Curious .. Footage in J Johnson Doc ..

Because it was a perfect political football. It was meaningless and had no impact but would convince some, and allow others to claim, that Trump isnt a racist because he supposedly righted that “wrong”.

 

Many believe the Man Act itself was introduced to put Johnson in his place after the Jeffries victory. Wiki states Johnson is the first person prosecuted under the law. Even if it was all true and Johnson was involved in prostitution, where's the crime? It's the oldest profession known to man. Meanwhile amunition and gun companies to this day produce weapons that murder countless people every year. But they're white and it's legal under a currupt system so it's all good.

 

You're talking anarchy here. Laws are the only thing separating us from animals, among other things.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

 

People who think the Mann act was enacted to “get” Johnson are morons who have no understanding of the progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Johnson wasnt the first person prosecuted under the Mann act. Not by a long shot. Several people had been charged with and prosecuted under the Mann act prior to Johnson including at least one woman who was madam. Caminetti and Diggs who argued their case all the way to the supreme court were prosecuted under the act for taking their girlfriends across state lines on a vacation. Unlike Johnson they had nothing to do with prostitution which is what the law was originally acted to combat. Why not pardon them instead of Johnson?

 

You're talking our you're arse. The first time Johnson was arrested under the Mann Act it was when he took his future wife over state lines:

In October, Cameron's mother went to the police and charged Johnson with kidnapping her daughter. She told the press, "Jack Johnson has hypnotic powers, and he has exercised them on my little girl. I would rather see my daughter spend the rest of her life in an insane asylum than see her the plaything of a ******." On October 18, Johnson was arrested for violating the Mann Act, but Cameron refused to cooperate and the case fell apart.

The second time Johnson didn't profit from in anyway. The racist authorities were clearly out to get him for publically dating white women.

What Johnson was actually guilty of is doing his jilted ex-prostitute lover a favour:

In March 1909, Johnson visited the Everleigh Club, an exclusive all-white bordello in Chicago's Levee District, with his manager George Little, who sidelined by collecting protection money from houses in the district for two corrupt city aldermen. Johnson, who had desired entry into the club for months, didn't have a chance to do more than just look around. But he convinced five of the girls to go for a ride with him in his car. One of them was named Belle Schreiber, the 23-year-old daughter of a Milwaukee policeman who preferred the "sporting life" to the secretarial work for which she'd come to Chicago three years earlier. The madams at the Everleigh Club fired her (and at least four other girls) after she slept with Johnson, but she was soon Johnson's new favorite, traveling with all expenses paid, plus "a little over to have in my pocketbook." But after Etta Duryea entered the picture in the fall of 1909, Schreiber was soon relegated to second-tier status. She left him twice after violent quarrels, but she had trouble finding other work. Madams fired her, or refused to hire her in the first place, because she'd been Johnson's lover. In October 1910, Johnson helped her open her own place of business — wiring her money for train fare from Pittsburgh to Chicago, then paying the first month's rent and buying all of the furniture for her own brothel. But two years later federal investigators tracked her down to a whorehouse in Washington D.C., and she became the prosecution's chief witness in Johnson's Mann Act trial.

Johnson never profited from any of this therefore the charges should of been thrown out.

 

Im talking out of my ass but you are sitting here saying Johnson was the first person prosecuted under the Mann act and that it was enacted to get him. Which is patently false and easily verifiable. You dont know **** and its been proven over and over again just in the past week by me. The Mann act didnt differentiate between who profited from prostitution and who didnt, and frankly I would argue that if Johnson was getting his knob polished by prostitutes he profited. The Mann act was enacted to combat prostitution. Go follow the history of its development. Johnson frequented prostitutes, ran a bordello out of his nightclub, and financially backed a house of prostitution. He was as guilty as sin under the law and FAR more guilty than the majority of men who were ultimately charged under it for doing nothing more than travelling with their mistresses or girlfriends. I will say again, given what we know about Johnson there was no reason he should have gotten a pardon above numerous other people who were, unlike him, actually wrongly convicted under the Mann act.

 

The Mann Act was passed to prevent White Slave Trafficking Johnson never did that, nor is there a shred of evidence he ever profited financialy from any prostitute he was associated with,in fact its been established he gave them money.The prosecution did not offer any evidence or testimony that Johnson ever pimped women .
Adam Pollacks two volume bio of Johnson came to the conclusion that Johnson was set up in racially motivated sting.He being an attorney ,I would suppose he would know something about the law.


The strict letter of the Law of the Act meant that any man who went across a stateline with a woman and had sexual relations with her was technically guilty of violating the act,whether they were an engaged couple or whatever.Johnson never co- erced or forced any woman to have sex with him. Jim Corbett,JohnL Sullivan,Stanley Ketchel,Sam Langford ,all consorted with with working girls ,none were ever arraigned for it.
Johnson's crime was he was black and never prepared to play Uncle Tom.

