President Trump took a break from railing against the Democrats and the Russia investigation to weigh in on the case of a long-dead boxer — and to name-drop a Hollywood star — Saturday.
“Sylvester Stallone called me with the story of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson,” .
“His trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial. Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!”
Johnson won the world heavyweight boxing championship in 1908, the first African-American to do so. He was a dominant force in the sport for years, but fled the United States after his 1913 conviction on charges of violating the Mann Act, which outlawed bringing women across state lines “for immoral purposes.” He was jailed for a year in 1920.
The law was often used as way to railroad black men dating white women, and has been denounced in the decades since as an instrument of racism.
Johnson died in 1946.