Biden Posthumously Pardons Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said of Garvey: “He was the first man, on a mass scale and level" to give millions of Black people "a sense of dignity and destiny.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Sunday posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Also receiving pardons were a top Virginia lawmaker and advocates for immigrant rights, criminal justice reform and gun violence prevention.

Congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey, with supporters arguing that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the increasingly popular leader who spoke of racial pride. After Garvey was convicted, he was deported to Jamaica, where he was born. He died in 1940.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said of Garvey: “He was the first man, on a mass scale and level” to give millions of Black people “a sense of dignity and destiny.”

It’s not clear whether Biden, who leaves office Monday, will pardon people who have been criticized or threatened by President-elect Donald Trump.

Issuing preemptive pardons — for actual or imagined offenses by Trump’s critics that could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration — would stretch the powers of the presidency in untested ways.