Pardon for Jackson over due

NEW YORK.
It was a century ago, and a black man reigned supreme as the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. White America didn’t particularly like that, and liked Jack Johnson even less.
He had beaten Jim Jeffries in the Fight of the Century, throwing a downer on the Fourth of July celebration in 1910. Many who dared to cheer for him were beaten around the country, so when Johnson returned victorious to Chicago, his friends posted handbills laying out the rules for his homecoming party:
Don’t talk to white strangers.
Don’t drink any gin.
Don’t tote a gun.
But be there.
Jack Johnson was there, but he didn’t always play by the rules. He liked white women and he flaunted it, a crime worse to many Americans at the time than a black man winning the heavyweight title. It cost him nearly a year in prison, and stole from him what could have been the best years of his boxing career. Through it all, Johnson was unrepentant, knowing he was the victim of a frame-up due solely to the colour of his skin.
He died a convicted felon, likely never dreaming there might be a day the wrongs would be made right.
President Barack Obama could take care of it all with a stroke of his pen. The fact that he hasn’t already is as puzzling as it is troubling.
Obama had the perfect chance to give Johnson a posthumous pardon last July 4, 100 years to the date after his win over Jeffries. A resolution calling for the president to do just that had already passed both houses of Congress, and the campaign for the pardon had some serious celebrity and political star power behind it.
But the president passed on the opportunity, and there’s no indication he’s given it much serious thought since. Sure, there are more pressing matters facing the leader of the free world.
But this is such a no-brainer that the only opposition so far comes from some stuffed shirts in the Justice Department who say pardons should be reserved for those still living.
Among the pardon backers is filmmaker Ken Burns, whose 2005 documentary, “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson,” – AFP.