Presidential Pardon For Jack Johnson, First Black Heavyweight Champion Is Sought.
WASHINGTON – A Presidential Pardon For, Jack Johnson, the First Black Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world has been sought by Sen. John McCain. Jack Johnson became the nation's first Black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years before Barack Obama became its first Black president.

McCain feels Johnson was wronged by a 1913 conviction of violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman — a conviction widely seen as racially motivated.

"I've been a very big fight fan, I was a mediocre boxer myself," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a telephone interview. "I had admired Jack Johnson's prowess in the ring. And the more I found out about him, the more I thought a grave injustice was done."

On Wednesday Apri 1st, McCain will join Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., filmmaker Ken Burns and Johnson's great niece, Linda Haywood, at a Capitol Hill news conference to unveil a resolution urging a presidential pardon for Johnson. Similar legislation offered in 2004 and last year failed to pass both chambers of Congress.

King, a recreational boxer, said a pardon would "remove a cloud that's been over the American sporting scene ever since (Johnson) was convicted on these trumped-up charges." (It appears that Cadet Webster Smith was not the first Black American to be convicted on trumped-up charges involving a white woman.)

"I think the moment is now," King said.

Presidential pardons for the dead are rare.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton pardoned Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the Army's first Black commissioned officer, who was drummed out of the military in 1882 after white officers accused him of embezzling $3,800 in commissary funds. Last year, President George W. Bush pardoned Charles Winters, who was convicted of violating the Neutrality Act when he conspired in 1948 to export aircraft to a foreign country in aid of Israel.

The Justice Department and the White House declined to comment on this latest Johnson pardon effort.

However, the idea has a passionate supporter in McCain, who has repeatedly said he was wrong in 1983 when he voted against a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

"It's just one of those things that you don't want to quit until you see justice," McCain said of Johnson's case. "We won't quit until we win. And I believe that enough members, if you show them the merits of this issue, that we'll get the kind of support we need."

Johnson won the world heavyweight title on Dec. 26, 1908, after police in Australia stopped his 14-round match against the severely battered Canadian world champion, Tommy Burns. That led to a search for a "Great White Hope" who could beat Johnson. Two years later, the American world titleholder Johnson had tried for years to fight, Jim Jeffries, came out of retirement but lost in a match called "The Battle of the Century," resulting in deadly riots.

Johnson lost the heavyweight title to Jess Willard in 1915.

In 1913, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which outlawed transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. The law has since been heavily amended, but has not been repealed.

Authorities first targeted Johnson's relationship with a white woman who later became his wife, then found another white woman to testify against him. (CMDR Sean Gill did the same thing against Cadet Webster Smith) Johnson fled the country after his conviction, but agreed years later to return and serve a 10-month jail sentence. (Cadet Webster Smith only served a 6 month jail sentence.) He tried to renew his boxing career after leaving prison, but failed to regain his title. He died in a car crash in 1946 at age 68.

"When we couldn't beat him in the ring, the white power establishment decided to beat him in the courts," Burns told the AP in a telephone interview. Burns' 2005 documentary, "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," examined Johnson's case and the sentencing judge's admitted desire to "send a message" to Black men about relationships with white women. (The Runaway Jury in the Webster Smith case wanted to send a message to all the Black cadets and the Black Coast Guard officers in the fleet.)

Both McCain and King said a pardon, particularly one from Obama, would carry important symbolism.

"It would be indicative of the distance we've come, and also indicative of the distance we still have to go," McCain said.

Burns, however, sees a pardon more as "just a question of justice, which is not only blind, but color blind," adding, "And I think it absolutely does not have anything to do with the symbolism of an African-American president pardoning an African-American unjustly accused."

Burns helped form the Committee to Pardon Jack Johnson, which filed a petition with the Justice Department in 2004 that was never acted on. Burns said he spoke about the petition a couple of times with Bush, who as governor of Johnson's home state of Texas proclaimed Johnson's birthday as "Jack Johnson Day" for five straight years. (Cadet Webster Smith is also from Texas. If Jack Johnson had lived long enough, he and Webster Smith would both be unjustly registered in the State of Texas as sex offenders because they got involved with white women in America. Racism is a peculiarly American sickness; and, it is a sickness unto death.)

