Members of Congress urge Biden to exonerate Marcus Garvey following recent executive pardons and commutations

A group of Congressional members are urging President Joe Biden to posthumously exonerate civil rights leader Marcus Garvey for a 1923 conviction. 

The letter to Biden, dated just before the Christmas holiday, calls on the president to continue his efforts to advance racial justice in his final days in office.

“Exonerating [Marcus] Garvey would honor his work for the Black community, remove the shadow of an unjust conviction, and further your administration’s promise to advance racial justice,” reads the letter led by U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., the incoming chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Other signees of the letter include outgoing Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Senator-elect and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., and Reps. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Nikema Williams, D-Ga., Hank Johnson, D-Ga., Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Summer Lee, D-Pa., and others.

The congressional letter adds, “At a time when Black history faces the existential threat of erasure by radical state legislatures, a presidential pardon for Mr. Garvey would correct the historical record and restore the legacy of an American hero.”

Garvey, a Pan-African activist, was committed to advancing Black achievement through entrepreneurship and building solidarity among Black Americans and people of African descent across the globe. In 1913, he was convicted of mail fraud related to his shipping business, the Black Star Line, which he founded along with his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The shipping line was intended to ship goods, but also, eventually, African Americans throughout the Black diaspora. 

However, as Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Center at Howard University, notes in an academic journal on Garvey’s life, several factors in his trial point to an unfair conviction, including a biased judge and a key prosecution witness who perjured himself during testimony. 

Though President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey’s sentence, the congressional letter to Biden emphasizes the need to clear his name. 

“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,” said the cadre of congressional members, who noted that “efforts to clear Garvey’s name have persisted for decades.”

“In 1987, under Congressman John Conyers’ leadership, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on Mr. Garvey’s exoneration,” they continue. “In 2004, Congressman Charles Rangel introduced a series of resolutions calling attention to the injustice, followed by Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke’s recent efforts to continue these strides.”

The request for Biden to exonerate Marcus Garvey comes on the heels of the president commuting the sentences of all but three inmates on federal death row and pardoning nearly 1,500 people convicted for non-violent crimes, a historic executive action.