Jack Johnson and one of his three wives.
*Lawmakers are making another attempt to get a posthumous presidential pardon for the world’s first black heavyweight champion, who was imprisoned nearly a century ago because of his romantic ties with a white woman.
New York Rep. Peter King and Arizona Sen. John McCain, both Republicans, plan to reintroduce a congressional resolution urging a pardon for boxer Jack Johnson. Another supporter, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said he will talk to President Barack Obama’s new chief of staff, William Daley, and Attorney General Eric Holder about the cause.
“It’s an injustice that shouldn’t fall through the cracks, and it looks like that’s exactly what happened here,” Rangel said.
Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion a century before Obama was elected the nation’s first black president. The boxer’s flamboyant lifestyle and his relationships with white women inflamed white sensibilities. Racial resentment boiled over after he defeated a white boxer in the “Fight of the Century” 100 years ago last summer. Three years later, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes.
One of Johnson’s great-great nieces, Linda Haywood of Chicago, is writing to Obama about the case.
“I think having a letter from a family member will help put a face on our plea,” Haywood said. “Many people didn’t realize he had nieces and nephews. For years, the rest of my family was so ashamed, no one ever spoke of him because of the stigma attached to him being in prison.”
King said he was surprised that Obama didn’t act during the last session of Congress, when the House and Senate passed the resolution. But the congressman said he’s still optimistic.
“With last year’s elections, there seems to be a clear intent by the president to try to be more bipartisan,” King said. “Everything is there to correct an historic wrong and also, in a small way but significant way, help to bring the country together now.”
The White House declined to discuss the request for Johnson, citing a policy of not commenting on how pardon candidates are chosen. Obama, a former constitutional law professor who once taught a class on racism and the law, has not spoken publicly of the Johnson effort, but the Justice Department has come out against it.
In a letter to King and McCain at the end of 2009, the Justice Department attorney who advises on pardons argued that resources for such requests are best used for those still alive “who can truly benefit” from them. That notwithstanding, he noted, Obama certainly could pardon whomever he wishes.
Rapper Chuck D, a member of the pardon committee organized by documentary film maker Ken Burns, said he feels a presidential pardon is still possible, but unlikely any time soon. “I think President Obama’s pardon for something a hundred years ago will be at the tail end of his presidential run,” the rapper said.
Last year, Obama pardoned nine people convicted of crimes including possessing drugs, counterfeiting and even mutilating coins. None was well-known.
The fact that Johnson wouldn’t personally benefit from the pardon is beside the point, argued another one of Johnson’s great-great nieces, Constance Hines of Chicago.
“This is about righting a wrong,” she said.
They need to let it go. Obama is too beholden to the Republicans/Fox/white people to do anything like this. They must have forgotten about Lynne Stewart, the 70 year old civil rights lawyer who Bush got sentenced to 10 years on bogus charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. Every Democrat “knew” that Obama would pardon this woman the minute he set foot in office. But it looks like that old woman will have to die in jail because Obama has the worst pardon record other than George Bush and George Washington, back when the new Republic was just figuring out how to do it.
As George Lardner, an associate at the Center for the Study of the Presidency noted, “It’s difficult to understand why the president has been so unwilling to grant any clemency. As someone who has taught constitutional law, he knows that the founders gave him, and him alone, the power “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment.” It is likely that he also knows that a disproportionate number of federal prisoners are black, that mandatory sentencing guidelines have left many of them with excessive sentences and that at least a few of them deserve clemency, whether they’ve asked for it or not.”
So I guess we can safely say that anybody like Jack Johnson, who defied white people, or Lynn Stewart, who stood up against the reprobate neo-cons, will not get a pardon from a Republican lap dog like Obama.
As a black person, a progressive, a patriotic American, how long can you sit by and turn a blind eye to the harsh insensitivity of this man?
As Glen Ford said, “After two years, one would think that folks on the Left would have gotten the idea that Obama is pro-Pentagon, pro-Wall Street, and doesn’t have a transformative bone in his body regarding either race or class.”
I cringe at the listen of being patriotic to anything. But OBAMMY aint pardoning anyone. He is not for any poor folks, he is all for the rich and powerful. See what you Negras got for thinking just because he is black he is for you? Did you expect him to be outside cooking chicken eating Watermelon? How sheepish people can be. This era we live in is about the Elite and the poor. The have and have nots. It’s all written in the bible. Read Revelation people, the time is now. “My President is Black” So the heck what!