President Joe Biden, on Sunday, posthumously pardoned black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s.
Congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey (1887-1940), with supporters arguing that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the increasingly popular leader who spoke of racial pride. After Garvey was convicted, he was deported to Jamaica, where he was born. He died in 1940 in England.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said of Garvey: “He was the first man, on a mass scale and level” to give millions of Black people “a sense of dignity and destiny.”
Britannica says of him: “He argued that Black people would be respected only when they were economically strong, and he preached an independent Black economy within the framework of white capitalism. To forward these ends, he established the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line (1919), as well as a chain of restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, and a printing press. He reached the height of his power in 1920, when he presided at an international convention in Liberty Hall, with delegates present from 25 countries.”
Speaking to the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina, Biden said that when people “we love fall and make mistakes,” Americans pick them back up.
“We don’t turn on each other. We lean into each other. That’s the sacred covenant of our nation. We pledge an allegiance, not just to an idea, but to each other,” Biden said.
Biden, who also pardoned four others and commuted two sentences, has set the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. He announced on Friday that he was commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. He also gave a broad pardon for his son Hunter, who was prosecuted for gun and tax crimes.
More pardons may be on the way. It’s not clear whether Biden, who leaves office Monday, will pardon people who have been criticized or threatened by President-elect Donald Trump.