'It's about time:' The 97-year history of Jack Johnson's quest for a pardon

Gregory Korte | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump pardons late boxing champ Jack Johnson President Trump granted a posthumous pardon to boxing's first black heavyweight champion more than 100 years after what many claim was a racially motivated injustice. Trump was joined by Sylvester Stallone and world boxing champ Deontay Wilder. (May 24)

WASHINGTON — Jack Johnson, the former heavyweight champion of the world and the first African-American boxer to hold that title, was serving a 10-month stint at Leavenworth prison in 1921 when he sent President Woodrow Wilson a letter.

On Thursday, President Trump finally answered that letter, granting Johnson a full and unconditional pardon for his 1913 conviction of a crime that amounted to traveling with a white woman.

Along the way, Johnson's 97-year road to a presidential pardon was paved by biographers, boxing champions, senators, journalists, historians, musicians — and ultimately actor Sylvester Stallone, whose conversation with Trump about the Johnson case led to just the third posthumous pardon knowingly granted by a president.

Johnson was finally vindicated, but vindication wasn't what he wanted. He wanted his freedom.

More: Trump grants posthumous pardon to former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson

"He would have been without any sentimentality about it," said Ken Burns, the filmmaker whose 2004 documentary launched the movement to pardon Johnson. "He didn’t think, 'I can get this. I can clear my name.' That wasn't him."

But Johnson did apply for a pardon in 1920, as he sat in prison to serve a one-year sentence for violating the Mann Act. Even the attorney general at the time had reservations about the case, since the Mann Act was intended to punish human trafficking — not consensual relationships.

By all accounts a model prisoner, Johnson sent his pardon application to President Wilson in February 1921, but by the time it got to the White House Warren G. Harding had been sworn in. And for a brief moment, it looked like the Harding administration might actually grant it.

Harding's attorney general, Harry M. Daugherty, told reporters he "might consider" a pardon for Johnson. He changed his mind four days later. The mere suggestion of a pardon had provoked an angry reaction.

"Do you know his crimes against white women?" read one letter, discovered by The Associated Press in the National Archives in 2011. "Why pardon the negro Johnson who should have 50 years in prison for his crimes against white women?" read another.

And with that, the file was closed for another 83 years.

'Unforgivable Blackness'

Airing on PBS in 2004, Burns' film told Johnson's story against the backdrop of Jim Crow America, where the only thing worse than a black heavyweight champion was a black heavyweight champion who dated white women.

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson got its title from W.E.B. Dubois, the African-American civil rights activist who was Johnson's contemporary.

Jack Johnson pardon reminds us of a racist past and how even today racist remarks and coded words are used to imperil African Americans and to advance an Un-American agenda. Video from film: https://t.co/9ZlDBXz76J pic.twitter.com/zk3ZC6R7pQ — Ken Burns (@KenBurns) May 24, 2018

”The reason Jack Johnson was so beset by his own country, a country ironically which had only recently reaffirmed that all men were created equal, was because of his unforgivable blackness,” Dubois wrote.

Burns started pushing for the pardon even before the documentary aired. He said the idea for the pardon actually came from Joe Deplasco, his longtime publicist. Deplasco said it was Burns' idea.

But they put together a committee that included Public Enemy rapper Chuck D, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, actor Samuel L. Jackson and senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy.

At the time, only one posthumous pardon had ever been granted: to Lt. Henry Flipper, a former slave, Buffalo Soldier and the first black graduate of West Point. He'd been convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer in a racially motivated military trial.

More: Trump's pardon for boxer Jack Johnson is just the third posthumous pardon in history

The committee turned to John Siegal, a New York attorney, to draft Johnson's petition. Siegal saw parallels with the Flipper case, and Clinton set a precedent.

But the formal process for requesting a pardon doesn't anticipate posthumous pardons, so Siegal attempted to check off all the boxes as best he could:

Full Name: "John Arthur (“Jack”) Johnson, the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion."

Address: "Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois."

Social Security Number: "Unknown."

Bush White House: 'Not gonna happen'

The Office of the Pardon Attorney flatly shot down the application. Long-standing Justice Department policy is that its resources are best used to process "applications submitted by living persons who can truly benefit from a grant of clemency."

George W. Bush was the president, and Burns said White House officials were even more blunt. "I was told by Karl Rove: 'Not gonna happen,' " he remembered Thursday. "That was it. Beginning and end of statement."

Bush would later grant a posthumous pardon to Charlie Winters, a former government procurement officer who had been convicted of violating the Neutrality Act by helping Israel obtain B-17 bombers during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. It was another filmmaker — Stephen Spielberg — who brought the Winters case to Bush's attention.

Then President Barack Obama took office. And while some saw Obama as a natural ally in Johnson's cause, Obama never strayed from Justice Department policy on pardons.

"We had no traction with the Obama administration," Burns said. "Could you imagine what would happen, given the racial dimension of this, if a black president and a black attorney general had suggested a posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson?"

That black attorney general, Eric Holder, told a New York television station in 2016 that there was "no question" that Johnson's conviction was a historical injustice.

But he said there were "countervailing concerns about the way he treated women." Belle Schreiber — the alleged prostitute that Johnson was convicted of transporting across state lines for "immoral purposes" — said Johnson had beaten her.

"So all of this has to be balanced before this president or his successor would make a determination that a pardon is appropriate," he said.

Johnson, Burns acknowledged, is controversial — perhaps even more so in the era of the "Me Too" movement.

"I assume it had to do with Johnson's checkered past and complicated personal life, and not the interests of justice," he said.

Still, the cause picked up support in Congress. Over a decade, resolutions urging a pardon passed either the Senate or the House — but not both. Then, in 2015, it was attached to the Every Student Succeeds Act and passed. Obama signed the bill, but not the pardon.

In retrospect, attorney Siegal said, the Burns' committee might have been naive about how difficult it would be to break through the political gridlock.

"It seemed like the right thing to do, to right a historical wrong. We weren't focused on the politics of how it happened, but just that it should happen," he said.

Part of the resistance, he said, was that Johnson was just one of many people wrongfully convicted throughout history. "If you're going to get into the business of reviewing American history for injustices, you have an endless caseload," Siegal said.

Trump: 'It's about time'

Obama always sought a Justice Department recommendation before granting presidential clemency. Trump's approach has done the opposite. All four of his pardons so far have circumvented the Justice Department process, even while rejecting applications from people who have formally applied.

More: After pardoning political allies, Trump quietly denies clemency for 180 others

Trump also takes advice from his circle of friends, and he's particularly interested in doing things his predecessors wouldn't and couldn't.

So when Trump got a call from Stallone — "I've known him for so long, such a great guy," Trump said — the president listened. And then he tweeted.

"Sylvester Stallone called me with the story of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. His trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial," Trump tweeted. "Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!"

Just 33 days later, Stallone was in the Oval Office.

Best known for his portrayal of the boxer Rocky Balboa, Stallone said Johnson was the inspiration for the character Apollo Creed, Balboa's nemesis-turned-friend in the Rocky movies.

"That was Jack Johnson — this bigger than life, incredible character," Stallone said Thursday.

Johnson had no known children, so his family was represented by Linda Haywood, his sister's great-granddaughter. She said Thursday that her family was so ashamed of his conviction that she didn't find out he was related until she was 12 years old.

After attending the Oval Office ceremony, she said she had all but given up hope after Obama left office.

"I have no idea why President Trump did it," she said. "Actually, I'm going to tell you the truth. I don’t give a damn what his motive was. I don't give a hoot in hell.

"He did it. It got done," she said. "And I now have a piece of paper that says you did railroad my uncle, you did him dirty and rotten."