As a young man, Johnson was frail, though, like all of his siblings, he was expected to work. Growing up in Galveston, Texas, Johnson attended five years of school. He was described by his son as the "most perfect physical specimen that he had ever seen", although Henry had been left with an atrophied right leg from his service in the war. His father had served as a civilian teamster of the Union's 38th Colored Infantry. Johnson was born on March 31, 1878, the third child of nine born to Henry and Tina Johnson, former slaves who worked service jobs as a janitor and a dishwasher. On May 24, 2018, Johnson was formally pardoned by U.S. He is buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. He died in a car crash on June 10, 1946, at the age of 68. Johnson continued taking paying fights for many years, and operated several other businesses, including lucrative endorsement deals. Sentenced to a year in prison, Johnson fled the country and fought boxing matches abroad for seven years until 1920 when he served his sentence at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. Johnson was arrested on charges of violating the Mann Act-forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes"-a racially motivated charge that embroiled him in controversy for his relationships, including marriages, with white women. Major newspapers of the time soon claimed that Johnson was attacked by the government only after he became famous as a black man married to a white woman, and was linked to other white women. In 1912, Johnson opened a successful and luxurious "black and tan" ( desegregated) restaurant and nightclub, which in part was run by his wife, a white woman. Transcending boxing, he became part of the culture and history of racism in the United States. According to filmmaker Ken Burns, "for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth". Jeffries was dubbed the "fight of the century". He is widely regarded as one of the most influential boxers in history, and his 1910 fight against James J. John Arthur Johnson (Ma– June 10, 1946), nicknamed the " Galveston Giant", was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915).
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