108 years after racially motivated trial, court docket for Black heavyweight champ Jack Johnson goes public
CHICAGO — The building hasn’t seen a trial in months, so to have a jury verdict suddenly pop up on the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse docket last week was unusual enough.
Then there was the date the verdict was returned: May 13, 1913.
That was the day an all-white jury in Chicago convicted Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson of federal charges of transporting a white woman across state lines, a case that would later be held up as a deplorable example of institutional racism in early 20th century America.
Johnson was posthumously pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2018. But it wasn’t until Friday that the paperwork — along with images of
