UNIA president says US government’s reluctance to exonerate Garvey tied to lawsuit fears
STEVEN GOLDING, president of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), says the United States government’s reluctance to exonerate Marcus Garvey from mail fraud charges in relation to the Black Star Line is rooted in the fear of potential legal repercussions from the UNIA.
It is a case that is so historical that government intervention and diplomatic relations are a part of the historical matter for one of Jamaica’s national heroes.
According to Golding, the late national hero’s exoneration could pave the way for the UNIA to pursue a lawsuit against the US government and help in proving the malicious intent behind his incarceration. That incarceration led to severe financial losses for the companies associated with the Black Star Line steamship venture and Garvey’s specific account, which had a significant number of shares that enabled him to pursue his activities. He was deported from the US in 1927, after serving two years of a five-year prison sentence.
“If Garvey is exonerated, then we would pursue a civil case to say that we’ve proven that it was malicious – his incarceration – and, because of that, it caused these companies to suffer and money to be lost, and so we would sue you,” Golding emphasised following his presentation at the inaugural Marcus Garvey lecture at the Lucea Baptist Church in Hanover recently.
He said, however, that the lawsuit would be the prerogative of the UNIA Chapter in the United States, which would pursue the matter. The UNIA has been advocating for the exoneration of Garvey for decades, maintaining that the charges against him were marked by injustice and racially motivated persecution.
“That money doesn’t have anything to do with Jamaica. It has to do with the UNIA as an organisation which still exists in the United States,” he explained.
Golding also argued that the acknowledgement of a setup against Garvey could be the reason behind the prolonged delay in granting him exoneration and President Barack Obama declining to act on a petition for a posthumous pardon of Jamaica’s first national hero.
“It is also the reason why they are resisting the exoneration so long, because they know that can come as a consequence of admitting that they set up Garvey… which is probably why Obama didn’t do it,” Golding pointed out.
His assertions were coming a month shy of a year after Jamaican-American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette Clarke introduced a resolution calling for the exoneration of Garvey, whom she lauded as a champion for the liberation of people of African descent.
In her resolution, Clarke had called upon US President Joe Biden “to recognise and denounce the racist smears against Garvey and his legacy” and do away with his “unfounded charges”.
“The world deserves to know the truth about Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the truth about Black history,” Clarke had said at the time.
Historical records show that, to transport people of African descent and goods back to Africa, Garvey had established the Black Star Line. The enterprise offered shares at $5 each, and enabled persons from the black community to possess a stake in the company.
This sale, coupled with Garvey’s speeches which focused on the desire for “A Black Civilization” and sizeable following, drew the attention of the US government, and, shortly after World War I, he became a target for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
In documents released later, the FBI had admitted to investigating Garvey with the aim of discovering grounds to “deport him as an undesirable alien”.