Jack Johnson -- USA

Many states and cities in the United States banned the showing of the Johnson v Jeffries film, the movement to censor Johnson's victory took over the country within three days after the fight.  Two weeks after the match former President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid boxer and fan, wrote an article for The Outlook in which he supported banning not just moving pictures of boxing matches, but a complete ban on all prize fights in America. 

Johnson earned considerable sums endorsing various products, he indulged in automobile racing and tailored clothing.  Once, when he was pulled over for a $50 speeding ticket (a large sum at the time), he gave the officer a $100 bill; when the officer protested that he didn’t have enough change, Johnson told him to keep the change, as he was going to make his return trip at the same speed.  In 1920, Johnson opened a night club in Harlem; he sold it three years later to a gangster, Owney Madden, who renamed it the Cotton Club.

Johnson constantly flouted conventions of blacks in American society, he had white girlfriends, and he was married three times, and all his wives were white, this caused considerable controversy at the time.  On 18 October 1912, Johnson was arrested on the grounds that his relationship with Lucille Cameron violated the Mann Act (transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes) as it was alleged she was a prostitute.  Cameron, refused to cooperate and the case fell apart, less than a month later, Johnson was arrested again on similar charges.  This time the woman, another alleged prostitute named Belle Schreiber, with whom he had been involved in 1909 and 1910, testified against him.  Johnson was convicted by an all white jury in June 1913, this was despite the fact that the incidents used to convict him took place long before the passage of the Mann Act, he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

While on bail and fearing for his safety Johnson left the country, joining Lucille in Montreal on 25 June, before fleeing to France.  For the next seven years, they lived in exile in Europe, South America Cuba and Mexico.  On 5 April 1915, Johnson lost his title to Jess Willard, a working cowboy from Kansas who started boxing when he was twenty-seven years old.  With a crowd of 25,000 at Oriental Park Racetrack in Havana Cuba, Johnson was knocked out in the 26th round of the scheduled 45 round fight.  Johnson, although having won almost every round, began to tire after the 20th round, and was visibly hurt by heavy body punches from Willard in rounds preceding the 26th round knockout. Rumours spread that Johnson threw the fight, but Willard is widely regarded as having won the fight outright.  Willard said, "If he was going to throw the fight, I wish he'd done it sooner, it was hotter than hell out there." 

It has been suggested, that in an arrangement with Federal Agents, Johnson threw the fight in exchange for a light sentence and his safety while incarcerated.  Johnson returned to the U.S. on 20 July 1920, He surrendered to Federal agents at the Mexican border and was sent to the Leavenworth Penitentiary, to serve his sentence.  Johnson was appointed athletic director of the prison while still an inmate, and he was released on 9 July 1921.  While incarcerated, Johnson modified a wrench for adjusting the ring ropes, and he patented his improvements on April 18, 1922, as US Patent 1,413,121.   It is said that the man act charges brought against Johnson were political and racially motivated, with the sole purpose of subduing him and African American aspirations.  

Johnson continued fighting, participating only in exhibition fights, as promoters would never give Johnson another title fight.  On 10 June 1946, Johnson died in a car crash on U.S. Highway 1 near Franklinton, North Carolina, after racing angrily from a diner that refused to serve him.  “For more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African American on Earth." He was 68 years old at the time of his death. 

“I'm Jack Johnson, Heavyweight Champion of the world, I'm black.  They never let me forget it, I'm black all right! I'll never let them forget it!”

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, but failed to pass in the Senate.  In April 2009, Senator John McCain, along with Representative Peter King, filmmaker Ken Burns and Johnson's great niece Linda Haywood, requested a presidential pardon for Johnson from President Barack Obama.  On 29 July, 2009, Congress passed a resolution calling on President Obama to issue a pardon.

Johnson was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954, and is on the roster of both the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame.  In 2005, the United States National Film Preservation Board deemed the film of the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight "historically significant" and put it in the National Film Registry.

Johnson's skill as a fighter and the money that it brought, made it impossible for him to be ignored by the establishment.  In the short term, the boxing world reacted against Johnson's legacy, but Johnson foreshadowed one of the most famous boxers of all time, Muhammad Ali.  In fact, Ali often spoke of how he was influenced by Jack Johnson, Ali identified with Johnson because he felt America ostracised him in the same manner, because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and affiliation with the Nation of Islam.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Jack Johnson on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Johnson's story is the basis of the play and subsequent 1970 movie The Great White Hope, starring James Earl Jones as Johnson (Jack Jefferson in the movie), and Jane Alexander as his love interest.

In 2005, filmmaker Ken Burns produced a 2-part documentary about Johnson's life, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, based on the 2004 non fiction book of the same name by Geoffrey C. Ward.

Blues musician Leadbelly references Johnson in a song about the Titanic: In 1969, American folk singer Jamie Brockett reworked the Leadbelly song into a satirical talking blues called "The Legend of the U.S.S. Titanic."