Senate

Senate backs pardon for late boxer Jack Johnson

by Jordain Carney - 07/15/15 2:21 PM ET

The Senate on Wednesday backed a bipartisan, yearslong push to get the White House to grant a pardon to the the first black heavyweight boxing champion.

An amendment from Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to the Senate’s overhaul of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law was unanimously approved as part of a manager’s package to the legislation.

{mosads}The senators want the late Jack Johnson to get a pardon to remove from his record “a racially-motivated abuse of the prosecutorial authority of the Federal Government from the annals of criminal justice in the United States; and…in recognition of the athletic and cultural contributions of Jack Johnson to society.”

Johnson, who became the first African-American heavyweight champion in 1908, was sentenced to one year in prison in 1913 under the Mann Act, when he was accused of trying to take a white woman across state lines for “prostitution and debauchery.”

The law, intended to stop human trafficking and prostitution, was sometimes used with racial motivation.

According to the legislation, federal officials at the time said Johnson “became involved with a White woman whose mother disapproved of their relationship” but the investigation fell apart when the woman refused to cooperate and later married Johnson.

After he was sentenced in 1913, Johnson fled the country, but returned in 1920 and served nearly a year in prison.

McCain has been introducing legislation to get a pardon for Johnson since 2004, and the Senate has previously passed similar resolutions.

McCain, in a statement, pushed on Obama to issue the pardon, which it said would “mark a significant step toward righting this historical wrong and restoring this great athlete’s legacy.”

But the Obama administration has previously said that it does not process posthumous pardons as a matter of policy.

Reid, a former amateur boxer, said that “now is the time to restore his legacy.”

“Jack Johnson was the greatest athlete of his time and a barrier-breaking boxer,” Reid said. “Johnson was a true champion whose name was tarnished by an unjust and racially motivated criminal conviction.”

Johnson was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954.

Tags Harry Reid John McCain