I am truly honored to have met
Dr. Garvey, and to have him as a contact on my cell phone to contact me 24/7
for any issues on disaster\emergency response for the islands or just to talk.
BEMA has given me the
opportunity to meet interesting and historical figures from our culture, just
as each of you are a part of history as members of BEMA. Those that truly
know me know that I’m not one to be a groupie, or awed by the presence of anyone
in the limelight. Except maybe …..(you figure it out). It is a
pleasure knowing Dr. Garvey and I fully support his efforts in vindicating his
father Marcus.
Any petitions, additional
information, or updates for pushing this thru will be forwarded.
Thanks
CDS
Marcus Garvey’s
son wants President Obama to pardon his famous father. Time is running out.
Julius Garvey, son of black nationalist Marcus Garvey, strolls the New York City park named after his famous father. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)
Julius Garvey, the son
of black nationalist Marcus Garvey, is pacing the lobby of a Washington hotel.
His collar is starched. His glasses polished. He holds a stack of fliers
displaying photos of his famous father under a headline that reads, “The
Exoneration of Marcus Garvey.”
Julius Garvey, an
83-year-old vascular surgeon, is on a mission to clear his father’s name,
tarnished by a 1923 federal mail-fraud conviction that he believes was bogus.
He wants the country’s first African American president to pardon the fiery
founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Marcus Garvey, who died
in 1940, led a “back to Africa” campaign that made him a seminal figure in the
push for racial and economic justice for black people.
“My father was central
to the civil rights movement in the early 20th century,” said Julius Garvey,
who lives on Long Island. “His organization was the dominant civil rights
organization. It shaped the thinking of that part of the century. It gave birth
to the Harlem Renaissance. Black is beautiful — my father was the basis for
that ideology.”
Marcus Garvey’s activism is chronicled in the
Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. His
son was among the 7,000 dignitaries, celebrities and elected officials who were
invited to the museum’s opening, where President Obama spoke about the nation’s
history of racial oppression.
The Obama
administration rejected a posthumous pardon for Marcus Garvey five years ago.
And Julius Garvey says he knows that time is running out, both for him and for
Obama’s tenure in the White House.
“It’s urgent from the
point of view of this president, because his term is up,” Garvey says. “The
point is the injustice has been allowed to sit for [almost] 100 years. It is a
continuing injustice that needs to be corrected.”
Marcus Mosiah Garvey
was an immigrant from Jamaica who had already founded the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA) when he arrived in the United States in 1916.
Eventually, the UNIA claimed millions of members around the world — although
those figures remain in dispute.
In 1918, Garvey
established the Negro World newspaper and a year later bought an auditorium in
Harlem. He called it Liberty Hall, where thousands flocked to hear him speak.
“Black people are
subjects of ostracism,” Garvey said in 1921 to thunderous applause. “It is sad
that our humanity has shown us no more love — no greater sympathy than we are
experiencing. Whosesoever you go throughout the world, the black man is
discarded as ostracized, as relegated to the lowest of things — social,
political and economic.”
Garvey preached that
the problem could be solved only through black pride and self-reliance.
In 1921, the UNIA
elected Garvey “President of Africa.” In an iconic photo, Garvey and UNIA
members marched through the streets of Harlem in military uniforms, carrying
banners that read “We Want a Black Civilization.”
To ferry black people
and cargo to Africa, Garvey launched a steamship line, which he called the
Black Star Line. The company sold stock for $5 a share, allowing black people
to own a piece of the steamship.
This sale, along with
Garvey’s rhetoric and following, attracted government attention. Soon after
World War I, Garvey was targeted by future FBI director J. Edgar Hoover — as
part of a “lifelong obsession to neutralize the rise of a black liberator,” Julius
Garvey said.
In documents released
later, the FBI acknowledged that it began investigating Garvey to find reasons
to “deport him as an undesirable alien.”
In 1921, Garvey’s
steamship company announced to stockholders it would buy two more ships. But a
competing newspaper published an investigative article claiming the U.S.
Department of Commerce had no record of those ships.
Garvey, his treasurer
and secretary were arrested and charged with using the Postal Service to
defraud stockholders.
Garvey’s lawyer,
William C. Matthews, urged him to plead guilty. Instead, Garvey fired Matthews
and defended himself. On June 21, 1923, after a month-long trial in the
Southern District of New York, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced
to five years in prison.
He had served nearly
three years of that time when President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey’s
sentence. Garvey was deported to Jamaica, where he is regarded as a national
hero. He died in London in 1940.
“We believe Marcus
Garvey was the subject of racial and political animus,” said Anthony T. Pierce,
a partner at Akin Gump law firm, who filed the pardon petition with the
Department of Justice and the office of the White House counsel. “Garvey was
targeted by J. Edgar Hoover. He did it in the same way he targeted Martin
Luther King several decades later. The main goal was to get evidence to deport
Garvey, because he was a rabble-rouser and a political threat.”
The petition, filed
June 27, 2016, argues that Garvey was innocent, that he did not receive a fair
trial, that a witness perjured himself and that the judge sided with the
prosecution.
A spokeswoman for the
Justice Department, which analyzes pardon requests, said she could “confirm
that the department has received a petition but cannot comment beyond that.”
Julius Garvey wants his father’s name cleared before he dies. (Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post)
Julius Garvey was 7
years old when his father died. By then, an ocean separated them. His most
vivid memory is throwing snowballs in his dad’s backyard in Britain.
Julius and his older
brother, Marcus Garvey Jr., now 86 and an engineer living in Florida, grew up in
Jamaica with their mother, Amy Jacques Garvey.
“My mom talked about
the injustice done to my father,” Julius Garvey said.
It has always been
difficult for him to reconcile his father’s conviction with “this great ideal
of American justice,” he said. “That is still grievous. It scratches that area
of me sensitive to social justice issues. This hits a nerve for me, because
I’ve been conditioned about social justice all my life. I’m 83. I’d like to see
this corrected in my lifetime.”
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