 

White slave trafficking was prostitution. The Mann act was passed to combat prostitution by preventing the interstate travel of women for the purpose of "prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." By very definition Johnson crossing state lines with PAID prostitutes was white slave trafficking. Add to that he was financially supporting prostitutes and their endeavors and its case closed. Period. Factor in that he was actively trying to conceal the movements of his prostitutes through proxys and its pretty obvious Johnson knew he was doing wrong and breaking the law. At least one of those proxys testified against him at trial. Pollacks characterization of the Johnson trial or rather MIScharacterization, down to totally taking out of context the judges words in order to paint the trial as a racist venture which was not what the judge was saying at all, is the type of mockery youd expect from a criminal defense attorney more interested in twisting procedural rules to suit his narrative than actually getting to the truth. Anyone who reads those trial transcripts, instead of just relying on Pollacks twisting of them can see Johnson was guilty under the law of the day. A law that wasnt written for him or about him or to get him and one that was applied harshly across the board. Had he actually researched it and other people who were persecuted under it instead of keeping his blinders on and only focusing on Johnson he would have seen that Johnson was actually dealt with rather lightly compared to a plethora of other men AND WOMEN prosecuted under the law.

Complaining that Corbett, Sullivan, Ketchel and Langford didnt get prosecuted under the law without providing any actual specific examples of them breaking it is rather comical. "I heard these four guys broke the law so they should have been prosecuted too, see, Johnson was innocent." Not sure how it works in England but here you have to actually have a crime to prosecute, not hearsay. Johnson had numerous examples of a crime, was caught red handed, and had witnesses close to him testify against him. So I will say again, if Johnson was guilty under the letter of the law why single him out for a pardon? If your thesis is that he was singled out because he was black and famous then that also applies to his pardon. Because he was ultimately guilty and frankly there is no getting around that given the transcripts. Whereas NUMEROUS people prosecuted under the law actually had zero contact or influence on prostitution. And thats the danger of trying to frame Johnson's trials and tribulations within the context of 21st century america. The progressive movement, which had little to do with race regardless of what revisionists have attempted to paint (no the Mann act was not an anti-miscegenation law) influenced all walks of American life in the early 20th century. You might as well go around pardoning everyone convicted under the Volstead Act as well because that was also an offshoot of the progressive movement. But we dont have a famous political football to lionize for that cause do we?

 

I'll take Pollack's research and account thanks.

 

There's very little real difference between a boxing promoter bringing a fighter over state lines to get his body wrecked in the fight and a pimp bringing a prostitute across state lines to get her body wrecked by a john.

A promoter and pimp are both in the flesh trade. Pimps have a stable of women. Promoters have a stable of fighters. That's why boxers and prostitutes have always been closely linked and seem to gravitate toward each other.

How close the two professions were became crystal clear when Bonavena and Mercado were managed by husband and wife pimps (Joe and Sally Conforte) who ran the Mustang Ranch in Nevada. One of the duo's fighters, a middleweight whose name escapes me at the moment, actually boxed for them and had sex with the wives of guys who brought their spouses to the Ranch to watch their wives have sex with other men.

Hell, Don King's fighters often lived at the Mustang Ranch before fights. He offered it up as a perk. Larry Holmes turned down the offer before the first Shavers fight. Holmes thought King was trying to sabotage him with all that prefight decadence.

The "Red Light District" of sports.

 

I generally don't like to weigh in too much on these debates. There is evidence to support arguments on both sides. There are a lot of shades of grey to the Johnson story. I try to include it all in my Johnson books, utilizing the actual trial transcripts and the appellate court record. The fact is that the Court of Appeals reversed his conviction on the prostitution counts, finding the evidence to be insufficient as a matter of law, but upheld his conviction on the immoral sexual purposes counts. The Court found the evidence sufficient to prove that he induced Schreiber, who was a prostitute, to cross state lines, and his intent and purpose in giving her the money at the time was that she cross state lines so he could have sex with her. Johnson vehemently denied it - said he did it to help her out because she said she needed help, and he wasn't even dating or seeing her at the time. However the evidence also was that he previously had paid her way to travel across the country and he paid her way throughout, that he took her out of a brothel, made her his de facto girlfriend, and everywhere he took her, he slept with her, and so the Court held that the evidence was sufficient to show that when he gave her the money at the time in question, he was intending that she come to Chicago so he could have sex with her again. Which he did. Whether one decides to have a problem with that, I suppose is personal choice. There is a lot more to it as well. Whether he was given a fair trial is another issue. The Court of Appeals admitted that it was not a fair trial, but nevertheless did not give him a new trial, finding that the result would have been the same regardless - meaning he was not prejudiced by an unfair trial. And yes, the prosecutor admitted that the motivation behind the prosecution was because they had a problem with Johnson having sex with white women. Meaning, if he had done the same with black women, they would not have cared at all and he never would have been prosecuted. It's all in the book: In the Ring With Jack Johnson Part II. Or Black Man vs. The World.

