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WASHINGTON (CBS) — Sylvester Stallone thanked President Trump at the White House on Thursday for granting a posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson — boxing’s first black heavyweight champion.
Stallone called Johnson the inspiration for “Apollo Creed” in the Rocky films.
In 1913, an all-white jury convicted Johnson of violating a Jim Crow-era law.
He spent a year in prison for crossing state lines with a white woman.
Johnson died in 1946.
