In the waning hours of President Joe Biden’s tenure on Sunday January 19, 2025, Jamaica's first national Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey received a posthumous pardon from the United States government.
Garvey, convicted of mail fraud in 1923, had long been the subject of campaigns calling for justice, with supporters arguing his conviction was politically motivated to undermine his influence.
Garvey, born in Jamaica in 1887, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) in 1914, which became the largest Black-led organization in modern history, boasting over 10 million followers worldwide.
At the height of his influence, Garvey’s activism made him a target of J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the Bureau of Investigation, now the FBI, who referred to him as a “notorious negro agitator.” Hoover even hired the first Black FBI agent James Wormley Jones to monitor him.
In New York, Jones was assigned to infiltrate Universal Negro Improvement Association under the leadership of Marcus Garvey. Jones' work led to the arrest and trial of Garvey on mail fraud charge.
Jones engendered the trust of the UNIA leadership to such an extent that he was able to gain responsibility for registering all incoming correspondence. His access to UNIA correspondence and his position as Adjutant General in the African Legion were essential in enabling his information-gathering activities.
In 1925, Garvey was jailed in Atlanta after being convicted of mail fraud. He served nearly three years of a five-year sentence before being deported to Jamaica in 1927.
When he learned of Garvey’s vision and movement, J. Edgar Hoover circulated an internal memo stating his clear intention to target him.
I am “transmitting herewith a communication which has come to my attention from the Panama Canal, Washington office, relative to the activities of Marcus Garvey,” he said.
Hoover described Garvey as “a West-Indian Negro and in addition to his activities in endeavoring to establish the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, he has also been particularly active among the radical elements in New York City in agitating the negro movement.” Hoover added: “Unfortunately, however, he has not yet violated any federal law whereby he could be proceeded against on the grounds of being an undesirable alien, from the point of view of deportation.”
It was clear that Hoover wanted my father off American soil, and the rest of his memo outlined how he planned to get there: “proceeding against him for fraud in connection with his Black Star Line propaganda.” said The youngest son of the Black nationalist and activist Dr. Julius Garvey now 91 years old.
Dr Garvey had been trying for years to get his father’s name cleared.
“I’m very satisfied that President Biden has done this, even if it’s the last minute,” Garvey told Capital News Service in a telephone call. “But it’s appropriate in terms of his own legacy.”
Dr. Garvey said that while the pardon was very important, it was a “step on the road to getting his name cleared”.
He added: “We will continue the efforts to achieve this because it is important that justice is not denied to Garvey.
He was a leader in the struggles for human and civil rights, and we must get his name cleared. The struggle continues.”
“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.”
Garvey who passed away in 1940 was a pioneering advocate for human rights and Pan-Africanism in the United States and worldwide.
His activism and push economic self-empowerment energized millions of people around the world, and his legacy of human rights advocacy before the League of Nations is being uplifted today by the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
Garvey’s legacy has influenced iconic figures such as Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela, with his advocacy laying the foundation for the modern civil rights movement in the US and liberation movements in Africa.
Great that American president Joe Biden did the right thing, he listened and pardoned Marcus Garvey who was put in prison for standing up for all black people in his time, and America never wanted a black man to be so powerful with his speeches , similar thing Martin Luther King Jr, so they killed Martin Luther King Jr,so America used an illegal term on Marcus Garvey calling it "mail fraud" which was not a fraud because Marcus Garvey never stole any mail from the post office or from the the people, but a crime that racist American president used to convict black people, and shut them up! Anyway yesterday the greatest mail fraud criminal entered the White House and…