Trump pardons late boxer Jack Johnson

President Donald Trump on Thursday granted a posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson, boxing’s first African-American heavyweight champion. In 1913, an all-white jury convicted Johnson of violating the Mann Act for traveling with his white girlfriend. That law made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Johnson spent seven years as a fugitive after the verdict but eventually turned himself in and spent 10 months in prison. The son of former slaves, Johnson defeated Tommy Burns for the heavyweight title in 1908 at a time when African-Americans and whites rarely entered the same ring. Former presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, declined to pardon Johnson because Justice Department policy directs clemency processing resources toward the living. In a ceremony in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he issued the pardon to correct “a racially motivated injustice.” WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, retired heavyweight titleholder Lennox Lewis, and actor Sylvester Stallone, who lobbied the president for the pardon, attended the ceremony.