Mann Up

2009-04-13
By DeAngelo Starnes

You want another reason for disliking George Bush (as if you need one)?  How about his refusal to pardon Jack Johnson for his alleged violation of the Mann Act?  He did this despite the advocacy of fellow Republicans John McCain and Orrin Hatch back in 2004.  Undaunted, McCain recently has renewed that request but this time placed it on the desk of his former presidential rival, Barack Obama.  What an ironic symmetry.  He wants the first Black President to expunge the record of the first Black heavyweight champion.

The effort to obtain a pardon for Jack Johnson is not solely on McCain.  He’s part of a committee formed by Ken Burns to right this wrong.  Burns, if you recall, produced a very detailed and compelling documentary about Jack Johnson called Unforgivable Blackness. The production of the documentary renewed focus on the injustice of Johnson’s conviction.

Why is McCain bringing this up now?  Other than the usual, “It’s past time to right a wrong that is 96-years-old,” your guess is as good as mine.  Maybe he’s trying to win some racial points for the Republican Party.  Maybe he’s trying to put his former rival on the spot.  Maybe it’s because he’s a former boxer who is a fan of Jack Johnson.  Maybe the committee had a post-election meeting and told him he has the spotlight to get it done.  Or maybe he really believes Johnson received a raw deal and never let go of being rebuffed on the issue by Bush.

The Mann Act was passed in 1910 because there was a concern that women were being transported from state to state against their will to expand the prostitution trade.   The Act created a felony to transport or aid in the transportation of a woman in interstate or foreign commerce “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel such woman or girl” to immoral acts.  The open-ended “immoral purposes” language left it wide open for some eyes of the beholder interpretation.  If, as it was in those days, the interpretation was left to a white supremacy practitioner a defiant Jack Johnson was vulnerable.

The Mann Act’s original title is the White Slave Traffic Act.  Interesting terminology as it seems to define a protected class.  African American women had been prostituted and used as unwilling concubines for centuries up until that point without federal statute protection.  However, given the times, when white supremacy - coming at the tail end of the Reconstruction - was at its most brazen, apparently the sanctity of the white woman was paramount. 

Despite popular lore, the Mann Act was not an anti-miscegenation law.  Its focus was to prevent interstate sex-in-trade and child prostitution.  White historical figures such as Charlie Chaplin and Frank Lloyd Wright have been prosecuted for violating it.  Even former New York governor Eliot Spitzer (in a cheap shot by Wall Street) found himself on the wrong end of it. 

Today, the Act’s focus is in protecting underage children from sexual predators.  Further, the law now applies equally to males.  What makes the Act so notorious is that Jack Johnson was the first notable person to be prosecuted under it. 

In the essay “Lazarus, Come Forth,” Eldridge Cleaver posited that the heavyweight champion was the ultimate symbol of manhood, the epitome of machismo, and the baadest dude on the planet.  If you focus on post-Mike Tyson heavyweight champs, you cannot appreciate the reverence the heavyweight champion used to receive. As a heavyweight, you were bigger than other pugilists.  And when it comes to boxing, size matters.  Further, hand-to-hand combat regulated by rules is the fairest form of fighting.  No guerilla warfare, no superior weaponry, no sunlight at dawn raids, no invasion on sleeping villages.  Just mano-a-mano, the better fighter wins.  Jack Johnson was the baddest man in the world from 1908 – 1914.

Back when black males were being lynched for using the wrong inflection with white men or dreaming of white women in any manner other than “Yes ma’am,” Jack Johnson was whupping white ass and sleeping with white women.  All done in public while making a ton of money.  “The Great White Hope” is a cliché now, but knocking Jack Johnson out of the heavyweight championship was the Holy Grail for the white power structure.  The “renowned” author Jack London, along with many other newspaper pundits, wrote editorials pleading for some white man, any white man, to knock Johnson’s block off.

But Johnson, sporting the gold-toothed-grill and bald look a century before it became popular, internalized the invectives and took it out on the latest seeker of the Holy Grail. He did it in such vicious style, too.  Smiling, talking to the audience and his opponents’ corners, holding his opponents up from a smashing blow that would ordinarily flatten them, and then collecting his money only to rush to a room of convenience to deflower an alleged sanctified white woman.  It was a horror show for self-described masters of the races.

The undefeated and seemingly invincible former heavyweight Jim Jeffries was supposed to restore order to the white world.  Fight was set up on the ultimate white American holiday – the 4th of July.  The late, great social commentator Richard Pryor once said the Fourth was about “white folks kickin’ ass.”  Except the best hope of a Great White Hope got his ass kicked on their holiday.  Well, that was it.  In a nation where miscegenation laws forbade interracial marriages, or couplings for that matter and only as applicable to Black male/white female relationships, something had to be done.  A society premised on the superiority of the white man discovered its concrete foundation was nothing more than quicksand.  The sinking had to stop.  The federal government stepped in to do what no white fighter could accomplish in the ring.

Utilization of anti-miscegenation laws couldn’t achieve the mission.  There was no national anti-miscegenation law, but that’s not for lack of effort.  Georgia Democrat Representative Seaborn Roddenberry tried to amend the Constitution to prohibit interracial marriage in 1913, as a reaction to Johnson.  On the Congressional floor he railed to thunderous applause, "No brutality, no infamy, no degradation in all the years of southern slavery, possessed such villainous character and such atrocious qualities as the provision of the laws of Illinois, Massachusetts, and other states which allow the marriage of the negro, Jack Johnson, to a woman of Caucasian strain.” 

It’s not unusual for the federal government to employ its resources to suppress high profile African Americans who they believe are acting “uppity.”   The government robbed Muhammed Ali of his boxing prime for his refusal to fight in what he thought was an unjust war.  Barry Bonds had to face down federal prosecutors in the same manner he has many pitchers because he won’t confess he used steroids.  And what the federal government can’t achieve, ostracization by white business owners will.  Curt Flood challenged the free agency system but, in spite of having the skills just about any team could use, shortly found himself out of baseball.  The NBA informally kicked out Craig Hodges and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf for expressing “unforgivable blackness.”

It was then that Jack Johnson finally ran into an opponent he couldn’t dominate.  The case was flimsy on its face.  The Government’s primary witness was a woman scorned.  Their relations were consensual and no monetary transaction attached.  But back then, crossing state lines to have sex with a woman who wasn’t your wife was considered “immoral.”  Johnson was convicted and had the book thrown at him: the full one year and a day in jail.  If there was any doubt that the Mann Act was being used as an anti-miscegenation law, check the words of the prosecuting district attorney who reportedly said: "This Negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted ... it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks."

Serving time when innocent or on trumped up charges is injustice.  Even if the conviction is reversed or pardoned, you can’t get back lost freedom or time.  The small consolation is you can have your reputation restored.  I think Jack Johnson’s reputation has been restored.  But the symbol of his being pardoned would complete the circle.  From one “uppity” brother to another, Obama could sign off on this quickly and get on to more serious tasks.  That’s symmetry I think we can all get with.

DeAngelo Starnes is a writer and attorney living in Denver with his wife and son.