Jack Johnson Pardon: Momentum Growing To Exonerate Former Boxing Champ
From the archive: published Apr 4, 2013, 13 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Activists who want boxer Jack Johnson pardoned are calling on President Obama to wipe out the late fighter’s conviction for traveling across state lines with a white woman.
The boxer, who died in 1946, was the first black heavyweight champion of the world, fighting both opponents in the ring and racists out of it. Fights for Johnson were often billed as black against white, with one of his opponents being named The Great White Hope for his bid to take the championship belt from Johnson.
At the height of his fame in 1912, Jack Johnson was targeted under Jim Crow laws for traveling across state lines with a white woman named Lucille Cameron, who would later become his wife. Police charged Johnson under the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport a woman across state lines “for immoral purposes.”
Cameron would not testify against Johnson, but police nabbed him again the following year for traveling with another white woman, former girlfriend Belle Schreiber. He was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
The movement to have Jack Johnson granted a presidential pardon comes from the late boxer’s supporters and family. His great-grand0niece, Linda Haywood, said Johnson’s plight is similar to the same-sex marriage battle going on today.
“This was about who you love and how you love,” she said. “A pardon would erase the shame and the stigma and allow us to hold our heads up high.”
This weekend, to celebrate would would have been the boxer’s 135th birthday, relatives and supporters gathered in his hometown of Galveston, Texas, to record a video to send to President Obama.
Many have pinned their hopes on Obama, the nation’s first black president, using his authority to pardon Jack Johnson. Congress even passed a resolution in 2009 calling on Obama to pardon the boxer.
The bid for a Jack Johnson pardon may have trouble with the Justice Department, which has said it has a general policy not to grant posthumous pardon requests.