Boxing's first black heavyweight world champion pardoned by Donald Trump

This week, President Trump found himself in the Oval Office playing host to Lennox Lewis, a former boxing champion, Sylvester Stallone, a fictional boxing champion, and Deontay Wilder, a current boxing champion. Trump had a question for the group. “Lennox,” he asked, “if I really went and started working out, could I take Deontay in a fight?” This was a joke, of course, but not a meaningless one. Sitting beneath the fighters, Trump seemed to want to remind them that he, too, thinks of himself as a fighter, or at least a fight fan. “This is forty-and-oh, thirty-nine knockouts,” he said, citing Wilder’s record. “Could I take him in a fight, if I really went to work?”

Lewis, who is famously gracious, offered his expert opinion. “You’d have to get past those long arms,” he said. This seemed to satisfy Trump, who moved on to his prepared topic: a Presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, the legendary boxer who became, in 1908, the first black heavyweight champion. Johnson was convicted, in 1913, of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to “transport” women or girls across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” Johnson was widely believed to have been convicted because he was black, and because the woman he was accused of transporting was white. Lucille Cameron was the woman in question and would later become the wife of Johnson, who skipped bail and spent many years in exile before returning to the US in 1920 and serving 10 months in prison.

In his statement, Trump acknowledged some of the leaders who have pushed for Johnson to be pardoned, including Senator John McCain and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, as well as Stallone. He also took a moment to criticize his predecessor, noting that a series of congressional resolutions had failed to secure a pardon for Johnson. “They thought it was going to be signed in the last Administration, and that didn’t happen,” he said. “That was very disappointing for a lot of people.” He also noted that Johnson had been imprisoned “for what many view as a racially motivated injustice.” Trump suggested that he was pleased to be able to “correct a wrong that occurred in our history.”