Bush gave Burns a phone number which led to adviser Karl Rove, Burns said, but Rove told him a pardon "ain't gonna fly."

Rove doesn't recall any such conversation with Burns, his spokeswoman Sheena Tahilramani said, and "if he had been approached, he wouldn't have offered an opinion." Such is the state of white compassion among the compassionate conservatives in America.

Is it because Barry Bonds is Black?
Everyone has a theory about why U.S. federal prosecutors never let Barry Bonds out of their sights for four years as the Giants slugger hit 104 home runs and broke the records of Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.

The day after baseball's newly crowned home run king was indicted for allegedly lying about using steroids, historians and legal experts say Bonds was targeted because he shrugged off the accusations, while pursuing the game's most cherished title.

"There is not a minute that goes by that some federal agent or federal prosecutor or law enforcement figure somewhere is not being lied to by someone," said Jean Rosenbluth, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who teaches law at the University of Southern California.

"What the government tends to do is not prosecute perjury unless it's a high-profile case," Rosenbluth said. "You can send the message out worldwide saying, 'Do not lie to us.' Barry Bonds is a perfect example."

Whether his petulant behaviour and singular success were enough to explain the government's drawn-out investigation remained a source of disagreement. Some scholars agreed with Bonds, insisting that given how widespread doping is in sports and the U.S.'s uneasy relationship with Black superstars, race cannot be ignored as a factor.

"This is the latest in a long litany of America's near-obsession with the troublesome Black athlete. Whether it's Terrell Owens, Michael Vick or now Barry Bonds, Black athletes who don't toe the line are going to be held accountable," said Steven Millner, chairman of the African American Studies Department at San Jose State University.

Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said that regardless of whether racial bias made Bonds subject to disparate treatment, it remains an important issue for professional sports and society because the perception is there.

"If you are a kid trying to decide what sport to play and look at Major League Baseball, and then see the person who is arguably the greatest player of his generation not being a favourite of the media even before the steroids story became as pronounced, you are going to be less likely to choose baseball," Lapchick said.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted this summer, while Bonds was chasing Aaron's historic record revealed a wide divide in the way Black and white fans viewed his achievements and the accusations of steroid use.

More than three-quarters of the poll's non-white respondents thought Bonds was being treated unfairly with the doping allegations, compared to just 38 per cent of non-Hispanic white fans. About two-thirds of minority fans said Bonds belonged in the Baseball Hall of Fame, while 49 per cent of non-Hispanic whites did.

Critics of the race argument point to homemaking diva Martha Stewart and U.S. presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - both of whom served time for perjury - as evidence that if Bonds has been singled out unfairly it's because of the size of his paycheque, not the colour of his skin.

They also note the multiracial makeup of the other figures swept up in the steroids scandal linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

Like Bonds, New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, who is white, was given immunity from criminal prosecution when he testified before the BALCO grand jury. Unlike Bonds, Giambi acknowledged taking steroids and weathered the fallout.

In Millner's view, a face-by-face analysis of athletes tarnished by steroids allegations misses the larger point about selective enforcement, as does the suggestion that Bonds would fare better if he had a more pleasant public persona.

"Black people may not embrace Barry Bonds, but they look with a jaundiced eye at why Barry and not Karl Rove, why Barry and not the remaining Enron engineers," Millner said. "He epitomizes the insular Black athlete, and that rubs some wrong."

The ongoing investigation of doping in baseball might dispel some of the suspicion that prosecutors reserved a special bulls-eye for Bonds if other current players, especially white pitchers, are implicated and punished, Lapchick said.

"How long it took them is a sad statement for baseball. They portrayed their whole don't-ask, don't-tell policy about steroids, when a large part of (Bonds') generation of players probably did the same thing," Lapchick said. "He wasn't doing it himself."

