Marcus Garvey Convicted and Deported; FBI's Hoover Orchestrated Case

Marcus Garvey, leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association with 4–6 million members, was convicted of mail fraud in 1923 related to stock sales for his Black Star Line steamship company. J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI's Radical Division, built the case against Garvey beginning in 1919, deploying Black informants including James Wormley Jones. Garvey's sentence began in 1925. President Coolidge commuted his sentence in 1927, after which Garvey was deported to Jamaica. Hoover considered Pan-African organizing a national security threat.