President Trump granted a rare and historic posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson 72 years after death Thursday, clearing the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion of racially motivated charges resulting from his relationships with white women in 1912.
Advocates for Johnson — including boxers, historians, academics and senators — had been pushing for a pardon for 14 years through the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.
But it appears to have taken a phone call from actor Sylvester Stallone to Trump to make it happen.
Johnson's is just the third posthumous pardon granted in the history of the presidency.
More: A Trump pardon for boxer Jack Johnson would be just the third posthumous pardon in history
Johnson, who with Joe Lewis and Muhammad Ali is widely considered to be in the pantheon of the greatest boxers of all time, broke the color barrier in boxing in a 1908 in a 1908 fight with Tommy Burns. But it was his 1910 title defense against former champion Jim Jeffries that sparked racial unrest that resulted in perhaps hundreds of deaths around the country.
Johnson openly dated white women — and married three of them. The mother of his second wife, Lucille Cameron, alleged that Johnson had abducted her, leading to federal charges in Chicago. Those fell through when Cameron refused to press charges, but Johnson was then convicted of sexual debauchery charges against an alleged prostitute, Belle Schreiber.
He was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which passed Congress two years earlier to combat human trafficking but was never intended to criminalize consensual relationships.
But Johnson — with perhaps a wink and nudge from officials from the judge on down — was able to slip out of the country before being sentenced. He served seven years in exile in Canada, Europe and Mexico during World War I before returning to serve his year-long sentence at Leavenworth prison in Kansas.
While banished from the United States, Johnson lost his heavyweight title to Jess Willard in Cuba. With his federal conviction, he was denied licenses to fight in many states, and ended his career as a vaudeville performer and coach before dying in an automobile accident in 1946.
Source: UsToday
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