Barry Bonds Black Home Run King Indicted. Barry Bonds has more to worry about now than an asterisk beside his name in the record books. Just three months ago, the Black Super Star from San Francisco Giants angrily defended himself against steroid allegations on the night he surpassed Hank Aaron to become baseball's home run king.
"This record is not tainted at all," Bonds declared. "At all. Period."
Barry Bonds has never been identified by Major League Baseball as testing positive for steroids. His personal trainer Greg Anderson has spent most of the 2007 in jail for refusing to testify against his longtime friend. His attorney, Mark Geragos, said the trainer didn't cooperate with the grand jury at all.
This indictment came out of left field," Geragos said. "Frankly, I'm aghast. It looks like the government misled me and Greg as well, saying this case couldn't go forward without him."
Bonds is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Dec. 7.
Government lawyers didn't notify Bonds of the impending indictment, a courtesy typically extended to white collar defendants so they can prepare for the public announcement.
Michael Vick, a Black Football quarterback, was indicted for his alleged role in a dog fighting enterprise. Marion Jones, a Black Olympic Track star, was indicted for doping. Barry Bonds, a Black Baseball homerun king, was indicted for allegedly using steriods. A very distinct pattern is emerging. They are all Black super-star athletes. Two white Tour de France winners, including Lance Armstrong, have been accused of using performance enhancing drugs. Not one of them has been indicted. Only the Black athletes. What's up with that??
I am appalled at the federal indictment of Barry Bonds on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. Of course, lying to federal authorities is wrong and poisonous to the criminal justice system, if Barry lied.
I admire tenacious no-holds-barred prosecutors -- when they go after violent thugs, mobsters and would-be terrorists. The U.S. Department of Justice, however, has gone overboard in wielding its awesome might for years -- acting on a tip received in August 2002 -- to prolong a case it could have wrapped up long ago. The feds have crossed the line from closing a righteous case to prosecutorial overkill.
The charges against Bonds concern grand-jury testimony four years ago, on Dec. 4, 2003. Under grant of immunity (unless he lied), Bonds asserted that he never knowingly used banned steroids. He said he thought his personal trainer was treating him with flaxseed oil and arthritis balm.
And I wonder why the feds have put so much energy into this case, when there are so many truly dangerous criminals out there.
Why did the U.S. attorney take another four years to indict? If their case is so strong, what were they waiting for?
If they consider perjury to be a threat to the system, why wait years to go after a man whom so many observers believe lied to a grand jury? Doesn't that undermine the system's credibility, too?
Joe Russoniello was nominated to become Northern California's U.S. attorney on Thursday. Attorney General Michael Mukasey assumed his post this month. I agree with Debra J Saunders. They've both inherited this headache.
"I'm surprised," said one of his lawyers, John Burris, who was notified of the indictment by The Associated Press. "But there's been an effort to get Barry for a long time. I'm curious what evidence they have now they didn't have before."
Defense attorney Mike Rains said he spoke briefly with Bonds but did not describe his reaction. At an evening news conference, he read a statement accusing federal prosecutors of "unethical misconduct" and declined to take questions.
"Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn't know if waterboarding is torture and can't tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other," Rains said.
The indictment charges Bonds with lying when he said he didn't knowingly take steroids given to him by Anderson. Bonds is also charged with lying that Anderson never injected him with steroids.
"Greg wouldn't do that," Bonds testified in December 2003 when asked if Anderson ever gave him any drugs that needed to be injected. "He knows I'm against that stuff."
Prosecutors promised Bonds they wouldn't charge him with any drug-related counts if he testified truthfully. But according to the indictment, Bonds repeatedly denied taking any steroids or performance-enhancing drugs despite evidence to the contrary.
On Thursday,15 November 2007, his very freedom was put in jeopardy when a federal grand jury indicted him on five felony counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, charges that could result in a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison if he's convicted.
The indictment culminated a four-year investigation into steroid use by elite athletes.
Bonds and his lawyers long have accused the government of targeting a high-profile, unpopular player merely for political gain while pondering if the investigation was racially motivated.
Charges of leaks to the media and unethical legal behavior flew from both camps as the investigation dragged on and questions mounted about the government's intentions.
The 10-page indictment mainly consists of excerpts from Bonds' December 2003 testimony before a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO. It cites 19 occasions in which Bonds allegedly lied under oath.
Bonds, who surpassed Aaron's career home run mark of 755 on Aug. 7, finished the season with 762. A seven-time NL MVP, he also holds the season record with 73 home runs in 2001.
He is a free agent after being told late in the season that the San Francisco Giants didn't want him back next year.

