THE already strained relations between the Barack Obama administration and
the Government of Jamaica could be in for more severe testing, as the US
government now says the granting of a pardon to Jamaica's National Hero
Marcus Garvey would be a waste of time and resources, since Garvey has
been dead for ages.
A report in the Sunday Observer says the flat rejection of a request for a
presidential pardon for Jamaica's first national hero, the Right
Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, follows an eventual reply to
Florida-based Jamaican-born attorney Donovan Parker, who has been writing
to president Obama every week since January, requesting a posthumous
pardon for Garvey.
Many believe that Garvey was set up by the J Edgar Hoover-led Federal
Bureau of Investigations (FBI), fearful of his widening popularity among
downtrodden US blacks.
Garvey was imprisoned for mail fraud totalling US$25 in June 1923, and
after spending two years and nine months in an Atlanta Federal
Penitentiary, was deported from New Orleans, Louisiana to Jamaica on a ship.
The Sunday Observer says it acquired a copy of one letter sent by Parker
to the US President, and the first ever reply from the White House on the
matter .
"Marcus Mosiah Garvey is also a National Hero of Jamaica, West Indies and
a leading forebear of the African American civil rights experience," wrote
Parker.
"It is full time that this extraordinary human being of humble beginnings
and strong moral character be pardoned by the pen of an American
president. It would be fitting if both you, Mr President, and the first
lady visit Jamaica for the purposes of signing the executive order
pardoning Marcus Mosiah Garvey."
In a tersely worded reply to Parker's request, White House Pardon
Attorney, Ronald Rodgers said such a move would be a waste of time and
resources since Garvey had been dead for ages.
"It is the general policy of the Department of Justice that requests for
posthumous pardons for federal ofences not be processed for adjudication.
The policy is grounded in the belief that the time of the officials
involved in the clemency process is better spent on pardon and commutation
requests of living persons.
"Many posthumous pardon requests would likely be based on a claim of
manifest injustice, and given that decades have passed since the event and
the historical record would have to be scoured to objectively and
comprehensively investigate such applications, it is the Department's
position that the limited resources which are available to process
requests for Presidential clemency -- now being submitted in record
numbers -- are best dedicated to requests submitted by persons who can
truly benefit from a grant of the request," Rodgers replied on behalf of
Obama, who is the first black president in the history of the United
States.
Parker expressed his utter disappointment at the latest development and
called on US ambassador to Jamaica Pamela Bridgewater, to add her voice to
the call for Garvey to be officially pardoned.
"She should advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to strongly
recommend an posthumous presidential pardon for the Right Honourable
Marcus Mosiah Garvey in the name of human decency and justice. There is no
reason why the US government shouldn't do this and Obama shouldn't sign
it," Parker said.
The Jamaican-born attorney also pointed out that the original transcripts
of Garvey's trial cannot be found.
"They don't have it. Somebody took it. I was told this by the Jamaican
Consul General in Miami, Sandra Grant-Griffiths, who informed me via a
letter," he said.
He doubted whether President Obama had actually seen the request.
"I believe there has been no co-ordinated effort to get this issue in
front of the president. I think if President Obama reads it, he will sign
it," Parker said.
Six years after being deported to his homeland, Garvey was also imprisoned
in Jamaica for contempt of court and Culture Minister Olivia 'Babsy'
Grange had, earlier this year, signalled her intention to do all within
her powers to clear Garvey's name at home and abroad. Grange is reportedly
assembling a team of Garveyites and legal minds to deal with this task.
Efforts to contact Grange yesterday were unsuccessful, but director of
communications in the ministry of youth, culture and sports, Oliver Watt,
said the news of the presidential rejection was a hard pill to swallow.
"We will be pursuing all the other options available to us. We definitely
think his name should be cleared at home and overseas," Watt said.
Head of the Marcus Garvey-founded People's Political Party, Miguel Lorne,
was also livid as well as disappointed by the rejection of Parker's
request.
"The language used in the reply is most disdainful. It makes you wonder if
Obama actually read the request. Obama must know about Garvey, who is the
forerunner of the civil rights movement. It is most disappointing," Lorne
told the Sunday Observer.
Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga asked the US President, the late Ronald
Reagan to grant a full pardon to Marcus Garvey on the 1923 charge of mail
fraud. A resolution was brought to the US House Subcommittee on Criminal
Justice from as far back as 1987, but the issue seemed to have been pushed
on the back burner.
Marcus Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940, reportedly after succumbing
to the effect of two strokes attributed to his reading a false obituary of
himself in a Chicago newspaper which stated, in part, that he died broke,
alone and unpopular. His remains were interred at the Kensal Green
Cemetery in London.
In 1964, his remains were exhumed and re-interred at the National Heroes
Park in Kingston and he was named Jamaica's first national hero.
--
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://www.toyinfalola.com/
www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa
http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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