credit where credit is due

John McCain supports a pardon for Jack Johnson (the boxer, not the singer)

My sense is that Johnson was not so different than many superstar athletes of today - vain, brash, etc. - but he had the misfortune of living in a more explicitly racist time when black superstars sleeping with white women was not only implicitly frowned upon but actively resisted--hence, his 1913 arrest for violating the Mann act.