Asked directly if Anderson supplied him with steroids, Bonds answered: "Not that I know of." Bonds even denied taking steroids when he was shown documents revealing a positive steroids test for a player named Barry B.
"I've never seen these documents," Bonds said. "I've never seen these papers."
The indictment does not explain where prosecutors obtained those results, but may have been seized when federal agents raided BALCO in September 2003.
At the end of the 2003 season, Bonds said, Anderson rubbed some cream on his arm that the trainer said would help him recover. Anderson also gave him something he called "flax seed oil," Bonds said.
Bonds then testified that prior to the 2003 season, he never took anything supplied by Anderson — which the indictment alleges was a lie because the doping calendars seized from Anderson's house were dated 2001.
Bonds has long been shadowed by allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs. The son of former big league star Bobby Bonds, Barry broke into the majors with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986 as a lithe, base-stealing outfielder.
By the late 1990s, he'd bulked up to more than 240 pounds — his head, in particular, becoming noticeably bigger. His physical growth was accompanied by a remarkable power surge.
Bonds is by far the highest-profile figure caught up in the steroids probe, which also ensnared track star Marion Jones. She pleaded guilty in October to lying to federal investigators about using steroids and faces up to six months in prison.
Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who is investigating drug use in baseball, declined to comment, but the Giants, the players' union, even the White House called it a sad day for baseball.
"These are serious charges," the Giants said. "Now that the judicial process has begun, we look forward to this matter being resolved in a court of law."
In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The president is very disappointed to hear this. As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball."
Commissioner Bud Selig withheld judgment, saying, "I take this indictment very seriously and will follow its progress closely."

Coach Eddie Robinson, Grambling football coach, made civil rights part of his game plan.
To his very last day, April 3rd, 2007, Eddie Robinson was always battling something.
There was the institutional racism that surrounded him, the piddling football budget he and his coaching staff subsisted on at predominantly black Grambling State and, ultimately, the Alzheimer's disease that took his life at age 88.
And so ended the life of a beloved football coach who put a small school in remote northern Louisiana on the map and turned it into a virtual farm team for the NFL during a career that spanned 57 years.

He was born Edward Gay Robinson, the son of a sharecropper and a domestic maid, on February 13, 1919 in Jackson, Louisiana. He graduated with a BS in English from Leland College in Baker, La. He earned an MS degree in Physical Education from the U. of Iowa.
After college he could not find a job as a coach. He began working in a feed mill in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by day, and at night he worked on an ice wagon.
He married Doris Mott in 1941. They were married for 65 years. He aunt worked at Grambling. At that time it was known as Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute. It consisted of 5 buildings in the middle of a peach orchard and pig farms. There was an opening at the school for a football coach. Robinson took the job. He salary was $63.75 per month. That was a pay raise from the feed mill and the ice wagon.
In 1945 the father of his star players was a large cotton sharecropper. He pulled all of his sons out of school to pick cotton. Robinson took his entire team over to the farm and picked all of the cotton for the sharecropper. With his star players bach, he went on to win the championship.
Robinson was a champion of "equal rights" who tried to effect change by working within the established boundaries and avoiding confrontation. He rallied against prejudice but refused to allow racism to keep him from his destiny.
"You know, I've lived a long time, and I've seen a lot," he once said. "I have ridden on the back of the bus, and I have drunk from segregated water fountains; but, I am not trying to make any body pay. All I wanted was an opportunity to prove that I can do what other people can do. I got that at Grambling."
Robinson built a football powerhouse with a worldwide reputation, all the while struggling to get past years of segregation and discrimination against blacks.
His success at Grambling no doubt made him the first easily recognizable black coach in any sport.
"Today we mourn the loss of a great Louisianan and a true American hero," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. "Coach Eddie Robinson became the most successful college coach of all time and one of the greatest civil rights pioneers in our history. ... Coach Robinson elevated a small town program to national prominence and tore down barriers to achieve an equal playing field for athletes of all races."
Robinson won 408 games, the most ever for any coach at the time of his retirement in 1997. He sent hundreds of players to the NFL and other leagues, and the majority of them were clutching college degrees when they left.
Playing at Grambling became a goal of young black men as Robinson's fame grew.
"Everybody wanted to play at Grambling," Jackson State coach Rick Comegy said. "He'd done such a fantastic job. He was on national TV, you know, and that was the first time I'd ever seen a black college football team on TV growing up."
Robinson's career spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil rights movement. Though his teams struggled during his final years, his overall record of excellence is what will be remembered: 408-165-15.
Until John Gagliardi of St. John's, Minn., topped the victory mark four years ago, Robinson was the winningest coach in all of college football.
Jerry Izenberg, the sports columnist emeritus at the Star-Ledger of Newark and a close friend of Robinson since 1963, said the coach was an inspiration in the deep South.
"People look at black pride in America and sports' impact on it," Izenberg said. "In the major cities it took off the first time Jackie Robinson stole home. In the deep South, it started with Eddie Robinson, who took a small college in northern Louisiana with little or no funds and sent the first black to the pros and made everyone look at him and Grambling."
Running back Paul "Tank" Younger signed with the Los Angeles Rams and became the first player from an all-black college to enter the NFL. Suddenly, pro scouts learned how to find the little school 65 miles east of Shreveport near the Arkansas border.
Robinson sent over 200 players to the NFL, including seven first-round draft choices and Williams, who succeeded Robinson as Grambling's coach in 1998. Others went to the Canadian Football League and the now-defunct USFL.
Robinson's pro stars included Willie Davis, James Harris, Ernie Ladd, Buck Buchanan, Sammy White, Cliff McNeil, Willie Brown, Roosevelt Taylor, Charlie Joiner and Willie Williams.
The same year Robinson took his team on the road, 1968, Howard Cosell and Izenberg produced the documentary, "Grambling College: 100 Yards to Glory;" Robinson became vice president of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics; and all three major television networks carried special programming on Grambling football.
A year later, Grambling played before 277,209 paying customers in 11 games, despite a home field that seated just 13,000.
The National Football Foundation honored Robinson in 1992 with its Outstanding Contribution to Amateur Football Award. When he retired, the organization inducted him into the College Football Hall of Fame. Also in 1997, foundation board member and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner endowed one of the foundation's national scholar-athlete awards in Robinson's name with a $300,000 gift.

