This isn't close to being as important as the bailout, and it's coming about a century too late, but mad props to Republicans Peter King and John McCain for their efforts to posthumously pardon boxer Jack Johnson last Friday:
The House resolution, passed by voice, states that Johnson paved the way for black athletes to participate and succeed in integrated professional sports and that he was "wronged by a racially motivated conviction prompted by his success in the boxing ring and his relationships with white women."
It urged the president to grant Johnson, who died in 1946, a posthumous pardon.
McCain has authored a companion resolution for the Senate.
Johnson's crime, in case it isn't clear, was kicking the tar out of white boxers and making public his predilections for sleeping with white women. Both made journalists at the time, including author Jack London, apoplectic. But if lawmakers are concerned with correcting the legacy of racism in reaction to Johnson, they might consider adding language that apologizes for the race riots that followed Johnson's whooping Jim Jeffries in 1910. Enraged whites, suffering an existential crisis as a result of the crumbling foundation of white supremacy in the wake of Jeffries' defeat, injured and killed black folks all across the country in response. The racism Johnson faced was bad, but at least he wasn't killed for being black at the wrong place at the wrong time.
--A. Serwer
