He’s sponsoring this bill entreating President Bush to pardon heavyweight champ Jack Johnson, nearly a century after Johnson’s racially-motivated conviction under the Mann Act and sixty-two years after his death. A similar bill passed by voice vote in the House on Friday.
A five-minute documentary about the 1915 fight in which Jess Willard took Johnson’s heavyweight title can be found here . Did Johnson throw the match to a white fighter, as was common at the time? I say yes, with the caveat that Johnson kept his pride by losing not on talent but on endurance—they went twenty-six rounds in the hundred-degree Havana sun, and Willard was younger and in better shape—which is exactly how Johnson wanted to lose. But that’s a question between Johnson and his God; it’s the matter between Johnson and his government that McCain wants to redress, and God bless him for it.
