The case for exoneration of Marcus Garvey

In this edition of Reparation Conversations, P.J. Patterson, statesman-in-residence and director of the P. J. Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The UWI, presents the case for the posthumous exoneration of Rt. Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, 100 years after his wrongful conviction of mail fraud in the United States. Following is an excerpt from a speech he gave at the February 16, UWI Vice Chancellor’s Forum titled ‘Exonerate Marcus Garvey’.

When Marcus Mosiah Garvey migrated to the United States, the Confederacy revolt and the Civil War had ended; but the stains of slavery and racism had not been erased. Their deleterious effects in the quest for full freedom and equal rights were evident everywhere. Marcus Garvey’s outright condemnation of innumerable instances of racial oppression, lynching and burning as “crimes against the laws of humanity, and ... against the God of all mankind” was gospel to the ears of 370,000 African-Americans who had fought against Nazism and Fascism in Europe. Despite their courage, these men and women returned home to face many instances of violence and racism, e.g. the riots of East St Louis and Chicago in 1919 and the destruction of the black flourishing towns of Rosewood and Tulsa.

As his denunciation of these evils intensified, Garvey raised funds to assist the victims of racial violence, publishing the weekly Negro World Newspaper and launching The African-Communities’ League as the business arm of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). White supremacists, however, found his message and power of mobilisation repugnant to their designs. To the American establishment, Garvey was regarded as a threat to the very foundation on which their architecture of governance and the practice of racial superiority had been built. Garvey’s oratorical skills, his passion for racial justice, his recruitment of black men and women to secure jobs in his Negro Factories Corporation and the enrolment of six million people worldwide as members of the UNIA were intolerable for white supremacists, and several agencies of the US Federal Government.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation feared his power and wanted his expulsion from the USA. Determined to stop Garvey, the powerful J. Edgar Hoover engaged black spies to infiltrate the UNIA and carry out extensive surveillance into Garvey, which was among the most aggressive in his infamous programmes against leaders of the civil rights movement. After many failed attempts to find criminal wrongdoing and reasons to deport Garvey as an undesirable alien, J. Edgar Hoover indicted Garvey and three directors on charges of “conspiracy to use the mail in furtherance of a scheme to defraud”.

PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT

The entire trial process was replete with glaring instances of prosecutorial misconduct, including State attorneys suborning evidence from key witnesses. To this end, in his recommendation for clemency to President Calvin Coolidge, three years after Garvey’s wrongful imprisonment, Attorney General Sargent subsequently opined: “the facts as reported to the Department are severely stated and susceptible of modification and explanation”.

I assert that there was never any evidence against him; and therefore Garvey had no case to answer.

The judge for Garvey’s trial should have recused himself. His racist views were notorious, and he falsely denied being a member of a group known to be bitterly opposed to Garvey’s mission and the teachings of the UNIA. The judge’s frequent outbursts and biased rulings violated every tenet of judicial conduct in the jurisprudence of the common law. He was the ‘Persecutor in Chief’, and the 12 white jurors acted in compliance with his orders to return a verdict, which was an egregious miscarriage of justice.

The principal witness against Garvey was a 19-year-old who was coached by the prosecutors to lie. He admittedly proceeded to commit perjury in his testimony. These travesties should be sufficient to persuade President Biden to order his Justice Department, with the appropriate engagement of the US attorney for the Southern District, to obtain the only legal remedy – exoneration – and clear the blot against Garvey’s good name.

Egregious though these errors in the proceedings were, there is yet one irrefutable ground why the conviction cannot stand. Perry Mason would have called it ‘The Case of the Empty Envelope’.

In order to prove that Garvey was guilty of mail fraud, the State had to establish, inter alia, that mail was sent through the postal service from the Southern District of New York by Garvey, or on his orders, soliciting shares in a company which was defunct or bankrupt. But, firstly, the only exhibit offered in support of the mailing of the letter under the indictment count is the front and back of an envelope, marked Black Star Line. The prosecuting attorney, in presenting the letter, simply stated: “I offer the envelope in evidence on the ground it bears on the back a stamp, ‘Black Star Line’. It is a reasonable assumption that the envelope contained matter from the Black Star Line”. I submit that there is no basis in law to admit the exhibit and to draw any inference as to what were its content. In allowing this evidence, the judge made a serious error of law.

DID NOT TESTIFY

Additionally, the witness, Dancy, did not testify that he received the envelope, but that he recognised the envelope, stating further that he could not remember what was in it. No secondary evidence could be adduced with regards to its contents. So how could any judge allow a jury to guess or speculate what its contents might have been? The only evidence submitted was an empty envelope. Where is the proof that it was mailed, or caused to be mailed by Marcus Garvey? What was in the envelope? How can it be assumed that it contained fraudulent matter? How can the jury be asked to speculate on the contents of this empty envelope? There is not a scintilla of evidence that Garvey placed, or caused to be placed in the mail, the circular or letter described or referred to in this count of the indictment. How can any conviction be based on an empty envelope where its contents cannot be assumed or ascertained?

The judge must have been unaware of two simple legal tenets or chosen to discard them: a) He who asserts must prove; b) It is for the State to prove beyond reasonable doubt the contents of the envelope and that they were inculpatory. For these compelling reasons, it is clear that Marcus Garvey was not guilty of any offence of moral turpitude.

In light of this grave miscarriage of justice against one of the most significant human rights defenders in history, it is my view that the petition for Garvey’s posthumous exoneration should not be confined to persons of African ancestry. The appeal for the exoneration of Marcus Garvey deserves the support of every man and woman, in every continent and island who loves justice and equality under the law.

It is more than 100 years ago since this manifest act of injustice was perpetrated on Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a man whose only conviction was to Get Up, Stand Up, Stand Up for our Rights.