Congress members urge Biden to exonerate Black civil rights leader Marcus Garvey

By Tesfaye Negussie, ABC

A group of 21 House Democrats signed a letter urging the president to exonerate former civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, according to a statement sent by the lawmakers to ABC News on Monday.

Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) led the panel of lawmakers — mostly from the Congressional Black Caucus — to exonerate Garvey on the heels of President Joe Biden’s commutation of 37 sentences from federal death row on Monday.

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 Congress members, obtained by ABC News. President Calvin Coolidge pardoned Garvey two years into his sentence. Garvey was immediately deported to his birth country of Jamaica.

“Exonerating Mr. Garvey would honor his work for the Black community, remove the shadow of an unjust conviction, and further this administration’s promise to advance racial justice,” the lawmakers said in the letter to the president. “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.”

ABC details congress’ decades-long efforts to clear Garvey’s name.

Learn about the crucial role of the Blass press and see Garvey’s portrait among those of other activists.

More breaking Black news.