6607: McCain Says, “Pardon That One.”

From USA TODAY…

McCain seeks pardon for boxer Jack Johnson

Sen. John McCain plans to offer a congressional resolution today calling for a presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, who became the nation’s first black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years ago, the Associated Press reports.

McCain says Johnson was done a “grave injustice” by a 1913 conviction for violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman — a conviction widely seen as racially motivated, the AP says.

The Arizona Republican, a big boxing fan, has repeatedly said he was wrong in 1983 when he voted against a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., filmmaker Ken Burns and Johnson’s great niece, Linda Haywood, will join McCain at a news conference in Washington to unveil the resolution.

Similar legislation offered in 2004 and last year failed to pass both chambers of Congress, the AP says.

Johnson won the world heavyweight title in 1908 by beating Canadian world champion, Tommy Burns. That led to a search for a “Great White Hope” who could beat Johnson. Two years later, Johnson beat Jim Jeffries, the one-time American titleholder who had come out of retirement for a match billed as “The Battle of the Century.” Johnson’s victory triggered deadly riots.

He lost the heavyweight title to Jess Willard in 1915.

The Mann Act, which outlaws transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes, has since been heavily amended, but not repealed, the AP says.

Johnson fled the country after his conviction, but agreed years later to return and serve a 10-month jail sentence. He died in a car crash in 1946 at age 68.