In one of his last acts as outgoing US president, Joe Biden posthumously pardoned civil rights leader and former West Kensington resident Marcus Garvey.
In the late 1920s, Black activist Garvey and his wife Amy were regarded as one of the most significant human rights married couples of the 20th century. They lived at 57 Castletown Road in West Kensington.
Today, it's one of the most celebrated addresses in the capital – a rare example of a property bearing a blue plaque commemorating five global figures of note.
Last autumn, Cllr Sharon Holder, H&F Cabinet Member for Public Realm, applauded the plaque unveiling as an appropriate way to launch Black History Month.
"This is part of the council's wider programme to diversify our public realm by visibly celebrating the borough's Black heritage and history in a proactive way," she said.
Strong influence
A century ago, Garvey was a strong influence on Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders. However, he was convicted of the crime of mail fraud in the United States – an act now seen as having been politically motivated in an effort to silence the outspoken activist.
Following the conviction, Garvey was deported from America to Jamaica, his country of birth. He then made his way to London, where the Castletown Road address eventually became his home, along with his wife Amy, from March 1928 to October 1929.
The Rev Martin Luther King Jr said of Garvey: "He was the first man, on a mass scale and level" to give millions of Black people "a sense of dignity and destiny".
Blue plaque
In September last year, the Garveys' former home was honoured with a commemorative plaque as part of H&F's celebration of Black History Month.
The five-storey house, just round the corner from the Queens Club, was also variously home to the African statesman and nationalist Jomo Kenyatta and the Nigerian civil rights lawyer and leader of the West African Organisation Ladipo Solanke.
Solanke was supported in his campaigning for Nigerian rights by Amy Ashwood Garvey, the Jamaican feminist activist who co-founded the influential newspaper Negro World with her husband Marcus.
Years later, the same house became the London base of Malcolm X, the African American revolutionary who campaigned for civil rights and was the Nation of Islam's vocal advocate.
He lived there in 1965 before returning to New York shortly before his 40th birthday, where he was assassinated.
