Round 3: Unforgivably Black
Jack Johnson’s controversial lifestyle remained a topic of conversation throughout his life. Civil rights activist believed that Johnson did little to advance racial tolerance. When a young black boxer from Detroit burst onto the scene and proclaimed that he would “never disgrace the race” Johnson was appalled. Jack Johnson bet against all of Joe Louis’s opponents and he even offered to train James J. Braddock. When Joe Louis defeated Braddock on June 22, 1936 to become just the second black boxer to earn the title Heavyweight Champion of the World, Johnson must have been furious.
Jack Johnson stopped at a diner in North Carolina. When he was unable to use his money and fame to get served, he sped away in anger. He crashed his car and was taken 50 miles west to the nearest hospital that would accept a black person. On June 10, 1946 Johnson died at St. Agnes Hospital in Raleigh. His body was sent to Chicago where he was buried in Graceland Cemetery. Years later a headstone was placed at his gravesite.
Even in death Johnson remained a controversial figure. For decades after his death family members attempted to get his Mann Act conviction expunged. The federal felony charge required action from the US Legislature or a presidential pardon. Several times legislation was passed but it failed to earn signatures from Presidents George H.W. Bush and Barak Obama. Then, on April 21, 2018, President Donald Trump, acting on the advice of boxer and actor Sylvester Stallone, tweeted that he was considering a full pardon for Jack Johnson.
Jack Johnson received a full presidential pardon on May 24, 2018. At the signing, President Trump stated that Johnson was “a truly great fighter” who served time for a “racially motivated” crime. Throughout the decades since the boxer’s death, debates brewed over Johnson’s conviction of the Mann Act. The debate over his ability as a boxer has, surprisingly, never been questioned. Perhaps its is fitting that a controversial president pardoned a controversial man who lived his life “unforgivably black.”
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
Karen Abbot. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul, New York: Random House, Inc., 2007.
John Eligon and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Pardons Jack Johnson, Heavyweight Boxing Champion,” The New York Times, May 24, 2018.
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. PBS.