(BPRW) Media and community event to elevate the request for President Biden to Exonerate Marcus Garvey

By: PRLog

December 31, 2024 at 13:32 PM EST

The event is set for Thursday, January 2, 2025, from 3 - 4 PM (EST) Peter Spencer Plaza @ The Garvey Flag in Wilmington, Delaware. Several partner organizations, officials, civic and community leaders will stand in solidarity and provide remarks.

WILMINGTON, Del. - Dec. 31, 2024 - PRLog -- By The Center for Global Africa

On the heels of President Joe Biden's recent pardoning and commutation of several sentences from federal death row, 21 Members of Congress have formally appealed to President Biden in a letter to exonerate Marcus Garvey for "mail fraud in a case that was marred by prosecutorial and governmental misconduct."

Along with notable legal scholars, business and community leaders nationwide, the Center for Global Africa, led by Professor Ezrah Aharone, Founder & Chair, Center for Global Africa, USA and the Marcus Garvey Institute for Human Development, led by Dr. Julius Garvey the surviving son of Marcus Garvey will host a press conference to amplify Delaware voices who are calling on President Biden to take action.

Garvey is considered to have organized the largest global Africa-Diaspora movement for economic independence and human rights, which offers a model of Africa-Diaspora engagement that "should be validated rather than criminalized" says Professor Aharone. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated 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 he was somebody." He was wrongly convicted of $25 mail fraud in 1923 and given a five-year sentence. While serving his prison sentence President Calvin Coolidge commuted his remaining time amidst protests from Black Americans. In 1927, he was deported from the United States to Jamaica.

For decades Black leaders have petitioned the U.S. government and presidents to address this injustice. According to Dr. Julius Garvey "President Biden now has the opportunity to correct this historical wrong and restore the legacy of my father whose philosophy and practices influenced African leaders like Presidents Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Nelson Mandela." He also founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which remarkably had up to 6 million supporters. He incorporated the Black Star Line, the Negro Factories Corporation, and the UNIA in the state of Delaware where this press event will be held.

The Center for Global Africa released The Garvey Legacy Film Trailer www.legacymovementfilm.com to support the exoneration movement and mobilize Delaware's black leadership to align with national and international networks that are advocating for reparative justice for Marcus Garvey. Dr. Julius Garvey released Justice 4 Garvey, a collection of informative essays and personal narratives about the senior Garvey's life and work, demonstrating his essential influence on current social justice movements.

Contact Alicia Clark at 302-540-0954 or aclark@centerforglobalafrica.com for more information.