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
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