A group of 21 House Democrats signed a letter asking the president to exempt former civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, according to a statement sent to ABC News by lawmakers on Monday.
Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) led a committee of lawmakers, mostly from the Congressional Black Caucus, to exonerate Garvey after President Joe Biden commuted 37 sentences from federal death row on Monday.
Garvey, one of the oldest internationally known black civil rights leaders, was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and sentenced to five years in prison, according to a letter to Biden from members of Congress obtained by ABC News. President Calvin Coolidge pardoned Garvey two years into his sentence. Garvey was immediately deported to his native Jamaica.
“Exonerating Mr. Garvey would honor his work on behalf of the black community, remove the shadow of a wrongful conviction, and advance this administration’s commitment to racial justice,” the lawmakers said in their letter to the president. “At a time when black history faces the existential threat of being erased by radical state legislatures, a presidential pardon for Mr. Garvey would set the historical record straight and restore the legacy of an American hero.”
Members of Congress have been trying to clear Garvey’s name for decades, according to members of Congress. Congressman John Conyers chaired the 1987 House Judiciary Committee hearings on Garvey’s impeachment. Congressman Charles Rangel introduced the resolutions, highlighting alleged injustices against the former civil rights leader in 2004.
African-American nationalist Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica around 1920.
Library of Congress
“Exactly 101 years ago, Mr. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in a case marred by prosecutorial and government misconduct,” the congressmen said in the letter. “The evidence makes it abundantly clear that the charges against Mr. Garvey were not merely fabricated, but designed to criminalize, discredit and silence him as a civil rights leader.”
The White House did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Garvey, who was he? He was born in Jamaica in 1887He was a prominent pan-Africanist, who believed that people of African descent around the world should be united because of supposed common interests.
Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which was created to combat racial inequality, according to lawmakers. The organization advocated black self-determination and economic independence at a time when Jim Crow laws oppressed African Americans and colonization subjugated Africans on their continent.
Garvey also established the Black Star Line, the first Black-owned shipping company in the Western Hemisphere, connecting Black businesses across America, according to lawmakers. The civil rights leader eventually wanted to steer the ships to Africa for a redemption program, he says US National Archives and Records Administration. He wanted to establish a nation for those who were born into slavery or descended from slaves, he says. The Washington Post.
Garvey also founded the Negro World Newspaper, which, at its peak, reached a weekly circulation of 200,000 readers, according to congressmen.
Congresswoman Yvette Diane Clarke speaks at the 33rd Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King on Jan. 21, 2019, in New York.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press via Getty Images
Garvey shared the segregationist views of the Ku Klux Klan while seeking a separate state for the African diaspora, he says. The Washington Post.
“I think the Anglo-Saxon clan clubs and the white American societies are better friends to the race than all the other hypocritical white groups put together as far as the black is concerned,” Garvey said. The New York Times.
Other Black civil rights activists were outraged. WEB Du Bois said that Garvey was the most dangerous enemy of the black race and that he was “a leader or a traitor”. PBS. Du Bois also said that Garvey had “serious defects of temperament and training.”
African-American nationalist Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica around 1920.
Library of Congress
The newly formed Bureau of Investigation, which would later become the FBI, and its intelligence division director, a-Young J. Edgar Hooverbrought mail fraud proceedings against Garvey in connection with the sale of Black Star Line shipping stock The Washington Post. He was sentenced to five years in prison and Coolidge served two years before being pardoned and eventually deported.
The FBI declined ABC News’ request for comment.
Garvey never returned to the US, he says US National Archives and Records Administration.
“As we approach the end of your administration, this moment presents an opportunity to leave an indelible mark on history,” the lawmakers told Biden in the letter.
ABC News’ John Parkinson contributed to this report.
