New Effort for Marcus Garvey Pardon

By: - May 25th, 2011

Jamaican Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Olivia Grange is looking to set up two committees to lobby the U.S. government to pardon Marcus Garvey. It would not be the first such effort; Edward Seaga, former prime minister of Jamaica, lobbied President Ronald Reagan in 1987 to grant a full pardon for Garvey, who was imprisoned for mail fraud in 1923. “It is time to clear Garvey’s name in America and right here on that sedition charge,” Grange said. The two committees will be headed by attorney Tom Tavares-Finson and Professor Verene Shepherd of the University of the West Indies. Garvey’s five-year sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927. [Jamaica Observer]

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