Trump grants posthumous pardon to former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson

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WASHINGTON — President Trump granted a rare and historic posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson 72 years after his death Thursday, clearing the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion of racially motivated charges resulting from his relationships with white women in 1912.

Advocates for Johnson — including boxers, historians, academics and senators — had been pushing for a pardon for 14 years through the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.

But it appears to have taken a phone call from actor Sylvester Stallone to Trump to make it happen. "He was treated so unfairly, his prime was taken away, but somehow he managed to keep his pride," Stallone said in a surprise Oval Office ceremony Thursday.

Stallone, best known for his portrayal of the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, was among real-life heavyweights, including former champion Lennox Lewis and current champion Deontay Wilder.

Johnson's is just the third posthumous pardon granted in the history of the presidency.

"I am taking this very righteous step, I believe, to correct a wrong that happened in hour history," Trump said. "It’s about time.”

More: A Trump pardon for boxer Jack Johnson is just the third posthumous pardon in history

With Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali, Johnson is widely considered to be in the pantheon of the greatest boxers of all time, breaking boxing's color barrier by shadowing champion Tommy Burns until he agreed to face the challenger in Australia in 1908.

But it was his 1910 title defense against former champion Jim Jeffries that sparked racial unrest that resulted in perhaps dozens of deaths around the country — and led to the search for the "Great White Hope" to reclaim the title.

Jack Johnson was once the most despised man in Jim Crow-era America after becoming the first African-American boxing heavyweight champion of the world, the most coveted athletic title of the time. (Feb. 8) AP

Adding to the racial tensions, Johnson openly dated white women — and married three of them. The mother of his second wife, Lucille Cameron, alleged that Johnson had abducted his future wife, leading to federal charges in Chicago.

Those fell through when Cameron refused to press charges, but Johnson was then convicted of sexual debauchery charges against an alleged prostitute, Belle Schreiber.

He was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which passed Congress two years earlier to combat human trafficking but was never intended to criminalize consensual relationships.

But Johnson — with perhaps a wink and nudge from officials from the judge on down — was able to slip out of the country before being sentenced. He served seven years in exile in Canada, Europe and Mexico during World War I before returning to serve his year-long sentence at Leavenworth prison in Kansas.

While banished from the United States, Johnson lost his heavyweight title to Jess Willard in Cuba. With his federal conviction, he was denied licenses to fight in many states, and ended his career as a vaudeville performer and coach before dying in an automobile accident in 1946.