Washington DC - President Joe Biden pardoned five people on Sunday, including the late civil rights activist Marcus Garvey, just hours before he cedes the Oval Office to Donald Trump.

Garvey, who died in 1940, was a Jamaican-born writer and orator who advocated for pan-Africanism and the fight against European and US imperialism.

After being pursued by the FBI, he was convicted of mail fraud on what are widely seen as trumped-up charges and sentenced to five years imprisonment. That sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, and he was later deported back to Jamaica. The fight for his exoneration had been ongoing ever since.

Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. called Garvey "'the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement,'" the White House said in a statement Sunday.

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Garvey "created the Black Star Line, the first Black-owned shipping line and method of international travel, and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which celebrated African history and culture," the statement added.

"Advocates and lawmakers praise his global advocacy and impact, and highlight the injustice underlying his criminal conviction."

Biden also pardoned gun violence prevention advocate Darryl Chambers, immigrant advocate Ravi Ragbir, Virginia lawmaker Don Scott, and criminal justice advocate Kemba Smith Pradia, all convicted of non-violent offenses, the White House said.

It was the latest in a slew of pardons and clemency Biden granted in his final days in office, including commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people in one day in December – as well as the controversial pardon of his son Hunter.

Despite widespread calls from lawmakers, Indigenous peoples, and civil rights advocates from all over the world, imprisoned freedom fighter Leonard Peltier was not included on the list.

Peltier, the US' longest-held Indigenous political prisoner, has spent over 48 years behind bars on charges of killing two FBI special agents in a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His conviction is widely considered to be illegitimate.