Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr., ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940), was a Jamaican political activist leader. He started the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He inspired Rastafarians and the Nation of Islam. Garvey was a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist. His ideas came to be known as Garveyism.

Garvey in 1924

Garvey was born in Jamaica. He left Jamaica in 1910. He lived in Costa Rica for a few months. In 1912 he moved back to Jamaica. The Marcus Garvey Award is given each year to a Jamaican by JAM. He was an important activist during the Back-to-Africa movement.

Garvey was controversial because he supported the separation of black and white people and even supported the Ku Klux Klan.^[1] He thanked white people for Jim Crow laws as well.^[1]

Garvey had a stroke in January 1940 and this caused many to believe he had died.^[2] In fact, many early obituaries of Garvey were released, some of which Garvey read himself.^[2] He died in London on 10 June 1940 shortly after reading another early obituary of him, aged 52.^[3][2]
He is buried in NAtional Heroes Park, Kingstown Jamaica^[4] The "...Obama administration had "flatly rejected request for a presidential pardon for Jamaica's first national hero, the Right Honorable Marcus Garvey" on the grounds that it would be "a waste of time and resources" since Garvey had been "dead for ages..."^[5] Garvey was pardoned by President J Bidden in 19 January 2025.