Marcus Garvey's family is calling on President Barack Obama to pardon the late Jamaican political activist who, before being convicted of mail fraud, controversially tried to organize African-Americans in the 1920s to shun white culture and return to Africa
Garvey's family held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, the day before what would have been Garvey's 129th birthday, reported Roll Call.
Garvey supporters claim his fraud conviction in the 1920s after launching his Black Star Line and his Universal Negro Improvement Association was "motivated by a desire on the part of the federal government to discredit, disrupt and destroy Garvey's civil rights movement," said Roll Call.
"Everyone stands on the shoulders of everyone who comes before," Garvey's son Julius Garvey said at the press conference in calling on Obama to grant a pardon, according to NBC News. "There would be no black president if it wasn't for the Civil Rights movement.
"The Civil Rights movement started with Marcus Garvey, as acknowledged by Brother Malcolm (Malcolm X), as acknowledged by Martin Luther King, and acknowledged by anyone who knows history. The president stands on that foundation," Julius Garvey said.
Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association advocated for African descendants to find their own economic independence by reclaiming European territories in Africa, said NBC News. His call for political, social, and economic separation from whites became known as Garveyism.
Some African-Americans, though, disagreed with Garvey at the time, most prominently NAACP co-founder W.E.B. DuBois, who called Garvey "the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America," noted NBC News.
The UNIA claimed four million followers by 1920 and its first international convention held at Madison Square Garden attracted more than 25,000 people.
Garvey actually started the organization in Jamaica in 1914 and started a New York branch after arriving in American in 1916, said PBS.
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