To this day, Linda Haywood recalls the shame she once felt for her great-uncle."I could see from the expression on my mother's face that it pained her to tell me about him," she recalled, "but it wasn'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 didn'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.
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