David Hinds, founder and lead vocalist of Steel Pulse, says he has questions he’d like to ask of both Hawaii-born former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.

Obama pardoned or commuted the sentences of more people than any president in history, including that of Chelsea Manning, the transgender former security analyst who leaked classified or sensitive military and diplomatic documents. Hinds said he’d ask Obama why he did not expunge the criminal convictions of two standard-bearing African-Americans who were prosecuted for political reasons in the early years of the 20th century.

“It would have spoken volumes to me if he had pardoned Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world,” Hinds said. “I would have asked him why he didn’t go about trying to put that right.”

The vocalist was taking a call last week on the Caribbean island of Martinique, where he had been working on the group’s next album — the first studio recording for Steel Pulse since 2004. He returns to Honolulu with Steel Pulse for a one-nighter at The Republik on Monday.

“Jack Johnson was imprisoned because he crossed state lines with a white woman. Especially with (Obama) being of mixed race, I think he would have looked at it from that direction where his parents were of different color and his father could have been imprisoned back in the day. I would ask him about why he didn’t look about pardoning Jack Johnson,” Hinds said. “And I would ask him about exonerating or pardoning Marcus Garvey.”

If Hinds could meet Trump, he’d suggest that Trump confound his critics by pardoning Garvey and Johnson.

“I’d say, ‘If you’re going to do everything that Barack Obama didn’t do, why not pardon them?’” Hinds said with a chuckle. “Wouldn’t it be great if Donald Trump decided to turn everything around and said, ‘I’ll show ’em! I’m gonna exonerate Jack Johnson and Marcus Garvey!’ Yeah!”

Johnson’s cause is familiar to many who study the history of racism in America. The boxer became the first black heavyweight champion of the world when he defeated James J. Jeffries in 1908; it was the first time that a black boxer had been allowed to fight a white boxer in a sanctioned bout. In 1912 Johnson was charged with taking his white girlfriend “across state lines for immoral purposes” even though the law he was charged with violating had not been in effect when they made the trip. The boxer eventually spent a year and a day in prison. He was a convicted felon for the rest of his life.

Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, encouraging his fellow blacks to unify and empower themselves by establishing their own economic infrastructure and institutions. This alarmed the U.S. government, and after a long-term investigation by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Garvey was eventually charged with federal mail fraud and sentenced to five years in federal prison for the offense in 1923. Upon his release in 1928, Garvey was deported to Jamaica. In 2011 Obama turned down requests that Garvey be pardoned.

Despite Obama’s disinterest in pardoning Johnson and Garvey, Hinds and Steel Pulse were vocal supporters of Obama when he launched his initial campaign. Hinds wrote a song endorsing Obama, “Barack Barack,” in 2008, and followed it with another solid endorsement, “Paint the White House Black.”

Hinds said he was told that “a lot of key people” had heard “Barack Barack” in 2008, but he hasn’t received acknowledgement from the White House.

Political issues have been part of Steel Pulse’s repertoire since it was founded in 1975 by Hinds (lead vocals, guitar), Basil Gabbidon (lead guitar, vocals) and Ronald McQueen (bass) in Birmingham, England.

The group’s first single, “Kibudu, Mansetta and Abuku,” was about the experiences of black urban youth in England. Another early single, “Ku Klux Klan,” called for resistance to racism. In 1993 Hinds addressed a long-standing problem in New York: cabdrivers not stopping for black passengers in general and Rastafarians in particular — with a song titled “Taxi Driver.”

In 1986, album “Babylon the Bandit” earned the group a Grammy for best reggae album. Steel Pulse was the first non-Jamaican outfit to win the award.

Its most recent album release, “African Holocaust,” came out in 2004, and is the group’s 11th studio album. It was hailed as a return to the group’s roots in protest.

In its latest material, Steel Pulse commented on climate change (“Global Planning”), political corruption (“Tyrant”) and urban violence (“Put Your Hoodies On [4 Trayvon]).”

The group also recorded a reggae arrangement of “George Jackson,” originally written and recorded by Bob Dylan, to protest the 1971 killing of Jackson, a member of the Black Panthers, while attempting to escape from California’s San Quentin prison.

The Dylan song has become a snapshot of a particular event frozen in time, but many of Hinds’ songs are timeless.

“We wrote a song about about the (English) National Front, a racist political party that exploded in the mid-’70s; there were riots throughout Britain during that time for that reason, and come to think about it, the world’s gone full circle,” Hinds said. “It goes to show that a song we wrote and recorded 40 years ago is as current as ever.”

Hinds, 60, mentioned African-American activist Angela Davis as one of the many people who shaped his view of the world. Davis, also affiliated with the Black Panthers in the late 1960s and ’70s, was famously charged with but found not guilty of conspiracy, kidnapping and murder in a case connected to Jackson’s imprisonment.

“Everyone wore Angela Davis badges because of the whole incident involving George Jackson. We’ve yet to meet Angela but we’d love to do that,” Hinds said. “That would be like a milestone. So many key figures that have molded my life and my personality have passed on, like Muhammad Ali and Pete Seeger and B.B. King.”

As a musical influence, Hinds said he also admired the multifaceted African-American spoken-word performer and self-styled “bluesologist” Gil Scott-Heron, who influenced a generation with his 1970 recording “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Scott-Heron was a hero whom Hinds was able to meet.

“I got the gist of what America was all about through the songs of Gil Scott-Heron,” Hinds said. “I met him on a couple of occasions, watched quite a few of his shows, a lot of his shows in the United States and the United Kingdom, and hung out with him. We’ve been searching religiously for a couple of photos that we made together backstage at one of his dates. I don’t know that anyone has found one yet.

“Meeting Bob Marley was an equal treat. They both molded my sense of lyric writing and the way I do things. I have to give credit and big ups to those guys.”