 

Great book it is too!
Looking forward to the first vol of your Dempsey one!

 

Again, you mischaracterize both the judges and prosecutors words. Stressing Johnsons denials is comical given how evasive and combative he was on the stand. You cant come away from reading those transcripts thinking Johnson had nothing to hide nor that the prosecutors didnt have a mountain of evidence that couldnt be submitted but drove their questioning. Does an innocent man try to bribe justice department officials with $20,000??? Johnson admitted to doing that and it resulted in the firing of at least one justice department official. The bottom line, and indisputable whether you are a Johnson apologist or like me think he was guilty, is that he committed the crimes he was accused of under the letter of the law of the day. That wasnt written to “get” Johnson, Johnson wasnt the first man arrested under or prosecuted under that law and it wasnt applied to only black men. Despite the fact that it was called a “white slave” law it was not an anti miscegenation law. White slavery was a term applied to prostitution regardless of who was procuring their services. You can look at the past through the lense of todays morals and virtues and say the law itself was wrong or oppressive (and it absolutely was misused) the same as you can prohibition, anti gay laws, etc but why single Johnson out for a pardon when so many others, black and white, men and women, etc were PERSECUTED, not prosecuted, under that law without having violated its spirit unlike Johnson? Thats the real question at heart. The statements made by Harry arent even grounded in reality or fact, hardly worth addressing beyond aping the moronic max kellerman tropes that the law was written to get Johnson. Horse****.

 

On the afternoon of October 18, 1912, just over one month after his wife’s suicide, Jack Johnson was arrested on a charge of abduction. He was accused of abducting Lucille Cameron, an alleged 19-year-old white woman who was the daughter of Mrs. Cameron-Falconet of Minneapolis, a divorced woman.

Mrs. Cameron-Falconet had her own daughter arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, and Johnson arrested on an abduction charge. She also swore out a warrant charging that her daughter Lucille was insane, for she had to be insane to be with Johnson. Judge Owens of the County Court issued a commitment order for Lucille’s detention at the Detention Hospital pending an investigation as to her mental condition.


It was obvious that Mrs. Cameron-Falconet had her daughter and Johnson arrested in order to facilitate the breaking up of the relationship. It had nothing to do with abduction, for it was clear that Lucille Cameron was a willing participant in the relationship. But her mother was hell-bent on trying to break them up, and was willing to use whatever means she could to make it happen. Law enforcement and the courts were willing to help her, even though it involved an abuse and misuse of power and the law. It entirely was the result of the general objection to interracial relationships.


Two agents from the U.S. Department of Justice were present at the arraignment. Apparently, a few hours after Johnson’s arrest, James Wilkerson, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, ordered a thorough federal investigation, with the intention of pursuing prosecutions under the White-Slave Traffic Act, otherwise known as the Mann Act, which prohibited aiding or assisting with the transportation of women from one state to another for the purposes of prostitution, debauchery, or immoral practices. “The government is determined to go the limit in investigating Johnson’s alleged relations with the Cameron girl and others. Information has come to the department of justice that the negro prize fighter has associated frequently with young white girls.”

On November 7, 1912, Jack Johnson was arrested on four indictments returned by the federal grand jury for violations of the Mann Act. His bond was fixed at a whopping $30,000, and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis refused to reduce it. Born in 1866, Judge Landis was named for a mountain peak where his father had been wounded in the Civil War.


The Mann Act, a federal law officially known as the “White-slave traffic Act,” was drafted by Republican U.S. Congressman James Mann of Illinois. The Act made it unlawful to aid or assist the transportation of women (specifically including the aiding or assisting in the procurement of any tickets or form of transportation) across state lines for the purposes of prostitution, debauchery, or other immorality. Although intended to eliminate forced prostitution, the language of the act was so vague and overbroad that prosecutors could persecute even sexual encounters between unmarried consenting adults that didn’t involve prostitution. It was a morality crime. Hence, anyone providing finances to a woman not his wife who traveled across state lines, if the intent was to have sexual relations, technically could be found guilty of a federal criminal felony. The law was approved by the U.S. Congress on June 25, 1910, signed by U.S. President William Taft, and went into effect on July 1, 1910.

Contrary to popular belief, Jack Johnson was not the first person prosecuted under this Act. In fact, in the Northern District of Illinois alone, there were forty Mann Act prosecutions even before the Johnson case.

