8-th, 2004 - 29: 1   (Posted By: Webmaster)
Application for Executive Clemency by Marcus Garvey - 13 June 1925

Previous Page by them was the result of such set prejudice.

That the prosecutor did summon to New York from Atlanta, Ga., for questioning about me, Mr. Edward Young Clark Clarke, acting Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who himself, at that time was under federal indictment, and that such a conference and such questionings about me and my alleged membership in and relationship to the Klan was irrelevant to my prosecution for using the mails to defraud and could have had no other intent and result than to increase the prejudice of the Jewish prosecutor against me, and that it is reasonable to infer that the learned Judge also shared a similar prejudice, and that their attitude toward me during the trial and after, was actuated by such prejudice.

The fact that I was accused in Court by the wild, evasive, frivolous and irresponsible testimony of the Government witness, Leo Healy, of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and at the same time wickedly and maliciously stating for effect on the jury, that I did not want any American citizens as officers of the corporation of the Black Star Line, but Liberians, a statement proved false by the fact that the majority of Directors, Officers and Associates were American citizens, and that the said Healy had admitted that he had had special luncheon with the prosecutor (who used every subterfuge and artifice to create prejudice against me for conviction) before testifying, and the fact that several Jewish gentlemen were members of the jury, created a prejudice against me that it was hard to overcome, and that said prejudice militated against my receiving justice in the trial Court.

That in the year of 1921, I did by appointment, visit the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan at Atlanta, Ga., and conversed for about two hours with Mr. Edward Young Clark, then acting Imperial Wizard of the Klan, at which time there was present another person representing the Klan as also my private secretary Enid Lamos. My reason for the visit and interview was to authoritatively and correctly find out the corporate and objective attitude of the newly organized Klan toward the members of my race.

Being the head and leader of a large Negro organization that embraced millions of members scattered all over the country and the world, it was my duty to find out and be thoroughly and competently informed and to advise my race about all and every movement, society or organizations that may tend to impede or jeopardize, their interest and for the fact that I was being goaded by sections of the irresponsible, venal, Negro press and hot headed and unthinking Negro agitators and professionally agitating Negro organizations to call upon Negroes to attack the Klan in the wave of attacks that was then levied at them, which I refused to do, because of a desire to prevent further hard feelings between the races, riots, and civil strikes, and because I had no positive proof except exaggerated newspaper reports, that the Ku Klux Klan had any other desire than to preserve their race from suicide through miscegenation and to keep it pure, which to me is not a crime but a commendable desire and did not supply the reason why Negroes should attack them, and because I believed in the purity, honor, pride and integrity of each and every race. Other than this I had no motive in visiting and conversing with the Officers of the

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