Insteading of handing out pardons and withdrawing them, ...he should be posthumously pardoning Jack Johnson.
Jack Johnson was convicted under a perverted application of the Mann Act in a racially motivated trial in 1913, which diminished his athletic, cultural, and historic significance, and tarnished his reputation.
The Jack Johnson Story is being told in a new and provocative Ken Burns PBS documentary, "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson", which explores the life and times of this great pugilist, who has often been overlooked but dominated opponents inside the ring and sparred with America outside the ring over issues of race and personal freedom - mainly over his relationships with white women. In 1910, Congress passed the White-Slave Traffic Act (commonly known as the `Mann Act'), which outlawed the transportation of women in interstate or foreign commerce `for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.' The woman Johnson travelled across state lines with, was his fiancé who he later married. Nevertheless, this act was used to convict Johnson, after which he fled the country to France, via Canada, but later returned to serve nearly a year in the Leavenworth (Kansas) Federal Prison.
The Ken Burns documentary is the first step in gaining public support for a pardon. President Bush's support for this pardon is expected, since, when he was Texas Governor, he recognized March 31 - Johnson's birthday - as Jack Johnson Day in Texas. Mr. Johnson was born to former slaves in Galveston, Texas in 1878. He was Heavyweight Champion from 1908 to 1915.
John L. Sullivan and other white heavyweights refused to fight Jack Johnson because he was Black. Tommy Burns gave him a chance at the title in 1908 - for which he was roundly criticized - and Burns lost. A national effort to find a `Great White Hope' to defeat Johnson finally ended in 1910, when former undefeated heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries came out of retirement and said "I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro". At the fight, billed `The Battle of the Century' which took place on July 4, 1910 in front of 22,000 people, at a ring built just for the occasion in downtown Reno, Nevada, the ringside band played "All coons look alike to me". The fight had become a hotbed of racial tension, and the promoters incited the all-white crowd to chant "kill the guy". Johnson, however, proved stronger and more nimble than Jeffries. In the 15th round, after Jeffries had been knocked down twice for the first time in his career, his people called it quits to prevent Johnson from knocking him out.
The "Fight of the Century" earned Johnson $225,000 and silenced the critics, who had belittled Johnson's previous victory over Tommy Burns as "empty," claiming that Burns was a false champion since Jeffries had retired undefeated. Johnson's victory over Jeffries triggered race riots nation-wide similar to what happened after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated..
Jack Johnson supported his nation during World War II by encouraging citizens to buy war bonds and by participating in exhibition boxing matches to promote the sale of war bonds. He died in an automobile accident in 1946.
Johnson's skill as a fighter and the money that it brought made it impossible for him to be ignored by the white establishment. In a time in which African-Americans enjoyed few civil rights and in which lynching was an accepted extra-legal means of social coercion in many parts of the United States, his success and defiant behavior were a serious threat to the racist status quo
Jack Johnson paved the way for African American athletes to participate and succeed in racially integrated professional sports in the United States. He was wronged by a racially motivated conviction prompted by his success in the boxing ring and his relationships with white women. The criminal conviction of Jack Johnson unjustly ruined his career and destroyed his reputation. President Bush should grant a posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson to expunge from the annals of American criminal justice a racially motivated abuse of the prosecutorial authority of the federal government, and to recognize Jack Johnson's athletic and cultural contributions to society.
"I'm Jack Johnson. Heavyweight champion of the world. I'm black. They never let me forget it.
I'm black all right! I'll never let them forget it!" --Jack Johnson
