For allegedly racially persecuted for upholding racial justice, descendants of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey want President Joe Biden to issue a posthumous pardon for Garvey.
According to moguldom.com, the bold and vibrant leader led a Black nationalist movement that spanned the globe.
Garvey spearheaded a “back to Africa” movement in the U.S. in 1923. His son, Julius Garvey, is leading the call for the presidential pardon. He and other descendants of the Black revolutionary leader say Marcus Garvey was targeted by the U.S. government and persecuted for his work to uphold racial justice for Black people in the African diaspora, The Washington Post reported.
In 1923, Garvey was convicted for mail fraud.
“President Biden has made statements in his inaugural address about the dream for justice not to be delayed any longer,” said one of Garvey’s sons, Julius Garvey, 88, a New York-based vascular surgeon.
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“We will take him at his word. Racial injustice was done to my father more than 100 years ago. He committed no crime. What he was trying to do was elevate the status of African Americans and Africans across the world.”
“I think the pardon and indeed complete exoneration of Marcus Garvey is warranted given the sham prosecution that resulted in his conviction,” Anthony Pierce, a lawyer representing the descendants, told The Hill in a statement.
Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which adopted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,” a bill of rights for Black people. Garvey’s work would later inspire leaders such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.), Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, according to Tony Martin, chair of the Department of Black Studies at Wellesley College, in testimony at a 1987 congressional hearing on Garvey’s conviction. Malcolm X’s father was a Garveyite.
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Born on Aug. 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, Marcus Garvey went on to study law and philosophy at the University of London’s Birkbeck College. Upon his return to Jamaica in 1914, he founded the UNIA.
In 1916, Garvey migrated to the U.S. and was based in New York City. He grew the UNIA and was often seen delivering speeches on self-determination and a return to Africa. In 1919, Garvey founded the Negro World newspaper, whose contributors included famed Black author Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur Schomburg, William H. Ferris, and Norton G.G. Thomas.
Garvey opened several businesses, including the Black Star Line shipping and passenger company. It was one of the first Black-owned shipping companies in the world, The Washington Post reported.
When in 1921 Black Star informed stockholders it planned to purchase two more ships, a newspaper investigation reported that the U.S. Department of Commerce had no record of those ships. By 1922, Garvey and three business associates were indicted on charges of “conspiracy to use the mails in furtherance of a scheme to defraud,” according to congressional records. They were charged with sending promotional circulars through the mail “with intent to defraud their recipients by selling stock in what had become a worthless corporation.”
At the same time, Garvey and his movement were becoming more popular. By 1923, Garvey’s movement had more than 6 million followers throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa, The Washington Post reported. The UNIA had more than 700 branches.
Garvey went to court, and after a five-week federal trial, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud on June 21, 1923, and sentenced to five years in prison. He was also fined $1,000. The three other defendants in the case were acquitted.
Thousands of Garveyites appealed to President Calvin Coolidge in a letter, requesting he grant Garvey a presidential pardon.
Coolidge did commute Garvey’s sentence on Nov. 18, 1927. Garvey was released from prison and deported to Jamaica. He moved to London, where he died in 1940.
Still, many thought the charges against Garvey should be pardoned. On Feb. 23, 2021, Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution expressing “the sense of the House of Representatives that Marcus Garvey should be recognized as a leader in the struggle for human rights and that the President should take measures to exonerate him of charges brought against him.”
