In May, President Trump pardoned Jack Johnson, the legendary first black world heavyweight boxing champion.
His legacy had been tarnished by a racially-tainted criminal conviction from 1913.
President Trump
An all-White jury convicted Johnson under the Mann Act, a law that barred transporting women and girls across state lines for sex. He had travelled with a white woman across state lines and served 10 months in federal prison, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The pardon erases the “shame and humiliation that my family felt for my uncle, a great hero, being in prison unjustly,” said Linda Haywood, one of Mr. Johnson’s descendants in the Oval Office.
“African American families comprise 42 percent of welfare recipients…but are 59 percent of poor people shown on television are African American.” “Sustaining Stereotypes” by Lanien Frush Holt in QUILL Summer 2018 www.spj.org/quill
Deontay Wilder, current WBC champion with a perfect 40-0 record, said, “This is a big step forward, especially for the Black community for the simple fact he [Trump] didn’t have to do it.”
“Hopefully, this ain’t one thing — you do one great deed, then that’s it,” said Wilder, to encourage Trump to use the correction of this miscarriage of justice to improve race relations in America today according to The New York Times.
“However, there are a lot of current, modern-day issues that he could address as the living president that he chooses not to. I’m just personally tired of symbolism,” Stefanie Brown James said to The New York Times.
Sen. John McCain (R, Arizona) has been pushing for the pardon for years and tweeted “finally rights a historical wrong, restores a great athlete’s legacy and closes a shameful chapter in our history.”
Boatwright