Get over yourself. When you show the depth of research Adam has provided then you can make such statements. You are way out of your league here.
Just to make himself even more ridiculous ,he's commenting,and passing judgement on 2 volumes he hasn't read!
This thread seems to have gathered momentum all of its own. I had thought the subject was dead in the water until I saw it on Yahoo,and I just posted it for US readers who may have missed it. I'm not especially concerned either way.
The pardon means a lot for me. Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and even Joe Louis are looked at as the first Back American Athletes to break down barriers. However, Johnson did it long before any of them. And yet, he's tucked away from the annals of history like garbage. And that's not right. Pardoning him acknowledges that he was mistreated due to his race. It clears his name, and makes him a relevant 20th century hero. Personally, I like when wrongs in history are corrected. There's never a wrong time to do that. And to say "There are many other issues that are more important" is a silly excuse for inaction.
Nixon is one of the most hated men of the last 50 years. Maybe if he was pardoned it would remove him from the garbage dump of history and "clear his name". Oh wait......he WAS pardoned! ...hmmmmmm...
To extrapolate from my post, "Pardon = cleared name" is the wrong ****ysis. Simply because Johnson was wrongfully accused and convicted.
You misunderstand the point. I never said his research isn't excellent. I said he was selective in presenting his facts at times in an unbalanced way and doesn't always show equal lighting on both side of the coin.
You giving reading comprehension lessons to Seamus And accusing Adam of intentional selective bias.atsch
Pardoning Johnson will do nothing for him. I doubt that 5% of the population knows who Jack Johnson is. Out of those 5%, maybe a fraction of them know he was convicted under the Mann Act. I don't have a problem with him being pardoned, but I think you are overdoing the high flying rhetoric.
Apologizing to someone to stepping on their shoe is an insignificant wrong to right. Pardoning a man who won the most coveted championship in sports history in a time of racial oppression is a significant wrong to right. It symbolizes enlightenment, equality, fairness, growth, acceptance, and justice.
"Tucked away?" He has had a major motion picture, a Miles Davis album, a multi-part PBS docu-series and accompanying book done on him. Where have you been?
Perhaps they were targeted, or perhaps they were victims of overzealous policing. It might be the case that a wider review of these convictions is appropriate. In this era there was a fine line between the occupations of actress and prostitute, and all of the major sporting figures associated with these women. I will take a guess, and say that they could have got Barney Oldfield under the Mann act, if the will had been there. Either way, there would certainly be precedent for doing it in Johnsons case.
Jesse Owen, Jackie Robinson are house hold names, largely for symbolizing values that Johnson wore to a much higher degree. Louis doesn't get enough credit either.
A pardon is not an apology. It is a forgiveness. A federal pardon requires an apology and an admission of guilt from the person being pardoned. Obviously Johnson can't do that, but the implication remains that if he is pardoned, he was guilty.