KINGSTON, Jamaica – Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, vice-chancellor of The University of the West Indies is calling on United States President Barack Obama to grant a posthumous pardon to Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., for his 1923 mail fraud conviction in the United States.
Sir Hilary’s call comes in the wake of Jamaica’s National Heroes Week, the annual celebration of the country’s heroes and martyrs. It also comes at a time when countries and communities in the Caribbean and across the world are observing the United Nations’ declared Decade for People of African Descent.
“Marcus Garvey was the victim of trumped up charges orchestrated by the late J. Edgar Hoover, the famously anti-black director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation,” said Sir Hilary. “We are today calling on President Obama, himself the victim of racist campaigns to de-legitimise his presidency, to exonerate Garvey before he leaves office. It is the right and proper thing to do.”
A global petition campaign demanding that Garvey’s federal record be expunged has generated tens of thousands of signatures. The campaign is supported by the Jamaican Government, the Caribbean Reparations Commission, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the US House of Representatives.
“Garvey’s call for the upliftment of all Caribbean citizens through education and political engagement constitutes a critical part of the ideological and philosophical currents that gave birth to The University of the West Indies almost 70 years ago,” said Sir Hilary. “The UWI’s mission and mandate is a manifestation of Garvey’s struggles for quality education for the masses of Caribbean peoples, for self-respect, self-determination and cultural awareness in our region.”
Born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, Garvey was a civil and human rights activist, organizer and eloquent orator who led the largest mass movement of black people in the 20th Century.
The founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Garvey was a strong proponent of Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and self-reliance. He is Jamaica’s first national hero, and is revered by millions throughout the Caribbean, the United States, Canada, Central and South America and Africa.
The late D. Martin Luther King Jr. in paying tribute to Garvey in the 1960s said he was “the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny.”
Answering questions on April 9, 2015, following a speech at The University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, President Obama said: “I think that all people want basic dignity and want basic freedom, and want to be able to worship as they please without being discriminated against, or they should be able to speak their mind about an important issue pertaining to their community without being arrested.”
“That’s true today, but it was also true of Marcus Garvey in 1923,” said Sir Hilary. “The principles of reparatory justice on which the Caribbean Reparations Commission are founded, are the same principles that should be applied to repair and restore Garvey’s good name in the annals of US and world history.”
The philosophy and teachings of Marcus Mosiah Garvey have long been internationally recognized for its strong and enduring influence on the independence movements in the Caribbean and Africa, on Rastafarianism and on the black liberation and Black Lives Matter Movements in North America. (PR)
