O my Lord What a morning, O my Lord, What a feeling, When Jack
Johnson Turned Jim Jeffries’ to the ceiling. Adaptation of the
spiritual “My Lord, What a Morning” by William Waring Cuney,
1910. While I’m skeptical about their motives, I applaud the
efforts of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Representative Peter
King (R-NY) to obtain a presidential pardon for the great
heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. Arthur John “Jack”
Johnson, who died in 1946 at the age of 68, was the first black
Heavyweight Champion of the World. The crime that the pardon
would cover is Johnson’s supposed violation of the Mann Act —
“transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes.”
Johnson eventually served 10 months in federal prison on the
charges, which also destroyed his boxing career. No one now
doubts that Johnson’s Mann Act conviction was thoroughly racist:
the women Johnson was convicted of “transporting” were white.
When Johnson started his boxing career at the turn of the last
century, boxing was as segregated