Joe Biden has posthumously pardoned Jamaican black nationalist Marcus Garvey.
Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s.
The black nationalist leader was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, and moved to the United States in 1916.
Before he died in 1940, Garvey founded the first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) to promote black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.
Garvey was a big proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, encouraging black Americans to return to their ancestral homeland.
The mail fraud conviction against him was based on the sale of stock in the Black Star Line, a shipping company he founded as part of his Back-to-Africa movement.
Garvey’s supporters have argued that the charges were politically motivated due to his growing popularity.
The prosecution claimed Garvey used the mail to defraud investors by making false statements about the company’s financial status.
Garvey’s sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, and he was deported to Jamaica.
In a statement about the pardon, Biden’s White House said:
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) was a renowned civil rights and human rights leader who was convicted of mail fraud in 1923, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence in 1927. Notably, Mr. Garvey created the Black Star Line, the first Black-owned shipping line and method of international travel, and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which celebrated African history and culture. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described Mr. Garvey as “the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement.” Advocates and lawmakers praise his global advocacy and impact, and highlight the injustice underlying his criminal conviction.