Initially, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that over two years ago, on August 10, 1910, one month after the Jeffries fight, and one month after the law went into effect, Jack Johnson had brought a then 24-year-old Belle Schreiber of Pittsburg, a white woman, to Chicago for an unlawful purpose. Johnson had set her up in business as a part owner of a resort (another way of saying brothel) on the south side.

On November 19, 1912, the groundless abduction charge against Jack Johnson was dismissed quietly. Municipal Judge Jacob Hopkins dismissed it; owing to the fact that the prosecution could not prove Johnson had abducted Cameron. The sensational story started by the daily newspapers and Cameron’s mother had no basis in fact whatsoever. Of course, everyone had known this all along; yet they had put Johnson through the ringer anyhow, because of the fact that he was dating a white woman. Using the prevarication was an abuse of the justice system, it was unethical for the prosecution to pursue a case that had no factual or legal basis, and unethical for the judiciary to support the charge and the high bail amounts

On December 3, 1912, Jack Johnson married Lucille Cameron at the family home at 3344 South Wabash avenue.

On December 11, U.S. Congressional Representative Seaborn Roddenberry, a Georgia Democrat, from the House floor demanded a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting the marriage of whites and blacks. He said, “We have heard much of slavery in the South, but in all the years of Southern slavery there never was such brutality, such infamy as the marriage license authorizing that black African brute, Jack Johnson, to wed a white woman and to bind her in the wedlock of black slavery.” Roddenberry declared that in the South, blacks “respected the superiority of their former masters and would commit self-destruction before entertaining a thought of matrimony with a Caucasian girl.” He prophesied that legal sanction of mixed marriages could bring the country to a bloody conflict.

At that time, in the 48-state Union, 29 states legally prohibited whites and blacks from marrying one another. They were: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana (as of 1909), Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota (as of 1909), Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota (as of 1909), Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. Illinois was one of the 19 states that allowed interracial marriage, but that did not mean it was supported. It simply was legal. The following year, in 1913, Wyoming would become the 30th state to pass an anti-interracial marriage law, bringing the total to 62.5% of the states forbidding interracial marriage between blacks and whites.

In 1883, in Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883), the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that individual states were within their rights to prohibit marriage, cohabitation, and sexual relations based on race. The Court argued it was the state’s duty to protect married couples against disturbances such as interracial relationships, because relationships between whites and blacks “must naturally cause discord, shame, disruption of family circles, and estrangement,” and therefore were incompatible with the family life the state needed to protect. This interpretation of the constitution was the law for the next 81-plus years, until the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1964 in McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964)(holding that laws prohibiting interracial cohabitation of unmarried persons were unconstitutional) and in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)(holding that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional).

 

On May 13, 1913 at 10:45 p.m., the case was given to the jury to decide. After about an hour of deliberations, that same evening the jury returned guilty verdicts on all seven counts of violating the federal White Slave Traffic Act, otherwise known as the Mann Act.


Afterwards, a gloating Assistant U.S. District Attorney Harry Parkin said,


This verdict will go around the world. It is a forerunner of laws to be passed throughout the entire country forbidding miscegenation. Many persons believe the negro has been persecuted. Perhaps as an individual he was, but his misfortune will be a foremost example of the evil in permitting intermarriage between whites and blacks. He must bear the consequences.


On Wednesday June 4, 1913 in Chicago, after his motion for a new trial was denied, Jack Johnson was sentenced. When imposing sentence, Judge George Carpenter said,


It has been hard to determine what punishment should be meted out in this case. We have had many cases where violations of the Mann act have been punished with a fine only. We have had other cases where defendants have been sentenced to one or two years in the penitentiary. The circumstances in this case have been aggravating. The life of the defendant, by his own admissions, has not been at all a moral one. The defendant is one of the best known men of his race, and his example has been far reaching. The court is bound to take these facts into consideration in determining the sentence to be imposed. In this case the defendant shall be confined one year and one day in the Leavenworth penitentiary and that he shall pay a fine of $1,000.


Well known for being a rabid white supremacist and segregationist, U.S. Attorney General James C. McReynolds, whom U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had appointed earlier that year, had sent a telegram to James Wilkerson before the sentencing, informing him that the Leavenworth penitentiary was designated as the place of confinement specifically for Johnson. “This is special designation in this case only and does not affect generally existing designation Joliet institution for United States prisoners convicted [in] your district. Please have court order entered accordingly. McReynolds.” Judge Carpenter had honored the request and ordered Johnson confined to the maximum security Leavenworth prison instead of the usual Joliet penitentiary. The following year, in 1914, McReynolds would be appointed to and confirmed as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He would serve until 1941, and his open racial bigotry would permeate his opinions and conduct as a justice.