynched’ as a result of the relationship, and in a metaphorical sense he was.  In 1912, he was arrested for violating the Mann Act which prohibited ‘transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes’.  He was convicted to a year and a day in prison.  Initially, Johnson skipped bail but would later surrender and serve his time.

McCain and King wrote to Obama in August asking him to issue a pardon which is within his authority as President.  To date, they’ve received no response and on this week pressed him for a response:

"Regrettably, we have not received a response from you or any member of your administration right this wrong and erase an act of racism that sent an American citizen to prison."

A pardon for Johnson has been championed in popular culture by individuals as divergent as Miles Davis and documentary film maker Ken Burns.  Burns directed a film adaptation of Geoffery C. Ward’s book “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.  Jazz icon Davis record an album called “A Tribute To Jack Johnson”.