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Jack Johnson: They Said This Ship Don't Haul No Coal: 2!
As Barack Hussein Obama, The Chosen One waffles, my earlier blog on this matter will be remembered:
http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/marion/2009/aug/12/jack-johnson-they-said-this-ship-dont-haul-no-coal/
That being beyond question let us now go here:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/19/boxer.pardon/index.html
":WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House refused to indicate Monday whether President Obama will issue a posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson, the African-American boxing champion convicted in 1913 for dating a white woman.
The House of Representatives on July 29 unanimously passed a resolution urging Obama to grant a pardon; the Senate passed a similar measure by a voice vote on June 24.
The push for a rare posthumous pardon has been spearheaded for years by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Rep. Peter King, R-New York, two of Congress' top boxing enthusiasts.
"It is our hope that you will be eager to agree to right this wrong and erase an act of racism that sent an American citizen to prison," they wrote Friday in a letter to Obama.
Johnson, the first African-American to win the heavyweight title, was convicted for violating the Mann Act, which outlawed the transportation of women across state lines for "immoral" purposes.
He served 10 months in prison on charges "brought forward clearly to keep him away from the boxing ring, where he continued to defeat his white opponents," McCain and King said.
Almost a century after Johnson's conviction, his compelling saga has continued to capture the interest of sports writers, civil rights activists and historians. It provides, they agree, a unique window into American politics and culture at a time when Jim Crow-style racism reigned supreme.
Johnson was first arrested for breaking the Mann Act in 1912, four years after winning the heavyweight crown. That case fell apart, but investigators soon after charged him with a similar offense involving a woman he had dated years earlier.
Justice Department lawyers argued it was a "crime against nature" for him to have a sexual relationship with a white woman.
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, later to become the first commissioner of Major League Baseball, set Johnson's bail at $30,000, the equivalent of more than $660,000 today. When a bail bondsman showed up, Landis jailed him, too, according to an account that filmmaker Ken Burns relays in his documentary "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson."
An all-white jury convicted Johnson in less than two hours.
"Mr. Johnson was perhaps persecuted as an individual, but ... it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks," one of the prosecutors later said.
Johnson's real crime, in the eyes of many, was committed on July 4, 1910, when he successfully defended his boxing title against Jim Jeffries, a white boxer who came to be called the "Great White Hope" because many white fans saw him as the best chance to wrest back a boxing title from the African-American champ.
Johnson beat Jeffries, who had come out of retirement for the fight, before a stunned, almost entirely white crowd in Reno, Nevada.
Race riots followed. More than 20 people were killed and hundreds were injured. Most victims were black.
So when they "couldn't beat him in the ring, the white power establishment decided to beat him in the courts," Burns said in his documentary.
Johnson fled to Europe in 1913 while free on appeal. But after years of fights overseas, including the eventual loss of his title in Havana, Cuba, in 1915, Johnson came home. He turned himself over to U.S. authorities at the Mexican border in 1920 and served 10 months in prison.
He died in a car wreck in 1946.
"Back then, if you were black and you were told that you did something wrong, you really had no recourse," Linda Haywood, Johnson's great-niece, recently told CNN.
"You just accepted what was done because black people were basically powerless and voiceless. Jack may have been a rich boxer, but he couldn't fight the system."
McCain and King introduced resolutions calling for a presidential pardon in 2005 and last year. McCain, who says he made a mistake by once voting against a federal holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., sees the pardon as a way to right an old wrong.
"The Jack Johnson case is an ignominious stain on our nation's history," he said on the Senate floor in the spring.
"Rectifying this injustice is long overdue. [The resolution recognizes] the unjustness of what transpired, and sheds light on the achievements of an athlete who was forced into the shadows of bigotry and prejudice."
Barack Hussein Obama's Father:
Barack Hussein Obama's Mother:
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20 October 2009
at 6:08 a.m.
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artichokeheart (Anonymous) says…
You have blogged about this before. Is there some dicussion about Obama issuing a pardon?
20 October 2009
at 10:44 a.m.
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Marion (Marion Lynn) says…
“artichokeheart (Anonymous) says…
You have blogged about this before. Is there some dicussion about Obama issuing a pardon?”
Marion writes:
Well, there is a joint resolution form congress sitting on his desk and he is doing nothing about it.
You tell me.
20 October 2009
at 11:19 a.m.
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TomShewmon (Tom Shewmon) says…
Just more of that “Do as we say, not as we do” mentality that is so prevalent with this administration and congress. That's why they're all going to be gone within about three years.
20 October 2009
at 12:07 p.m.
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Marion (Marion Lynn) says…
I think maybe that BArack Hussein Obama is too busy manipulating the media and trying to get total control of it to right this undred-year-old wrong.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/…
“The Obama campaign's press strategy leading up to his election last November focused on “making” the media cover what the campaign wanted and on exercising absolute “control” over coverage, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told an overseas crowd early this year.
In a video of the event, Dunn is seen describing in detail the media strategy used by then-Sen. Barack Obama's highly disciplined presidential campaign. The video is footage from a Jan. 12 forum hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic.
“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control,” Dunn said, admitting that the strategy “did not always make us popular in the press.”
20 October 2009
at 12:39 p.m.
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snap_pop_no_crackle (Anonymous) says…
Caper & gibber, little geek.
Daddy needs more page views.
BTW, did you hear that the Swiss denied bail to Polanski?
20 October 2009
at 12:49 p.m.
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snap_pop_no_crackle (Anonymous) says…
or
has
that
gone
unnoticed
in
Wyandotte
County
?
20 October 2009
at 12:54 p.m.
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Marion (Marion Lynn) says…
Question not The Chosen One!
20 October 2009
at 2:03 p.m.
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artichokeheart (Anonymous) says…
BTW I think you may be right about that comment you made a few days ago. Followers will always follow and argue no matter what the subject matter.
20 October 2009
at 4:05 p.m.
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Marion (Marion Lynn) says…
“artichokeheart (Anonymous) says…
BTW I think you may be right about that comment you made a few days ago. Followers will always follow and argue no matter what the subject matter.”
Mary users of this forum are far less interested in dealing with the issues than they are in personality-bashing.
20 October 2009
at 5:59 p.m.
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artichokeheart (Anonymous) says…
or something
20 October 2009
at 8:29 p.m.
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Marion (Marion Lynn) says…
CBS News tells us that Barack Hussein Obama found time to get his flu shot:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/…
“CBS News has learned that President Obama received his seasonal flu shot this afternoon. Other members of the First Family had already gotten theirs.
As a healthy adult with no underlying conditions, President Obama does not fall into the priority group to receive the H1N1 flu shot just yet.
But he intends to get it when available to the general population.”
20 October 2009
at 11:05 p.m.
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Marion (Marion Lynn) says…
Of course, while Barack Hussein Obama was receiving his potentially life-saving flu shot, Americans were still needlessly dying in Afghanistan.