Biden urges Americans to ‘keep the faith’ on his last full day as president

Joe Biden traveled to South Carolina on Sunday, his last full day as US president, where he urged Americans to "keep the faith in a better day to come" as he marked the national holiday honoring civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

A scant day before turning the White House over to Donald Trump, Biden attended services at Royal Missionary Baptist Church, a historically Black church in North Charleston.

Promising that he is "not going anywhere," Biden told the congregants that America "must stay engaged, we must always keep the faith in a better day to come."

He also spoke about the continued fight to make King's dream of a color-blind nation "a reality."

Racial progress has never moved in a smooth arc in the United States, and some have described the election of Trump -- who in 2015 insisted that Barack Obama was not an American -- as a step backward.

But Biden told the congregants that "every time I spend time in a Black church I think of one thing: the word 'hope.'"

Early Sunday, the White House announced that, in one of his final official acts, Biden had pardoned Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born writer and orator seen by some as a prophet who advocated for a return to Africa.

Garvey had been convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to prison, but the sentence was commuted in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge. Biden's pardon expunges Garvey's conviction from the record.