Obama was asked to pardon the man but declined. No reason given
Presidential pardon There have been recurring proposals to grant Johnson a posthumous presidential pardon. A bill requesting President George W. Bush to pardon Johnson in 2008 passed the House,[66] but failed to pass in the Senate.[67] In April 2009, Senator John McCain, along with Representative Peter King, film maker Ken Burns and Johnson's great-niece, Linda Haywood, requested a presidential pardon for Johnson from President Barack Obama.[68] In July of that year, Congress passed a resolution calling on President Obama to issue a pardon.[69] In 2016, another petition for Johnson's pardon was issued by McCain, King, Senator Harry Reid and Congressman Gregory Meeks to President Obama, marking the 70th anniversary since the boxer's death.[70] This time citing a provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed by the president in December 2015, in which Congress expressed that this boxing great should receive a posthumous pardon, and a vote by the United States Commission on Civil Rights passed unanimously a week earlier in June 2016 to "right this century-old wrong."[71]
Mike Tyson, Harry Reid and John McCain 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.[72] Obama declined to pardon Johnson.
In April 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he was considering a full pardon of Johnson after speaking with actor Sylvester Stallone.[73] Trump pardoned Johnson on May 24 of that year.[74]
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