Obama Disappoints Many by Not Pardoning Marcus Garvey Before Leaving Office – Atlanta Black Star Most civil rights experts will tell you this: Before Martin Luther King Jr., before Malcolm X, before Nelson Mandela, there was Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born Black empowerment leader who died in 1940.

“Marcus Garvey was before his time,” says Niyala Harrison, a Jamaican-American attorney in Miami and president-elect of the Miami-based Caribbean Bar Association.

“He was speaking about things that had never been spoken about before when we’re talking about self-determination and the advancement of Black and colored people.”

So, Harrison is disappointed that Barack Obama, the first Black U.S. president, didn’t grant Garvey a posthumous pardon before leaving office last week.

Marcus Garvey was a proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, inspiring the Nation of Islam and the Rastafarian movement.

Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey was an orator for the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. Garvey advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global mass movement, known as Garveyism. Garveyism would eventually inspire others, from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement. (Biography).