Donald Trump Pardons Jack Johnson While Taking Swing At Obama
May 24, 2018
Donald Trump Pardons Jack Johnson While Taking Swing At Obama
President Trump today gave a full pardon, posthumously, to Jack Johnson, the country’s first black heavyweight champion. In 1913, all-white jury convicted Johnson, under the Mann Act, of transporting a white woman with whom he was involved in a relationship across state lines.
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Johnson died in 1946.
Sen. John McCain, Sylvester Stallone and Ken Burns are among those who had advocated for a pardon for Johnson, who died in 1946, and whose conviction became a prominent story of racism in the judicial system. He served 10 months in prison.
Burns documented Jackson’s life in the docu Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. It aired on PBS in 2005.
Johnson’s 1910 fight against James J. Jeffries inspired the play-turned-movie The Great White Hope.
Making the announcement from the Oval Office this afternoon, Trump noted Congress has supported numerous resolutions supporting Johnson but “no president ever signed it” adding that many “thought it was going to be signed in the last administration, and that did not happen, so it was disappointing for a lot of people.”
The resolutions had support of many including the Congressional Black Caucus, Trump continued, scolding, “but they couldn’t get the president to sign it….as recently as 2015.”
Cat got let out of the bag earlier today when Stallone, three-time world heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis, and current world heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder were spotted in the White House:
Breaking: So the rumor of the pardon of Jack Johnson today maybe true. I just saw Sly Stallone and his well dressed entourage walk down the hallway as I am in the Roosevelt Room waiting for the presidential signing.
— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) May 24, 2018