Biden posthumously pardons civil rights leader Marcus Garvey
President Joe Biden has posthumously pardoned civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, who was convicted of mail fraud over 100 years ago.
The outgoing president has used his power of clemency to grant more more individual pardons and commutations than any other president in U.S. history, according to a statement from Biden on Sunday. The president said that Garvey and the other clemency recipients "made significant contributions to improving their communities."
"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,'" Biden said in a statement. "Advocates and lawmakers praise his global advocacy and impact, and highlight the injustice underlying his criminal conviction."
Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, D-N.Y., led a group of 21 House Democrats -- mostly from the Congressional Black Caucus -- in signing a letter urging Biden to exonerate Garvey, according to a statement sent by the lawmakers to ABC News last month.
Garvey, one of the earliest internationally-known Black civil rights leaders, was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and was given a five-year sentence, according to a letter sent to Biden from the congressional members, obtained by ABC News. President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey's sentence after he served two years in prison. Garvey was immediately deported to his birth country of Jamaica.
“As we approach our nation’s observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I’m extraordinarily grateful for President Biden’s action today to posthumously grant clemency to a true national hero of Jamaica," Clarke said in a statement on Sunday.
Congress members have tried for decades to clear Garvey's name, according to the current members who pushed for his exoneration. Former Rep. John Conyers of Michigan led hearings in 1987 for the House Judiciary Committee on Garvey's exoneration. Former Rep. Charles Rangel of New York introduced resolutions, highlighting alleged injustices against the former civil rights leader in 2004.
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"Exactly 101 years ago, Mr. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in a case that was marred by prosecutorial and governmental misconduct," the members of Congress said in the letter they sent to Biden last month. "The evidence paints an abundantly clear narrative that the charges against Mr. Garvey were not only fabricated but also targeted to criminalize, discredit, and silence him as a civil rights leader."
Garvey, who was born in Jamaica in 1887, was a notable Pan-Africanist, believing that people of African descent around the world should be unified because of their alleged common interests.
He was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which was created to challenge racial inequality, according to the lawmakers. The organization championed self-determination and economic independence for Black people at a time when Jim Crow laws oppressed African Americans and colonization subjugated Africans on their own continent.
The civil rights leader also established the Black Star Line, one of the first Black-owned shipping companies in the Western Hemisphere, connecting Black businesses across the Americas, according to the lawmakers. Garvey eventually wanted to route the vessels to Africa for a redemption program, according to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. He wanted to establish a nation for those who were born into slavery or were the descendants of enslaved people, according to The Washington Post.
He also created the Negro World Newspaper which, at its peak, reached a circulation of 200,000 readers weekly, according to the congress members.
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Garvey shared the segregationist views of the Ku Klux Klan as he sought a separate state for those of the African diaspora, according to The Washington Post.
"I regard the Klan the Anglo Saxon clubs and white American societies as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together," Garvey said, according to The New York Times.
Other Black civil rights activists were outraged. W. E. B. Du Bois said Garvey was the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race and was either "a lunatic or a traitor," according to PBS. Du Bois also said Garvey "suffered from serious defects of temperament and training."
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The newly formed Bureau of Investigation, later becoming the FBI, and the director of its intelligence division, a-young J. Edgar Hoover, brought mail fraud proceedings against Garvey in connection to the sale of Black Star Line shipping stock, according to The Washington Post.
He was sentenced to five years in prison and served two years before his pardon and eventual deportation by Coolidge.
Garvey never returned to the U.S. again, according to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
The FBI declined ABC News' request for a comment.
"Although granting Mr. Garvey’s clemency will help remove the shadow of an unjust conviction and further the Biden Administration’s promise to advance racial justice, Mr. Garvey’s family, myself, and countless others across our nation and around the world will continue to push towards his full and unambiguous exoneration," Clarke said in a statement Sunday.
Biden announced nearly 2,500 pardons for non-violent drug offenders on Friday.
ABC News' John Parkinson and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.