Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican civil rights activist, the founding father of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and an owner of the Black Star Line shipping company.

America is a country,” Pres. Joe Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon alongside four others, “built on the promise of second chances.”

In one of his final acts in office, President Joe Biden posthumously pardoned Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr., a seminal figure in the civil rights movement, whose advocacy for Black nationalism and self-reliance left an indelible mark on leaders like Malcolm X and movements across the Black diaspora.