President Donald Trump says he’s considering a posthumous pardon of a heavyweight boxing champion after he received a call from Rocky Balboa himself.
“Sylvester Stallone called me with the story of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. His trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial,” Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. “Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!”
Johnson, who died in 1946, was the first black heavyweight boxing champion in American history, rising to that rank during the Jim Crow era. In 1912, he was arrested twice for accompanying a white woman across state lines under a law that forbade such transport for “immoral purposes” — which, at the time, included interracial relationships. Johnson spent a year in prison after being convicted by an all-white jury.
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Johnson has since appeared in popular culture in the 1967 play and 1970 movie The Great White Hope, which starred James Earl Jones as Johnson, and in the 2005 Ken Burns documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.
So far in his presidency, Trump has pardoned three formerly convicted felons, including former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, former U.S. Navy sailor Kristian Saucier and lawyer and former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Stallone’s representatives declined to comment.
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2018
