President Biden forgiven Five activists and officials on Sunday, including a posthumous pardon of civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, who mobilized the black nationalist movement and was convicted of mail fraud in 1923.
Mr. Biden also commuted the sentences of two people who are serving sentences for crimes they committed in the 1990s and would keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives. The two individuals, Robin Peoples and Michelle West, had overwhelming support from civil rights activists and will be released next month, Mr. Biden said.
It is the latest act of clemency in the final weeks of Mr. Biden’s term, many of which have highlighted Mr. Biden’s longstanding relationship with black communities and his record on civil rights and criminal justice.
The president announced thousands of individual pardons and commutationsmore than any other president, seeking to reverse long-standing disparities in sentencing and sentencing laws that have disproportionately affected minority communities. Mr Biden said the recipients of Sunday’s pardon had “demonstrated remorse, rehabilitation and redemption” and that “each had made a significant contribution to the betterment of their community”.
“The list is not only important because of each person represented on it, but it is also important because of the broader story it tells about the failures of our criminal justice system,” said Janai Nelson, THE Chairman of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
During a visit to the Royal Missionary Baptist Churcha legendary black church near Charleston, South Carolina, Mr. Biden said his decisions reflected how he had come to view the power of “redemption.”
“We know how healing and restoration from harm is a path to the kind of communities we want to live in, where there is equity, justice and accountability,” he said, “where the people we love go through tough times, fall apart, get through it. mistakes, but we are here and we help to get back up. We do not turn against each other. We rely on each other.
Civil rights leaders and lawmakers have long called Mr. Garvey’s criminal conviction unfair and argued that his conviction was racially motivated and that he was targeted for his civil rights activism with fabricated charges. fabricated and false evidence. He was sentenced to five years in prison, including two years before his sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927.
Mr. Garvey inspired generations of black leaders, including Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, and he was seen as the embodiment of black liberation and self-determination. Martin Luther King Jr. called him “the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions to black people and make them feel like he was somebody.”
A White House statement released Sunday noted the creation of the Black Star Line, the first black-owned shipping line and method of international travel, as well as the founding of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which celebrates the history and African culture. The association, founded in 1914, inspired thousands with its emphasis on racial pride and liberation, which it encouraged by urging black Americans to return to their ancestral lands in Africa.
After his conviction, Mr. Garvey was deported to his native Jamaica. He died in London in 1940.
For decades, many people — including Mr. Garvey’s descendants, legislators and even Roger J. Stone Jr., ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump – had lobbied for Mr. Garvey’s conviction to be pardoned, to no avail.
Anthony Pierce, the Garvey family lawyer who filed clemency petitions for Mr. Garvey during President Barack Obama’s administration and again under Mr. Biden’s, said in an interview that Mr. Biden reflected that “the country finally did the right thing in Marcus Garvey.
“There were a lot of legal infirmities in what the country did to convict him,” Mr. Pierce said. “It also shows that the country knows how to right a wrong, and I think that’s a good thing, both from a legal and moral perspective.”
In a statement, Mr. Garvey’s granddaughter, Nzinga Garvey, said his conviction was not only a “miscarriage of justice” but a “reminder of how excess of power can be weaponized to to silence the voices that demand justice, fairness and accountability.” »
A group of congressional lawmakers, led by Representative Yvette D. Clarke, Democrat of New York, sent a letter to Mr. Biden last month, urging him to exonerate Mr. Garvey. In a statement on Sunday, she said that while Mr. Biden’s clemency “will help remove the shadow of an unjust conviction,” she and Mr. Garvey’s family would continue to “press for his full and unjust exoneration.” ambiguity”.
Among those also receiving a pardon, which wipes any convictions from their criminal records, is Darryl Chambers, a gun violence prevention advocate who was previously convicted of a nonviolent drug offense and sentenced to 17 years in prison in 1998; Ravi Ragbir, a well-known immigrant advocate who was convicted of wire fraud in 2000; and Don Scott, an attorney who served time for a nonviolent drug offense and was subsequently elected to the Virginia Legislature in 2019, and became the first Black Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates l ‘last year.
Mr. Biden also pardoned Kemba Smith, a criminal justice advocate whose case drew attention to the mass incarceration of black women, often themselves victims, who were harshly punished by tough-on-crime laws .
Ms. Smith was a victim of domestic violence and was sentenced to 24 and a half years in prison without the possibility of parole when she was a non-violent first offender and seven months pregnant. She had observed her boyfriend’s illegal activities, and federal prosecutors charged her with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, even though she never sold or used drugs. His case was taken up by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund nearly 30 years ago, leading to his sentence being commuted by President Bill Clinton.
Although she was released 25 years ago and went on to build a successful career as a criminal justice activist, Ms. Smith said in an interview that pardon offered a new level of freedom from the confines of a felony conviction.
“I have always accepted responsibility for the choices that led me down this path, and even though I have done so much, it is an ongoing healing process,” Ms. Smith said in an interview. “This has several collateral consequences. So I am grateful to be able to enjoy complete freedom today.
Ms. Smith said she looked forward to reuniting with Ms. West, whom she befriended in prison and who was one of two people whose sentences Mr. Biden commuted on Sunday.
Ms. West was serving a life sentence for drug convictions at the height of the war on drugs. On Sunday, as Ms. Smith grew emotional talking about newfound freedoms, she touched a necklace that Ms. West had given her. She was due to return it when her friend’s sentence expired next month.