Trump Catches Flack for Potential Johnson Pardon

Jack Johnson in his prime

President Trump is getting flack from the left for considering a pardon of black boxing great Jack Johnson who was convicted of transporting a (white) woman across state lines for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Although the law was created supposedly to stop forced sexual slavery of women, the phrase "immoral purpose" in the statute allowed an extremely broad application of the law. A later United States Supreme Court ruling in Caminetti v. United States (1917), held that "illicit fornication", even when consensual, constituted an "immoral purpose."* Johnson had beaten white opponents and even married a white woman, unforgivable sins in the Democrat South. So when he crossed a state line with a white woman (the woman he later married), he was arrested and prosecuted. Johnson was convicted by an all-white jury in June 1913,^** despite the fact that the incidents used to convict him took place before passage of the Mann Act., eventually serving time in Leavenworth. Several Republican congresses have sent bills to various presidents urging a pardon for Johnson, even after a movie about him came out. Even Democrats urged President Obama to pardon Johnson posthumously, but he refused. 

The ever-progressive New York Times at the time wrote this of a fight between Jack Johnson and a white opponent. "If the black man wins, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory as justifying claims to much more than mere physical equality with their white neighbors."

Johnson was hardly a moral man or a terribly admirable man. He grew up in a mixed race community in Galveston, Texas where whites and blacks mingled freely. White moms gave him cookies and he failed to learn as a child that he was inferior to whites. This put him at odds with much of society during the Jim Crow era during which he regularly beat white opponents. Perhaps Trump should pardon him for that. It is, after all, difficult to accept being abused and looked down on because you believe you are as good as Democrats and white folk and refuse to step and fetch-it for "progressives" who think people of your color are racially inferior and need to be "taken care of" (See progressive movement founding father HG Wells' "History of the World").

Johnson's conviction was certainly racially motivated and I agree with Sylvester Stallone who has urged Donald Trump to pardon Johnson. The law was not kind to uppity black folk in those days and Johnson's pardon is long overdue. Someone should have done it a long time ago. It was a monstrous miscarriage of justice

© 2018 by Tom King

* https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-passes-mann-act
** "Cleveland Advocate 2 October 1920". Dbs.ohiohistory.org. Retrieved September 30, 2014.