Part 1 of this piece was published in The Agenda of Sunday, February 20, 2022. This is the conclusion.

The second legal issue that Hansford raises is that of Judge Mack erring in not addressing perjured testimony by the key prosecution witness, Schuyler Cargill. The sole count on which the Government convicted Garvey rested on the allegation that Garvey caused to be mailed a letter soliciting Benny Dancy’s purchase of Black Star Line Steamship Company shares when the organisation was near insolvency, depended heavily on Cargill’s testimony, as he was the 19-year office boy/Black Star Line Steamship Company employee, who had allegedly mailed the letter soliciting Dancy’s purchase.

Cargill was the only Black Star Line Steamship Company employee who testified that he was an actual participant in the sending of false advertisements by US mail. But apparently in his cross-examination he admitted that the prosecutor (Maxwell Mattock) had told him to lie on the stand. According to Hansford, specifically, Mattock instructed Cargill to say that he had worked for the Black Star Line Steamship Company in 1919 and in 1920. However, when cross-examined Cargill revealed that he did not even know who was the mailing supervisor at those times, and reluctantly admitted that it was the prosecutor who advised him to mention those dates.

Hansford points out that in 1923, at the time of Garvey’s trial, the perjury rule authorised courts to grant a new trial, if one could prove that a witness willfully and deliberately had testified falsely. It follows then that as Cargill had willfully and deliberately testified falsely (at least to the years that he had worked for the Black Star Line Steamship Compan), and because Judge Julian Mack had failed to strike this testimony and instruct the jury to disregard it, or even offered to grant a new trial, the district court’s conviction of Garvey could have been legally expunged according to the perjury rules in existence at the time. Unfortunately, Garvey as a layman representing himself, was most likely not aware of this, otherwise it is almost certain that he would have pushed for a new trial or pushed for the expungement of his conviction.

Of important note is that the only physical evidence that was tendered that ultimately led to Garvey’s conviction of the charge of mail fraud was an empty envelope addressed to Benny Dancy and stamped with the Black Star Line Steamship Compan seal on the back — but with no accompanying letter or company-related materials whatsoever. In fact none of the purported contents that were purported to have been mailed to Dancy on the instruction of Garvey were ever furnished before, during or after the trial. Where, then, was the tangible proof that the envelope that was allegedly mailed from the BSL office contained materials for the express purpose of soliciting funds from Benny Dancy? This is just one of the questions that reverberate not only within my head, but also in the heads of many who have scrutinised Garvey’s trial.

The appeal court hearing/trial of 1925 proved to be a disaster for Garvey as essentially they upheld the determination of the lower court’s biased trial. Even though during the essentially two-year interim between the trials many members of the public, the legal academic fraternity, and even some of Garvey’s own political opponents publicly announced that they thought that Garvey should not have been convicted, the appellate judges (Henry Rogers, Charles Hough) affirmed Garvey’s conviction and summoned Garvey for a five-year prison sentence on February 2, 1925.

When the news of the decision reached Garvey he was in Detroit. Although he immediately wired to his lawyers that he needed a couple of days to get his affairs in order — being that the date of his appeal had been brought forward unexpectedly by a couple of days — and that he would then travel south on the first available train. But a warrant for his arrest had already been issued. This meant that Garvey ended up being detained in custody at the Tombs prison in New York pending transfer to Atlanta Penitentiary. It was indeed a sad moment for Garvey when it came time for him to depart New York, in handcuffs, which was for all intents and purposes the epicentre of his operations when he and his UNIA reached its dizzying zenith.

The only silver lining for him was that Amy Jacques Garvey was able to accompany him on the train south-bound from New York to Atlanta as he was transported in handcuffs under the watchful eye of US authorities.

He never got to get his affairs in order so far as the US was concerned, as immediate deportation to Jamaica awaited his release from the Atlanta penitentiary, resulting in him never setting foot on US soil again.

There is an iconographic picture of him on a docked ship, waving goodbye to a large crowd of followers, friends and well-wishers, who had gathered at the docks of the New Orleans shipping port to bid Garvey goodbye and catch one last glimpse of him before the ship he was on left port, signalling for most the last time they would ever see him in the flesh again.

Although his five-year prison sentence was eventually commuted to two and a half years by President Calvin Coolidge, the damage had been done. Garvey now had a criminal record and, not being based in his Harlem Headquarters any more, his worldwide influence was significantly hampered and his UNIA organisation splintered and fragmented.

On the basis that Garvey was wrongfully convicted of mail fraud an argument for his exoneration has been long-standing now. Julius Garvey, Marcus Garvey’s youngest son, led an exoneration campaign/petition drive during the course of Barack Obama’s second term. There was overwhelming support for the petition, but disappointingly Obama did not seem to show any apparent interest in considering it. Then, in 2016, when it was assumed that Hilary Clinton would win the presidential race against Donald Trump, there was an effort to resurrect the petition drive.

Now, with Joe Biden in office, it has been deemed another appropriate time to push for the exoneration and the requisite expungement of his criminal record. This particular drive is being spearheaded locally by the Marcus Garvey Institute (led by Julius Garvey) and the P J Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy, as well as the Centre for Reparation Research, and importantly has the blessing of the National Council on Reparation and the Jamaican Government.

It must be emphasised that it is an exoneration that is being called for, and not a presidential pardon, on the basis that Marcus Garvey was not guilty of a crime in the first place, and that he was unjustly criminalised.

So far as Garvey’s past convictions in Jamaica are concerned, he was jailed twice in Jamaica. These were expunged a few years back. In fact, it was in 2018 that the Government passed the National Heroes and Other Freedom Fighters (Absolution from Criminal Liability in Respect of Specified Events) Act, 2018.

What this does in effect is to acknowledge that, in the local context, our national heroes, including Marcus Garvey and other freedom fighters, in their fight for equality and self determination, resisted unjust laws and oppression and for those acts were convicted. The Act essentially absolves them of all criminal liability in recognition of their sacrifice and efforts to win the freedoms we now enjoy in our nation.

This move was partly inspired by a series of consultations with the National Council on Reparation, of which I am a part, on the matter of the then existing criminal records of Marcus Garvey and other national heroes, such as Paul Bogle, Sam Sharpe, and George William Gordon, a few months after the Jamaica Labour Party Administration came back into power on the back of the March 2016 elections.

Michael Barnett is a sociology lecturer in critical race theory at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, and a board member of the National Council on Reparation. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or barnett37@hotmail.com.