Why is the United States still afraid of Jack Johnson?
Fear? Indifference? Ignorance of history?
“I think it’s a combination of all three,” Sen. John McCain said in a phone interview. “I would hope that it is lack of knowledge, lack of information. But it still doesn’t mean it isn’t shameful.”
Since 2004, McCain, other lawmakers and the filmmaker Ken Burns have campaigned for an executive pardon for Johnson, who became boxing’s first black heavyweight champion, in 1908.
Johnson’s victory over Tommy Burns that year stoked fears of a black challenge to white supremacy; he became an inspiration for the phrase “great white hope,” a sentiment that to this day describes the aggressive promotion of whites to prominence, especially in fields dominated by black athletes.
Two years later, amid national hysteria for a white fighter to regain the coveted heavyweight title, Johnson defeated James Jeffries. Johnson’s victory set off riots across the country resulting primarily in black deaths at the hands of roving white mobs.
In 1913, the federal government succeeded where a bevy of white fighters had failed when an all-white jury convicted Johnson of transporting a white girlfriend across state lines, under the Mann Act, a measure designed to stop the proliferation of immigrant prostitution. He served 366 days in prison.
Johnson was railroaded because he was a powerful, independent man who insisted on living his life his way, stepping outside the boundaries set for him by society.
More than a century after his conviction, appeals to have Johnson pardoned have been rejected.
President Bill Clinton did not do it; President George W. Bush did not do it.
A resolution has passed the Senate and now awaits approval in the House. “We need to put some pressure on the House of Representatives to pass the resolution,” McCain said. “The best way to do that would be for the president to say: ‘I want this legislation. I want this man pardoned.’”
President Barack Obama has not acted. I’m assuming — hoping — that he will save this for one of the final acts of his presidency: pardoning one of the most controversial figures in U.S. sports history and, beyond that, righting a wrong.
With mass killings, global warming, crises in the Middle East and police misconduct at home, the president has higher priorities than pardoning a boxer who died in 1946. But in a nation that promotes itself as the land of the free, there are few things more important than removing destructive symbols — like the Confederate flag — or correcting injustices like the imprisonment of Johnson.
As we discussed Johnson and the prospects of a pardon, McCain said, “Don’t you think this issue says something about the character of America?”
The issue says something about our reluctance to look back, to do the work needed to fix the flawed foundation of a nation conceived in democracy but built on the backs of millions of slaves.
Jack Johnson’s conviction was a small part of that foundation, but it is a part that can be acknowledged and addressed with a pardon.
“I think it’s really important for us as Americans, particularly for Americans who invest so much of our energies in promoting our own exceptionalism, to clean up the messes we’ve made in the past,” said Burns, who directed “Unforgivable Blackness,” a 2004 documentary about Johnson’s life.
There was optimism when Obama, the nation’s first black president, assumed office that Johnson had an ally in the White House who would issue a pardon. McCain said he had spoken to Obama about it. “He said, ‘We’re looking at it,’” McCain said.
For the president, there may just be too many political entanglements, too many priorities in the here and now, to reach back and pardon Johnson.
Burns tempered his expectations. “I understand why particularly in a first term it might be difficult for him to feel that he could expend the political capital to make a gesture with such a controversial figure,” Burns said.
Burns said he hoped Obama, in what he called “the sunset of his presidency,” would see a way to grant a pardon.
Johnson would have admired Obama for having the audacity to think he could become the president. Obama surely admires the gall of Johnson, raised in Galveston, Texas, the son of former slaves, who scratched and clawed his way through barriers to become the heavyweight champion.
Johnson’s personal behavior, which was an issue then, may be an issue now.
He enraged segments of both the black and the white public with his behavior.
When he dominated boxing, he flaunted his power and independence. He openly traveled with, went out with and married white women — the ultimate taboo of his era. He taunted, bragged and belittled his opponents.
A number of years ago, I spoke with Sydney Taylor Brown, whose father, the cyclist Marshall Taylor, known as Major, was the first internationally acclaimed U.S. sports star. She said her father, who held staunchly middle-class values, would not have invited Johnson to the house for dinner. Yet she said her father admired Johnson’s gumption for refusing to back down in the face of white authority and public opinion.
Johnson remains an enduring symbol of defiance and independence.
W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said of Johnson, “The reason Jack Johnson was so beset by his own country, a country ironically which had only recently reaffirmed that all men were created equal, was because of his unforgivable blackness.”
Poignant words, even now, all these years later, amid demonstrations against police brutality, amid demonstrations against racism at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities.
It’s not only Jack Johnson who needs the pardon.
We do.