Robinson was Grambling's coach for 56 years, from 1942 to 1997. He became the first college coach to rack up 400 wins, completing his career with 408 wins, 165 losses and 15 ties. His teams had just eight losing seasons and won 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and nine national black college championships.
Robinson sent more than 200 players to the N-F-L.
His survivors include Doris, his only wife of 65 years, and his son Eddie Robinson, Jr.; a daughter, Lillian Berry, and 5 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren.
His funeral is scheduled for Wednesday, 11 April 2007 at the Grambling Assembly Center next to Robinson Stadium.
Instead of flowers, donations may be sent to The Friends of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum, P.O. Box 550, Grambling, LA. 71245. Details at www.robinsonmuseum.com

LIFE IS A BASEBALL GAME.
"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball" the French Historian Jacques Barzun made this famous diagnosis of American life in 1954.

On 15 April 1947 , Jackie Robinson became the first African American player in Major League Baseball. Today San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds is moving closer to baseball's all-time home run record, soon to surpass Hammering Hank Aaron and Herman "The Babe" Ruth..

A Black Gospel Singer, Sister Wynonna Carr, put it this way:

You know life is a baseball game, and you must play it fair.
It's being played every day, and every one can play.
Jesus is standing at home plate; He's waiting for you there.
Life is a baseball game, and you must play it fair.
First Base is temptation, and Second Base is sin.
Third Base is tribulation, if you pass you can make it in.
Old Man Solomon is the empire. Satan is pitching the game.
He'll do his best to psych you out, keep playing anyway.
Daniel is up to bat first. He prayed three times a day.
Satan pitched him a fast ball, bur he hit it anyway.
Job, is up to bat next. Satan struck him in every way.
But, Job hit a homerun, and he came on in that day.
Prayer is our strong bat. When he hears that Satan will fall.
When you start to swinging, you've got to give it your all and all.
Faith is gonna be your catcher, and on him you can depend.
Lord Jesus is standing at Home plate, and waiting for you to come in.
Moses is on the sidelines, waiting to be called.
When he parted the Red Sea, he gave Jesus his all in all.
John came in in the ninth inning. The game was almost done.
Then God gave John a visio, and we knew we'd already won.
Life is a baseball game, being played every day.
each and every one can play.
Jesus is standing at home plate, and He's waiting for you there.
You know life is a baseball game, But you've got to play it fair.