Biden Posthumously Pardons Civil Rights Leader Marcus Garvey and Four Others

President Joe Biden posthumously pardoned civil rights leader and Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey, who was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Garvey served four years in prison until President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence in 1927, after which Garvey was deported to Jamaica.

Garvey founded the the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which “aimed to achieve Black nationalism through the celebration of African history and culture,” according to the National Archives. He created the Black Star Line, a Black-owned shipping company and passenger line created to bring goods and later people across the Atlantic ocean and throughout Africa as part of the “Back to Africa” movement. The predecessor to the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, aggressively investigated Garvey and attempted to sabotage the Black Star Line.

Garvey was known to many as the “Black Moses.” He died in 1940, but his influence reached far beyond his lifetime, inspiring Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley and many others.

“Marcus Garvey was the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement,” the late Martin Luther King Jr. said of Garvey in 1965. “He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions to Negroes and make the Negro feel he was somebody.”

Biden additionally issued pardons to four other individuals and commuted two sentences. They include four people convicted of non-violent drug offenses: Darryl Chambers, a gun violence prevention advocate; Ravidath “Ravi” Ragbir, an immigrant advocate; Don Leonard Scott, Jr., an attorney who last year became the first Black Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates; and criminal justice advocate Kemba Smith Pradia.

Biden commuted the sentences of Robin Peoples and Michelle West, both of whom the White House said had “demonstrated remorse, rehabilitation, and redemption.” Their sentences will expire on February 18, 2025.

“As President, I have used my clemency power to make that promise a reality by issuing more individual pardons and commutations than any other President in U.S. history,” Biden said in a statement from the White House.

Biden will leave office on Monday. It is not clear whether he will issue additional pardons before then.