WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday issued a pardon for the late boxer Jack Johnson, an African-American convicted a century ago for the crime of taking a woman across state lines, saying the move corrected a wrong in American history. Joining Stallone in the Oval Office where Trump issued and signed the pardon was WBC Heavyweight World Champion Deontay Wilder and former undisputed World Heavyweight Champion, Lennox Lewis. Last month, Trump tweeted that “Sylvester Stallone called me with the story of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson,” the president tweeted Saturday. "His trials and tribulations were great, his life complex and controversial," Trump tweeted in April. “Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!”

Johnson, the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion, was convicted in 1913 under the Mann Act for taking his white girlfriend across state lines for “immoral” purposes. In 2016, then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, along with Reps. Peter King, R-New York, and Gregory Meeks, D-New York, petitioned the Obama administration to grant a pardon to Johnson.
U.S. President Donald Trump posthumously pardons boxer Jack Johnson who was convicted for "taking his white girlfriend across state lines for 'immoral' purposes" in 1912.