A Pardon for Jack Johnson

Senator John McCain has launched a campaign seeking a presidential pardon for boxer Jack Johnson.  Johnson, whose life is traced in the Ken Burns documentary Unforgivable Blackness, rose from poverty to become the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion in the 1910s. His extravagant lifestyle and live-out-loud attitude was frowned on the white establishment, not to mention his consorting with white women:  Black men at that time weren’t to behave that way. When Johnson could not be defeated by white opponents in the boxing ring, circumstances and the justice system were manipulated to find him in violation of the Mann Act, for which he eventually served jail time. Johnson died in 1946 in an automobile accident.

McCain faces an uphill battle.  According to an Associated Press article, Ken Burns’ efforts with the G. W. Bush Administration fizzled in 2004; and posthumous presidential pardons are rare. But McCain feels the pardon is important enough to merit the effort. A pardon, coming from President Obama specially, “would be indicative of the distance we’ve come, and also indicative of the distance we still have to go.” (McCain, quoted in the AP)

I tend to agree more with Burns’ point of view:  The pardon would be a matter of justice, not color. Johnson was persecuted because of his race and what he achieved as a black man; recalling my blog on the film The Lena Baker Story, Lena Baker‘s conviction and execution was based on the fact that she – a black woman – killed a white man, the circumstances and intent of the act not withstanding. In these and countless other cases, justice was miscarried, if not denied, because of skin color in a society where justice is supposed to be blind.

A pardon for Johnson, whether it comes from the President or from the court that convicted him, would right a wrong, not a symbolic gesture.

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The book of Unforgivable Blackness, a companion to Ken Burns’ documentary, is available at CCLS.

The Great White Hope, a play based on Johnson’s life, is available at CCLS in the collection Best Plays of the Sixties, and as a single volume through PINES.

As of this writing, The Lena Baker Story is playing at four metro-Atlanta theaters. Check local listings for showtimes.