On his fi­nal day in of­fice, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden grant­ed clemen­cy to two Caribbean na­tion­als, Mar­cus Gar­vey, a Ja­maican-born civ­il rights leader, and Ravi Rag­bir, an im­mi­gra­tion ac­tivist from T&T. They were in­clud­ed in a list of five in­di­vid­u­als par­doned and two who re­ceived sen­tence com­mu­ta­tions, as part of Biden’s use of clemen­cy pow­ers to recog­nise “re­morse, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and re­demp­tion.”

Gar­vey, a Ja­maican-born civ­il rights leader, is best known for his lead­er­ship in the Black Na­tion­al­ism and Pan-African­ism move­ments. He was con­vict­ed of mail fraud in 1923 and sen­tenced to five years in prison for his in­volve­ment with the Black Star Line, the first black-owned ship­ping com­pa­ny.

In 1927, Pres­i­dent Calvin Coolidge com­mut­ed Gar­vey’s sen­tence, but the con­vic­tion re­mained. Gar­vey was de­port­ed to Ja­maica and died in Lon­don in 1940.

Gar­vey’s lega­cy as a glob­al ad­vo­cate for African his­to­ry and cul­ture lives on. He found­ed the Uni­ver­sal Ne­gro Im­prove­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (UNIA), which cel­e­brat­ed African iden­ti­ty and fos­tered pride in African her­itage. He was de­scribed by Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr as “the first man of colour in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States to lead and de­vel­op a mass move­ment.”

In a re­sponse, Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness said the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered it “a first step in the to­tal ex­on­er­a­tion, ab­so­lu­tion and ex­punge­ment of a his­tor­i­cal wrong done to one of the most sig­nif­i­cant civ­il rights leader and Pan African­ist.”

“I want to thank Pres­i­dent Biden for his con­sid­er­a­tion in this mat­ter. It has been a long and per­sis­tent strug­gle and I would al­so like to thank the Gar­vey fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly Julius and the UNIA, all the pri­vate cit­i­zens who signed var­i­ous pe­ti­tions, friends of Ja­maica and the Ja­maican di­as­po­ra who lob­bied the US Gov­ern­ment, and in­deed suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­ments of Ja­maica who have been con­sis­tent in of­fi­cial­ly re­quest­ing this con­sid­er­a­tion from the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States,” Hol­ness said in a state­ment

Rag­bir, an im­mi­gra­tion ac­tivist, im­mi­grat­ed to the US in 1991 and be­came a law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dent in 1994 but faced de­por­ta­tion af­ter a mort­gage fraud con­vic­tion in 2006. De­spite a de­por­ta­tion or­der, Rag­bir be­came a promi­nent ad­vo­cate for im­mi­grant rights, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the New Sanc­tu­ary Coali­tion, an in­ter­faith net­work that sup­ports vul­ner­a­ble im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.

Rag­bir was vo­cal in his crit­i­cism of the US Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment (ICE), es­pe­cial­ly af­ter his 2018 ar­rest by ICE dur­ing a rou­tine check-in, which he ar­gued was a re­tal­ia­to­ry act due to his ac­tivism. A court rul­ing led to a three-year stay of his de­por­ta­tion or­der.

“Rag­bir has re­ceived nu­mer­ous awards for his ef­forts to pro­mote jus­tice and hu­man dig­ni­ty,” the White House state­ment said.

The White House state­ment al­so said that Biden’s use of clemen­cy pow­er re­flects his be­lief that Amer­i­ca is “a coun­try built on the promise of sec­ond chances.”