Plan to pardon black boxer

A team of activists, politicians and celebrities has launched a campaign seeking the posthumous pardon of former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who was convicted under a racially motivated sentence a century ago.

Mike Tyson, Harry Reid and John McCain have all lent their support to the campaign, starting a Change.org petition asking President Obama to posthumously pardon the world’s first African-American boxing champion of his racially motivated 1913 felony conviction.

According to Reuters, a team of civil rights activists in Johnson’s birthplace of Galveston, Texas, held a rally on Sunday in support of a presidential pardon for Johnson, who died in 1946.