A floral tribute for Jamaica’s first national hero, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, will be held today at National Heroes Park in Kingston, as the nation marks the 119th anniversary of his birth.

Garvey, the father of contemporary black nationalism, was born in St Ann’s Bay, on August 17, 1887. He was the youngest of 11 children.

Garvey, revered by members of the Rastafarian faith as a prophet and saint, died in England in 1940. In the 1960s, his remains were re-interred in Jamaica at the National Heroes Park.

At age 14, Garvey began working in a printery and became acquainted with the abysmal living conditions of the working class. He quickly involved himself in social reforms, participating in the first Printers’ Union strike in Jamaica in 1907, after which he established his own newspaper, The Watchman, and later another newspaper called the Negro World.

In 1914, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League (ACL).

The St Ann’s Bay Homecoming Committee recently wrote to Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, seeking her intervention in the efforts to have the national hero’s name expunged from criminal records in the United States, where he was convicted by the American Court in 1923 on trumped up charges of mail fraud.