Twenty members of the Congressional Black Caucus are urging President Joe Biden to exonerate Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Pan-Africanist leader whose 1923 conviction for mail fraud has long been viewed as politically motivated. In a letter to the president, the lawmakers described the case as rooted in prosecutorial misconduct designed to discredit Garvey and undermine his work for racial justice and empowerment.
“Exactly 101 years ago, Mr. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in a case that was marred by prosecutorial and governmental misconduct,” the letter stated. “The charges against Mr. Garvey were not only fabricated but also targeted to criminalize, discredit, and silence him as a civil rights leader.”
Born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, in 1887, Garvey was the youngest of 11 children. His father, Marcus Garvey Sr., a stonemason, steered him to achieve. Garvey described his father as “severe, firm, determined, bold, and strong,” qualities that shaped his own steadfastness. His father’s extensive library sparked Garvey’s love for reading and ideas.
At 14, Garvey became a printer’s apprentice and later moved to Kingston, where his involvement in union activities and participation in a 1907 printer’s strike ignited his passion for activism. He traveled through Central America as a newspaper editor, highlighting the exploitation of migrant workers, and studied at Birkbeck College in London, where he worked for the African Times and Orient Review, advocating for Pan-African nationalism.
In 1912, Garvey returned to Jamaica and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to unite the African diaspora to “establish a country and absolute government of their own.” His correspondence with Booker T. Washington brought him to the United States in 1916. Garvey settled in Harlem, establishing a UNIA chapter and promoting economic independence for Black communities.
Garvey launched the Negro World newspaper in 1918, which reached hundreds of thousands of readers globally, and the Black Star Line in 1919, a shipping company intended to foster trade among Africans in the Americas, Caribbean, and Africa. The Negros Factories Association, another Garvey initiative, aimed to create manufacturing hubs across the Western Hemisphere and Africa.
Garvey’s work peaked in August 1920 when the UNIA claimed 4 million members and held its first International Convention at Madison Square Garden, where Garvey addressed a crowd of 25,000, urging pride in African history and culture. However, his separatist philosophy faced criticism from established Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, who called Garvey “the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America.” Garvey dismissed Du Bois as a tool of the white elite.
Despite his achievements, Garvey’s growing influence made him a target of federal authorities.
Evidence documents that Garvey’s conviction rested on illegal conduct by federal officials including infamous racist FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Federal prosecutors claimed Garvey used the mail to defraud one UNIA member of $25 involving stock in the Black Star Line ship company. That member later stated federal agents coached his testimony against Garvey.
“The government targeted Garvey, convicted him and deported him. That dismantled his movement,” said the Center for Global Africa’s founder Professor Ezrah Aharone during a press conference in Wilmington, Delaware last week, which was organized by Delaware Voices for Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s Exoneration.
President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey’s sentence in 1927, and he was deported to Jamaica.
Biden has used his presidential powers to pardon, commute and rescind sentences of over 8,000 persons. That figure is more than three times the relief granted by Biden’s three presidential predecessors combined.
The president’s pardons have included persons convicted of spying for China, illegally exporting technology to Iran, laundering money, and possessing illegal drugs. Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, convicted of tax charges and illegally purchasing a gun.
Formal requests for presidential relief date from 1977, when President Carter ignored a pardon request from surviving members of Garvey’s UNIA. In 1983 Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga asked President Reagan for a Garvey pardon, a request Reagan rejected.
The administration of former President Barack Obama twice rejected requests to pardon Garvey. One of the Obama rejections rested on the historically inaccurate assertion that Garvey’s mistreatment by the U.S. government did not constitute a manifest injustice.
The current Garvey presidential pardon request is listed as “pending” on the website of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of The Pardon Attorney.
“The pardon application is approved by the Justice Department and is in the White House awaiting Biden’s decision,” said Garvey Legacy Film Project Producer Alicia Clark during the Wilmington press conference.
Garvey influenced pivotal figures from civil rights icon the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to Ho Chi Minh, the leader who liberated Vietnam from colonial rule that included defeating the U.S. military.
King credited Garvey for giving “millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny …” when he visited Garvey’s grave during his 1965 visit to Jamaica.