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Obama Disappoints Many by Not Pardoning Marcus Garvey Before Leaving Office – Atlanta Black Star

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, Pan Africanism, Back To Africa Movement, Black History, African American History, KOLUMN Magazine, KOLUMN


“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).


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