“Therefore, with this so-called pardon that the US President Joe Biden, he should have also called out this J Edgar Hoover guy, the director of the FBI at the time, who persecuted and insulted and played a significant role in framing Marcus Garvey,” protested Aaron Alexander, President of the Iyanola Council for the Advancement of Rastafari.
Former United States President Joe Biden on January 19th 2025 posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Garvey, a Jamaican, was a great race leader who inspired feelings of self-pride and want for self-determination of the African people. Still to the United States government, he was thought of as a threat and was termed a “Negro Agitator”.
According to the ICAR President, Garvey was the subject of undue persecution by U.S authorities as he sought to embolden the consciousness of black people. “J Edgar Hoover referred to Marcus Garvey as an intelligent smart nigger monkey, too intelligent to be left alone to do the work which he was doing, teaching black people to have pride in themselves and that we are beautiful and intelligent as any other race of people,” he said.
Alexander says the U.S.’s former president was not sensitive to the documented struggles Garvey encountered and corrective measures should be taken.
“Therefore, it is our opinion that the US President Joe Biden should have been more aware of the history as to what Marcus Garvey went through with this Ku Klux Klan FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, and instead of a pardon, we believe he should have totally exonerated and vindicated,” he suggested.
Garvey himself visited Saint Lucia in 1921 and was listened to by dozens of citizens during his lectures at the then Clarke cinema in Castries.
