The Fight Continues To Pardon Jack Johnson

Added on Aug 05, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

Boxing

Jack Johnson is an iconic figure in boxing by virtue of his status as the first black heavyweight champion. The treatment he received after he won the title—including imprisonment on a questionable, racially motivated charge—was typical of the backwardness of his time. For a number of years now, many have urged a posthumous pardon for “The Galveston Giant” and US Senator John McCain along with Representative Peter King have taken their fight to President Barack Obama. For a President who ran on the promise and as a symbol of racial equality, his administration hasn’t been particularly forthcoming in their support of the Johnson pardon effort.

Jack Johnson won the world heavyweight title in 1908 defeating Tommy Burns in Australia. Immediately promoters looked for white challengers that could beat him—coining the now familiar term ‘great white hope’. After dispatching several more or less worthy contenders he soundly defeated Jim Jeffries who had come out of retirement to face Johnson. The Jeffries/Johnson bout set off race riots nationwide though the victory over a respected challenger further legitimized Johnson’s status as the rightful heavyweight champion. He would eventually drop the title at age 37 to Jess Willard in Havana, Cuba.

Many of Johnson’s legal problems were caused by his lifestyle, which was unusual for an African American in these racially intolerant times. Johnson ‘lived large’ and enjoyed his fame and fortune in a manner more like today’s superstar athletes. An even bigger problem for Johnson was his preference for white women which was a huge social taboo at the time. He was married three times and had countless relationships with white women, which was extremely scandalous in the early 20^th century.

Johnson married a prostitute named Lucille Cameron, the second of his three wives. Many southern ministers demanded that Johnson ‘be lynched’ as a result of the relationship, and to some extent he was. He was arrested in 1912 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 Presidential pardon for Johnson. To date, they’ve received no 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.”

Johnson’s plight and the need for legal redress have also been championed in popular culture by individuals as divergent as Miles Davis and documentary film maker Ken Burns. Burns directed a film version of Geoffery C. Ward’s book “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Jazz trumpet icon Davis recorded an album called “A Tribute To Jack Johnson”.