I wonder where this goes (and I agree with it):

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=649540

I agree with the pardon, but it's too little too late.

I suspect that Ken Burns' recent PBS documentary about Johnson's career, "Unforgivable Blackness," had more than a little to do with this effort. The facts surrounding Johnson's persecution have been widely known for many years. "The Great White Hope," first a Broadway play and later a movie starring James Earl Jones as Johnson, dates from the 1970's.

Johnson was undoubtedly the greatest boxer of his era and was arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time. The Mann Act, passed in 1910, was ostensibly an effort to curb the "white slave trade," but was actually a bill drafted explicitly to prosecute Johnson.

Sadly, of course, the pardon comes many years too late to provide Johnson any relief and is a purely symbolic act. I'd be (pleasantly) surprised, however, if GWB signs on to the pardon because Johnson was (and is) a symbol of moral turpitude to at least some of Bush's evangelical base.

Jack Johnson is from my hometown (Galveston), so I'm very familiar with his story. He was a very successful, flamboyant figure who had (white) women and money galore, and he was resented by the establishment for it. He drove the flashiest cars of the period too.

He actually learned a great deal about refining his boxing technique while in prison, but the charge that put him there was BS, and this pardon would be a nice gesture.