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Now-former President Joe Biden posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey.
During his last day in office, Biden pardoned Garvey, a Black nationalist who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders, on Sunday (January 19), per the Associated Press.
Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Supporters who urged Biden to pardon Garvey argued that his conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence an influential leader who was pushing for racial pride. Following his conviction, Garvey was deported to his home country of Jamaica. He died in 1940.
Late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. spoke highly of Garvey's impact on the movement.
āHe was the first man, on a mass scale and levelā to give millions of Black people āa sense of dignity and destiny," King said.
Biden broke the record for the number of pardons and commutations issued by a president. Ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, Biden announced Friday (January 17) that he was commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. The outgoing president previously said he was also commuting the sentences of 37 people on federal death row and converting their punishments to life in prison before Trump, a proponent of capital punishment, takes office.
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