KINGSTON, Jamaica — Congresswoman Yvette D Clarke and seventeen other members of the House of Representatives have called on US President Barack Obama to pardon civil rights leader Marcus Garvey.

Clarke, in a release today, noted that despite his legacy Garvey “…has never been fully exonerated from racially-motivated charges of mail fraud”.

On January 12, 1922, while residing in the United States, Garvey, founder of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and charged with mail fraud.

In 1925, Garvey began serving a five-year sentence in a US penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.

After several appeals, his sentence was eventually commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, and he was deported to Jamaica.

Garvey inspired generations of leaders, from slain civil rights leader Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr to former South African president Nelson Mandela, the release said.

Clarke also noted that: “His efforts to organise the African Diaspora across nations in support of freedom and self-determination were critical to the movements for independence in Africa and the Caribbean and to the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States. When Marcus Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, most of the nations of the Caribbean were colonies of the British Empire, and African Americans in the United States – nearly forty years after the end of the Civil War – were effectively denied their human rights.”

Clarke explained that Garvey meets the criteria for a posthumous pardon, based on his efforts to secure the rights of people of African descent and the utter lack of merit to the charges on which he was convicted.

“We ask therefore that President Obama work with the Department of Justice to secure a pardon for this man of accomplishment and high distinction,” the release added.