Boxer gets posthumous pardon more than 100 years after
First black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, has been granted a posthumous pardon more than 100 years after.
President Donald Trump said the pardon was necessary after many feel Johnson’s case was a racially motivated injustice.
Trump was joined by boxer Lennox Lewis and actor Sylvester Stallone as he announced the decision Thursday.
“I believe that Jack Johnson is a very worthy person to receive a full pardon, and in this case, a posthumous pardon. So I am taking this very righteous step, I believe, to correct a wrong that occurred in our history and to honor a truly legendary boxing champion,” Trumpn said.
Johnson, who died in a car crash in North Carolina in 1946, at the age of 68, was convicted by an all-white jury in Chicago in 1913 of violating the Mann Act for transporting a woman across state lines for “immoral purposes.”
According to reports, after the conviction the legendary boxer Johnson skipped bail and fled the country, living in exile, before surrendering and returning to the US in 1920 to serve his one-year sentence.
known as the Galveston Giant, Jack Johnson is a legendary figure in boxing who held the heavyweight champion title from 1908 to 1915.
