Trump and Race: Suspicious Minds

1. For decades, liberal activists have hoped, for example, that Jack Johnson, the early 20th century heavyweight champion of the world, would be pardoned for his conviction under the Mann Act, a 1910 law originally aimed at preventing pimps from taking underage girls or women across state lines for prostitution or other immoral purposes. Johnson traveled with his girlfriend, the underlying crime being that she was white.
2. Yet when President Trump did what President Obama declined to do, which was pardon Jack Johnson posthumously, this act was denounced as a con job that induced race-baiting whiplash, whatever that is.
3. Trump is sending a message here, he added, another little nod to the good old days, back when black visionaries could invent rock-and-roll, but only a white man could become the king.
4. As for Elvis, although a 50th anniversary of rock music in 2004 turned into a celebration of the king, he didn't invent rock n roll any more than Abner Doubleday invented baseball.
5. Staubach and Page are more than football players: Roger the Dodger played at the Naval Academy, where he won the Heisman Trophy, then served five years in the U.S. Navy before reporting to duty with the Dallas Cowboys where he won Super Bowls and All-Pro honors.
6. The line is originally from Chuck Berry, who used it in a 1956 song titled Brown-Eyed Handsome Man. The player he'd have had in mind could have been Mays, but more likely it was Jackie Robinson.
7. This seems absurd, but Zirin revealed his real objection: Johnson's pardon is long overdue, he wrote.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/18/trump_and_race_suspicious_minds_138688.html