Even those Americans who remember the name of Jack Johnson, the first African American to hold the world heavyweight title, often forget that he spent seven years in Europe as a fugitive and that when he returned to the United States in 1920, he was required to serve a year in Leavenworth.
His crime, hard as it may be to imagine today, was that he crossed state lines with a woman -- a white woman -- and prosecutors weren't about to let him get away with it. Especially after all the trouble he'd already caused and all the rules he'd already broken.
To understand why the U.S. government pursued Johnson for so many years, one must go back to 1908, when Johnson, a 6-foot-1 former dockworker, defeated Tommy Burns and won the world heavyweight title.
His victory shook white Americans hard and prompted a search for a "great white hope" who could win back the title. But repeated attempts were unsuccessful. Two years later, when Johnson defeated the legendary Jim Jeffries, who had come out of retirement and whom most whites considered unbeatable, it sparked deadly race riots across the country.
Johnson was everything that a black man of his era was not supposed to be: outspoken, articulate, intelligent, powerful, wealthy, good-looking and charming. This made him a hero to most of black America, but it also made him a dangerous enemy to much of white America. His mere presence threatened the notion that African Americans belonged to an inferior, subservient race.
Unable to beat him in the ring, his enemies sought other ways to bring Johnson low. In 1912, federal authorities in Chicago went after him in court instead, bringing charges against him for violating the Mann Act, a federal law designed to help fight prostitution by making it a crime to transport a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes." But virtually everyone knew -- and the prosecuting attorney even admitted -- that the real object was to punish Johnson for daring to engage in romantic relationships with white women.
In court, the federal prosecutors argued that Jackson committed a "crime against nature" for engaging in sexual intercourse with a white woman. The fact that he married the woman only a few months after he was arrested made no difference. He was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison.
After the verdict, the district attorney said that "it was [Johnson's] misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks."
