A Presidential Pardon for Civil Rights Pioneer Marcus Garvey - The Time Has Come

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being released by Julius Garvey:

One of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movements in the first half of the 20th century-and recognized as such by luminaries such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X as well as by the government of Jamaica, which posthumously named him its first National Hero-Marcus Garvey was wrongfully convicted by a U.S. court of mail fraud, a conviction that stalled his movement for racial justice, social progress and economic independence for all peoples of the African diaspora.

In an effort to redress this grievous, decades-old wrong, a request for a posthumous presidential pardon has been filed by the descendants of Marcus Garvey with the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House Counsel's Office.  This pardon request urges consideration of Garvey's unjust arrest, trial and incarceration in 1923; President Calvin Coolidge's commutation of his sentence; and Garvey's crusade, embodied in the Universal Negro Improvement Association, to improve the lives of African-Americans as well as of people of African descent worldwide.

Posthumous presidential pardons are rare occurrences-only two have been granted to date.  However, the fact that his conviction was:

• motivated by a desire on the part of the federal government to discredit, disrupt and destroy Garvey's civil rights movement;
• executed through covert surveillance and deception, with under-cover agents posing as Garvey supporters: and
• aided by judicial proceedings that have been condemned as factually unsound and politically and racially motivated speaks to the extent and gravity of the injustice perpetrated against Garvey.

Though President Coolidge commuted Garvey's sentence in 1927, almost 90 years later, his descendants and supporters believe that the time has come for President Barack Obama to clear, finally and entirely, the name of this pioneering civil rights figure who sought to uplift all peoples of African descent.

"(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 that he was somebody." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

All press are invited to attend.   

Contact: Julius W. Garvey, M.D.  at 718 460 3791, [email protected]

SOURCE Julius Garvey