Mike Tyson seeks pardon for heavyweight champion Jack Johnson

Former champion backs campaign supported by John McCain and Harry Reid to reverse infamous case of Jim Crow justice

Thursday 4 April 2013

The first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, on the way to victory over James Jeffries in Reno in 1910. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Mike Tyson has joined calls for the posthumous pardon of one of his predecessors as heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Jack Johnson. Johnson's career was brought to a crashing halt in 1913, when he became a victim of Jim Crow justice.

Tyson has loaned his star power to a campaign launched by prominent politicians – including Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, and former Republican presidential candidate John McCain – for Johnson's conviction to be overturned. The former boxer, who was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world between 1987 and 1990, has launched a petition on change.org that appeals to President Obama to use his executive powers to pardon Johnson.

"Let's show President Obama and the White House that we too care about Jack Johnson's legacy," the petition says.

Johnson enjoyed as much fame outside the ring as he did inside it, becoming an early-20th-century exemplar of the global potential of sporting celebrity. His supreme athletic skill, combined with great charisma and a sharp political sense – he regularly spoke out against British imperialism and racism wherever he encountered it – became a model for the effervescent black pride of Muhammad Ali, who used to call Johnson "Papa Jack".

Johnson fearlessly broke the rules of the segregated Jim Crow era into which he was born as a son of former slaves in Galveston, Texas. The first major rule he broke was that he deigned to fight a white man, having for years reigned as segregated colored heavyweight champion. In 1908 he taunted the white boxer Tommy Burns into accepting a bout which he won, becoming the first black heavyweight champion of the world. That led to calls for a "Great White Hope" – in other words, a white boxer who would take Johnson on and reclaim the title for the white supremacy. When the undisputed white heavyweight champion, James Jeffries, took on the challenge in 1910 and lost, race riots broke out in 50 cities across America.

"There was a sense that if Johnson's dominant image were allowed to stand it would disrupt the balance of power and threaten the control of white authorities," said Theresa Runstedtler, author of Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner.

'The authorities were looking to bring him down'

Jack Johnson with his wife, Irene. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

The second great rule that Johnson shattered was that he failed to act submissively outside the ring, treating with disdain the taboo against black men having sexual relations with white women. "In every aspect of his life, from his dating of white women to his love of fast cars, his wearing expensive clothing and the way he carried himself made him a target for the authorities who were looking for a way to bring him down," Runstedtler said.

That opportunity came in 1913, when Johnson was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for crossing state lines in the company of a white girlfriend. The prosecution was brought under the Mann Act, which was intended to protect women against enforced prostitution but was so loosely worded it could be applied against interracial relationships. From September 1920, Johnson spent 10 months in jail, having spent the previous seven years a fugitive in Europe and South America. The conviction effectively destroyed his career and his life.

Another person who is actively pressing for Johnson's pardon is his great-great niece, Linda Haywood. When she was growing up in Chicago her family hardly even mentioned Johnson's name, because they were ashamed of what had happened to him.

"A man as great as my uncle, who was known all over the world, who was the best at his craft, who had money and prestige, to have been thrown in jail only because he fell in love with someone who didn't have the same skin color as him – that made everybody ashamed," Haywood said. "It's paramount to me that he is pardoned now because I want my children to move forward and have the same amount of pride about him as I do."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/04/mike-tyson-pardon-heavyweight-jack-johnson?CMP=twt_gu