WASHINGTON -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- To this day , Linda Haywood recalls the shame she once felt for her great-uncle . Jack Johnson was convicted of transporting a white woman across state lines for `` immoral purposes . '' `` I could see from the expression on my mother 's face that it pained her to tell me about him , '' she recalled , `` but it was n't just her . The shame was there for all the members of my family . '' Haywood 's great-uncle , Jack Johnson , shocked the nation in 1908 by becoming the first African-American world heavyweight champion . Yet the boxer was arrested not long afterward for taking a white woman across state lines for `` immoral '' purposes . That case fell apart and the woman later became his wife , but then investigators charged him with a similar offense involving a woman he had dated years earlier . An all-white jury 's decision to convict him in that case has come to be widely viewed as a symbol of racial injustice . Now Haywood is working with Sen. John McCain and others to try to clear her great-uncle 's name . McCain wants the Senate to pass a resolution urging President Obama to grant Johnson a presidential pardon . It would represent a final vindication for Haywood , a 53-year-old seamstress in Chicago who now views her great-uncle with pride . Her parents did n't tell her until she was 12 that she was related to Johnson , even though she saw his photo at school during lessons on black history . `` I remember seeing his picture on the wall of my sixth-grade classroom in Chicago in 1966 , '' Haywood said in a voice tinged with sadness . `` It was up there next to pictures of Sojourner Truth and George Washington Carver as part of a black history week my teacher put together . I did n't have the first clue who the man was . My parents did n't want me to know . '' Her parents , she said , were trying to protect her from a legacy of racial injustice at a time when the country had yet to emerge from the long shadow of segregation . Haywood was stunned when she learned her great-uncle 's story . Less than five years after winning the heavyweight title , Johnson was convicted for violating the Mann Act , which outlawed the transportation of women across state lines for `` immoral '' purposes . Johnson was black and the woman was white -- enough to get even a champion imprisoned in early 20th century America . Justice Department lawyers decried it as a `` crime against nature '' for him to have a sexual relationship with a white woman . Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis , later to become the first commissioner of Major League Baseball , set Johnson 's bail at $ 30,000 -- the equivalent of more than $ 660,000 today . When a bail bondsman showed up , Landis jailed him , too , according to an account that filmmaker Ken Burns relays in his documentary , `` Unforgivable Blackness : The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson . '' An all-white jury convicted Johnson in less than two hours . `` Mr. Johnson was perhaps persecuted as an individual , but ... it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks , '' one of the prosecutors later said . Johnson 's real crime , in the eyes of many , was committed three years earlier , when he successfully defended his boxing title against Jim Jeffries , a white boxer who came to be called the `` Great White Hope '' because many white fans saw him as the best chance to wrest back a boxing title from the African-American champ . Jeffries , a former heavyweight champion , had come out of retirement intending to reclaim a title that many Americans believed Johnson had no right to in the first place . Johnson beat Jeffries on July 4 , 1910 , before a stunned , almost entirely white crowd in Reno , Nevada . Race riots followed . More than 20 people were killed and hundreds were injured . Most victims were black . So when they `` could n't beat him in the ring , the white power establishment decided to beat him in the courts , '' Burns said in his documentary . Johnson fled to Europe in 1913 while free on appeal . But after years of fights overseas -- including the eventual loss of his title in Havana , Cuba , in 1915 -- Johnson came home . He turned himself over to U.S. authorities at the Mexican border in 1920 and served ten months in prison . He died in a car wreck in 1946 . `` Back then , if you were black and you were told that you did something wrong , you really had no recourse , '' said Haywood . `` You just accepted what was done because black people were basically powerless and voiceless . Jack may have been a rich boxer , but he could n't fight the system . '' Today , in a very different America , Haywood 's family is seeking justice . They 've teamed up with Burns , McCain and Rep. Peter King , a New York Republican , to urge the nation 's first African-American president to grant Johnson a rare posthumous pardon . McCain and King introduced resolutions calling for a presidential pardon in 2005 and last year . The House passed it , but the Senate did not . The White House declined to comment when asked Obama 's views on a possible pardon for Johnson . McCain , who says he made a mistake by once voting against a federal holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , sees the pardon as a way to right an old wrong . `` The Jack Johnson case is an ignominious stain on our nation 's history , '' he said on the Senate floor this month , while introducing a new version of the resolution . `` Rectifying this injustice is long overdue . -LSB- The resolution recognizes -RSB- the unjustness of what transpired , and sheds light on the achievements of an athlete who was forced into the shadows of bigotry and prejudice . Johnson ... deserved much better than a racially motivated conviction . '' King , himself a former boxer , said in a written statement that Johnson was a trailblazer who became `` a victim of the times . '' For Haywood , the proposed pardon is also personal . It 's about wiping the slate clean for future generations of her family . `` My mother used to say Jack was defiant , '' she remembered . `` No disrespect , momma , but he was being his own man . And I 'm so proud of him . To think -- of all the families in the world , God gave him to us . '' Haywood has made sure her four children know the story of the country 's first black heavyweight champion . `` They love him , '' she said . `` Especially my oldest son . He was a bit of a pugilist in high school . He got into his fair share of scraps . I think we know where he got that trait . '' Haywood says she 'll go to Washington if Obama issues a pardon . With a bit of laughter , she promises to give a gracious , eloquent speech thanking him . With or without a pardon , she emphasizes , the stigma and the shame are gone . Today , Johnson 's family feels only pride .