KINGSTON, Jamaica--United States Congresswoman Yvonne Clarke is leading the charge to get President Barack Obama to pardon Jamaica’s first national hero Marcus Garvey who was convicted for mail fraud nine decades ago.
Clarke says she and two other members of Congress, Charlie Rangel and John Conyers, want Obama to hand down the presidential pardon before his term ends in January next year, according to the Jamaica Observer.
The Congresswoman made the announcement recently after accepting the Marcus Garvey Award for Politics and Government at the Jamaica Diaspora Awards Banquet in New York.
Legislation introduced by Rangel to secure the pardon has been languishing in the Congress and Clarke told the Jamaica Observer that the petitioners are seeking to have the President act through an executive order “as the atmosphere in Washington is not conducive to getting it done through Congress.”
Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, began serving a five-year sentence for mail fraud in an Atlanta, Georgia jail in February 1925.
His sentence was eventually commuted by President Calvin Coolidge and he was deported to Jamaica when he was released from prison in November 1927.
Since Garvey’s death in 1940, there have been calls for his record to be expunged. ~ Caribbean360 ~
