HARLEM, Manhattan (PIX11) -- He became world-renowned, as well as controversial, because of his actions and statements about black empowerment at a time when the concept was virtually unknown.
Now, Marcus Garvey, the organizational leader who ended up being convicted of mail fraud a century ago, has been pardoned by Joe Biden, in one of the former president's last official acts. While the move clears Garvey's name, a variety of advocates say that more needs to be done to cement his legacy.
Garvey immigrated to New York from Jamaica during World War I. After the war ended, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, an organization that promoted Black pride, Black economic strength, and Black separatism. Garvey coined the expression "Black is beautiful," according to the New York City Parks Department.
It named the former Mount Morris Park, in central Harlem, after him in 1977. The move was meant to honor the many accomplishments of the Harlem-based international leader.
From a brownstone at 235 West 131st Street, Garvey founded and ran his economic and political movement. It ended up including a shipping company, the Black Star Line, meant to help Blacks return to the African continent. When it wasn't successful, federal officials were able to convict Garvey of mail fraud, in 1923. Seen as a politically motivated charge, it was pardoned by Joe Biden in one of his last presidential acts.
On Monday, at the park named after the Black Power leader, dozens of people were on hand, playing in the snow.
Ebony Banks Turner was one of them.
"That's great," she said about the pardon, for which she expressed surprise over it having taken more than 100 years to come about. "It should've been happening. It should've been happening for him," she said.
Most parkgoers who spoke with PIX11 News were not familiar with Garvey, but they all expressed appreciation that he's memorialized in the park. Aliya Jefferson is a nanny who was at Marcus Garvey Playground in the eponymous park, with two children she said that she looks after and instructs.
She said that it's important for a wide variety of culturally significant figures to be highlighted in education.
"We started talking about... other historical people, like Marcus Garvey," she said.
She said that she'd been familiar with the man who, a few blocks from the park... founded his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association. It grew to have tens of thousands of members worldwide.
Locally in New York, Garvey not only has the Harlem Park named in his honor. His name also graces a boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, as well as three different housing areas in the borough.
Rep. Yvette Clarke represents the congressional district that includes all of the Marcus Garvey-named entities in Brooklyn.
"He was a global leader who spent so much of his time in the City of New York, mobilizing, organizing," Clarke said in an interview.
She went on to say that while former President Biden's pardon clears Garvey's name posthumously and further magnifies his legacy, the Black leader's full record is not cleared without one more step: full exoneration.
"I'm looking forward to that day," she said about the exoneration effort. It has to be carried out, by law by Congress. Clarke said that she appreciates continuing to lead that campaign. While the new, Republican-controlled Congress may not prioritize the exoneration effort, Clarke said, a position to which she was just elevated by be helpful. Clarke became chair of the Congressional Black Caucus at the beginning of this year.
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