Pardon for John "Galveston Giant" Johnson

Arthur John Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion of the world.  In 1902, Johnson had won more 50 fights against Blacks and whites.  In 1903 Johnson won the World Colored Heavyweight Championship against "Denver" Ed Martin. By 1908 he’d won the World Heavyweight title against Tommy Burns.  He was the first Black man to do so. On July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada thousands of people gathered in the hopes of seeing a retired white heavyweight champion of the world, Jim Jeffries, take the title back from the current champion, a Black man Jack Johnson.  It was called the Fight of the Century.  According to Thomas R. Hietala. Fight of the Century: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and the Struggle for Racial Equality. , American writer Jack London penned the term "Great White Hope," to describe Jim Jeffries. John Johnson retained the title. Johnson’s boxing career stats can be found at Boxrec.com.  This was a great accomplishment for the son of former slaves.  He was born in Galveston, Texas according to Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a 2 part film by Ken Burns and PBS, he was also known as the Galveston Giant.  His parents were laborers who taught their six children to read and write.

The Fight of the Century was a racially charged fight with the white Jim Jeffries being quoted by Observer.guardian.co.uk as saying, “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” Johnson had the ability to fight smarter than the average heavyweight. He was known to wait for a blunder, and then penalize his challenger. Johnson’s complete supremacy of Jeffries came as such a surprise and embarrassment to the white public that it triggered enormous riots from mid west to the eastern seaboard. There were shootings, knifings, beatings and lynching of Blacks from furious white crowds in the thousands. It was reported that no racial episode on that level of violence and geography would occur in the United States until the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968. A report noted that hundreds of people were injured, and at least 20 Blacks and at least 2 whites were killed. While whites were angry, Blacks celebrated.

By 1913 Arthur John Johnson’s boxing career was at an end by a knockout, but not in the ring. The search for the "white hope" not having been successful, prejudices were being piled up against me, and certain unfair persons, piqued because I was champion, decided if they could not get me one way they would another.... — Jack Johnson.  

James Robert Mann was a lawyer, American legislator and U.S. Representative from Illinois.  He was a member of the Republican Party, and served as House Minority Leader.  Representative Mann was best known for writing the Mann Act of 1910, which was a reaction to the "white slavery" issue and prohibited transportation of women between states for purposes of prostitution.  Jack Johnson was the first person prosecuted under the act, right after his victory at the Fight of the Century. He had a relationship with a white prostitute named Lucille Cameron. In the summer of 1912, Jack Johnson met Lucille Cameron, an 18-year-old prostitute from Milwaukee.  By October, Cameron's mother went to the police and charged Johnson with kidnapping her daughter.  He married Miss Cameron so that she could not be forced to testify against him, an act that outraged the public.  Belle Schreiber, also a prostitute left a whorehouse, and traveled with Johnson to another state.  She did testify against him. Johnson was prosecuted and sentenced to the maximum penalty of a year and a day in prison. After his Mann Act conviction in June 1913, Johnson ran out on the bail.  For the next seven years, he and Miss Cameron lived in exile in Europe, South America and Mexico, until Johnson surrendered to the authorities in 1920. Johnson was confined at  the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas.

Cornell University Law School website The Mann Act of 1910 (White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825; codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. § 2421–2424)Title 18 Part 1 Chap 117 TRANSPORTATION FOR ILLEGAL SEXUAL ACTIVITY AND RELATED CRIMES : The citation § 2421. Transportation generally- Whoever knowingly transports any individual in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

There have been countless women in my life. They have participated in my triumphs and suffered with me in my moments of disappointment. They have inspired me to attainment and they have balked me; they have caused me joy and they have heaped misery upon me; they have been faithful to the utmost and they have been faithless; they have praised and loved me and they have hated and denounced me. Always, a woman has swayed me — sometimes many have demanded my attention at the same moment. — Jack Johnson

According to pbs.org, Mr. Johnson had several women in his life. According to Johnson's 1927 autobiography, he married Marry Austin, a Black girl from Galveston, Texas, in 1898. Next he had a relationship with a Black prostitute, Clara Kerr in Philadelphia, PA around 1903. In 1907 Australia John Johnson had a 3 month romance with 20 year old white woman, Alma Toy.  In Johnson’s 1927 autobiography he stated after returning from Australia, he began traveling with white women exclusively.  Hattie McClay, whose real name was Anna Peterson, was a prostitute working in a whorehouse in Manhattan. Next was named Belle Schreiber, the 23-year-old daughter of a Milwaukee policeman who preferred the prostitution to the secretarial work.  By 1909 while attending the Vanderbilt Cup car race on Long Island, Johnson had a meeting with a 28-year-old Brooklyn socialite named Etta Duryea. They married and she later committed suicide.

In 2005 what some consider being Johnson’s injustice was addressed. Sen. John McCain and Rep. Peter King pushed for a posthumous pardon for Johnson, which President Bush did not sign. 63 years after his death in a car accident in 1946, United States Congress passed a resolution to recommend that the President grant a pardon for his 1913 conviction. In relation with Johnson’s conviction on charges of violating the Mann Act, it has been pointed out that "[i]f Johnson did not violate the actual letter of the law, he certainly violated its spirit repeatedly as he openly consorted with prostitutes and, in one insistence, bankrolled a former madam, who had been one of his personal favorites, when she was seeking startup capital to open her own fully furnished brothel,"according to Throwing in the Towel: The Factual Jack Johnson vs. the Fictional Jack Johnson. In April 2009, Senator John McCain of Arizona joined Representative Peter T. King of New York in a call for a posthumous pardon. On July 29, 2009, The House unanimously passed a resolution urging President Barack Obama for a posthumous pardon; the Senate had passed a similar voice vote in June.