Global Group Requests President Biden’s Exoneration for Late Pan African Leader, Marcus Garvey’s $25 Mail Fraud Case

On Thursday, January 2, 2025, at the Peter Spencer Plaza at The Garvey Flag in Wilmington, Delaware, there will be a special press conference to encourage President Joe Biden to exonerate pan African leader Marcus Garvey. Garvey was responsible for many programs and initiatives designed to strengthen Black people economically and financially.

Black PR Wire – Wilmington, Delaware – On the heels of President Joe Biden’s recent pardoning of his son and commutation of several sentences from federal death row, 21 members of Congress have formally appealed to President Biden in a letter to exonerate Marcus Garvey for “mail fraud in a case
that was marred by prosecutorial and governmental misconduct.”
Along with notable legal scholars, business and community leaders nationwide, the Center for Global Africa led by Professor Ezrah Aharone, Founder & Chair, Center for Global Africa, USA and the Marcus Garvey Institute for Human Development led by Dr. Julius Garvey the surviving son of Marcus Garvey will host a press conference to amplify Delaware voices who are calling on President Joe Biden to take action.

Garvey is considered to have organized the largest global Africa-Diaspora movement for economic independence and human rights, which offers a model of Africa-Diaspora engagement that “should be validated rather than criminalized” says Professor Aharone. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated Garvey “was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and make the Negro feel he was somebody.” He was wrongly convicted of $25 mail fraud in 1923 and given a five-year sentence. While serving his prison sentence President Calvin Coolidge commuted his remaining time amidst protests from Black Americans. In 1927, he was deported from the
United States to Jamaica.
For decades Black leaders have petitioned the U.S. government and presidents to address this
injustice. According to Dr. Julius Garvey “President Biden now has the opportunity to correct this historical wrong and restore the legacy of my father whose philosophy and practices influenced African leaders like Presidents Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Nelson Mandela.”

Garvey also founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which had up to six million supporters. He incorporated the Black Star Line, the Negro Factories Corporation, and the UNIA in the
state of Delaware. The Center for Global Africa recently released The Garvey Legacy Film
Trailer to support the exoneration movement and mobilize Delaware’s Black leadership to align with national and international networks that are advocating for reparative justice for Marcus Garvey.