President Biden’s legacy may get a boost, at least from activists and Black Nationalists, with his latest round of pardons and commutations. Among the 2,500 pardons and commuted sentences are such notables as Marcus Garvey, Kemba Smith, and Leonard Peltier.
His posthumous pardoning of Garvey sent ripples of joy to Black Americans familiar with the legendary founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Back to Africa movement. He was convicted in 1923 of using the U.S. mail to defraud buyers of his Black Star stock. He was sentenced to seven years in prison but only did two after his sentence was commuted in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge. Deported from the U.S., he returned to his native Jamaica and vainly sought to revive his organization. In 1940, he was living in London when he died.
Kemba Smith Pradia was a teenager in college when she began dating a man who was selling cocaine to students. Unbeknownst to her, he was a major figure in a crack cocaine ring and forced her to become actively involved in the ring where she subsequently was physically and mentally abused. She was pregnant when she turned herself into the police and charged with conspiracy to crack and cocaine trafficking. She was sentenced to nearly 25 years in prison but served only six years after President Clinton granted her clemency in 2000. For several years, she worked for the ACLU and is the recipient of many awards for her activism on the rights of felons. In 2019, she was appointed to the Virginia Parole Board.
Native American activist Leonard Peltier’s plight has long been high on the agenda of political activists, particularly those concerned with prison reform and justice. Peltier has been in prison for more than five decades for his conviction in the killing of two FBI agents in 1975 during a shootout in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Biden commuted his sentence to indefinite house arrest and he slated to be released in February. For many years, Peltier, 80, a prominent figure in the American Indian Movement, has been battling such ailments as diabetes, hypertension, and partial blindness.
Like the others who have been pardoned, received clemency, or been pardoned, Peltier’s commutation does expunge the conviction. Still, it will bring some comfort and relief knowing that Trump cannot revoke the pardons, though he may try.