By Lee A. Daniels

UPDATE: Urging president Obama to take an action “long overdue,” Congress today sent the White House a formal request that Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, receive posthumous pardon.

The long fight to right a nearly century-old wrong against Johnson took a substantial step closer to success Wednesday when the U.S. House of Representatives approved such a resolution by a voice vote.  The Senate had approved a similar resolution in late June.

Johnson, a flamboyant personality who delighted in ignoring the conventions of both black and white societies, was convicted in 1913 of violating the Mann Act. The federal law was ostensibly intended to stop interstate trafficking in prostitution but in fact was heavily used to punish black men involved in romantic relationships with white women. Johnson openly flaunted his companionship with several white women.

Jack Johnson

Equally galling to many whites was Johnson’s winning in 1908 boxing’s heavyweight championship, which whites had long considered “reserved” for only white men. He kept it by easily defeating a succession of “Great White Hope” challengers – often bantering during those bouts with white hecklers in the audience.

President Bush twice refused to act on similar Congressional resolutions acknowledging the wrong done the man whose astonishing pugilistic skills were eclipsed only by the controversy he provoked.

Johnson’s descendants, and a small band of disparate supporters, both black and white, have sought a presidential pardon for more than a decade. Their efforts gathered steam in recent years from filmmaker Ken Burns’ 2005 documentary, “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, which brought Johnson’s story to wide public notice.

For several years, Representative Pete King, R-NY, and Senator John McCain, R-AZ, both fight enthusiasts, have taken the lead, along with Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, in sponsoring resolutions in their respective Congressional chambers seeking a pardon.

The letter from Congress, signed by Sen. McCain and Rep. King, urged the President to take action to “allow future generations to appreciate Jack Johnson’s accomplishments and his contributions to society without the taint of his criminal conviction.”

Lee A. Daniels is Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline and Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.