JOE BIDEN MAKES IT ONE OF HIS FINAL ACTS
ST ANN’S BAY, St Ann; Jan. 19, 2025
Jamaica’s First National Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey has been pardoned by U.S. President Joe Biden.
In one of his final acts before leaving the White House, Biden pardoned five people on Sunday, January 19, 2025, including Garvey, considered one of the earliest Pan Africanists, a leading thinker and proponent of unity among Black people.
Garvey, born in St Ann, and seeing the world as his stage championed several efforts to empower Blacks. These included his creation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Black Star Line shipping company.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged Garvey’s leadership and said of him “He was the first man, on a mass scale and level” to give millions of Black people “a sense of dignity and destiny.”
A first-class orator, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. His sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927. A strong believer in Black pride, Garvey died in 1940.
Rights activists from Jamaica and around the world have long called for Garvey to be pardoned and his name not be sullied by what many saw as his politically motivated prosecution and conviction by US authorities.
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