The Politics of Repatriation and the First Rastafari, 1932–1940

Abstract

This article examines Leonard P. Howell’s understanding of repatriation as a form of black resistance aimed at decolonizing Jamaica. Howell, who is considered a Rastafari founder, engaged in political activities that indicated an investment in psychological repatriation as opposed to physical repatriation to facilitate a Rastafari black nationalist agenda for Jamaica. The Rastafari movement was inspired by the conception of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie I as the promised return of the Messiah, prophesied by the Bible. Howell’s use of repatriation to Ethiopia for black people has been equated to the back-to-Africa campaign of Marcus Garvey, the great pan-Africanist and black nationalist. However, Howell’s efforts to use repatriation to decolonize the Jamaican people suggests an alternative view. His back-to-Africa rhetoric was inflated by the British colonial government of Jamaica, and later creole nationalists, to undermine his political successes. The colonial strategy applied to Howell has left distorted knowledge about his radical anti-colonialism and political agency. While it is indisputable that he paid homage to Ethiopia, this article demonstrates that Howell intended to remain in Jamaica, where he would work to make the island a part of a global diaspora of the kingdom of God in Ethiopia.

Keywords:

• back-to-Africa
• black nationalism
• decolonization
• Ethiopianism
• Garvey movement
• Leonard Howell
• pan-Africanism
• Rastafari movement

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the help of the late Professor Flore Zephir of the University of Missouri, Columbia, who kindly read a draft of this article and provided invaluable suggestions. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, I thank my wife, Irica, for her love and support.

Notes

The archival sources used in this article can be found in Jamaica, Britain, and the United States. The “Pinnacle Papers” contain most of the records on Leonard Howell and are housed at the Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town (JA). Approximately sixty percent of these records are typed and the remainder are handwritten documents. The Colonial Office Records can be found at the British National Archives, Kew (TNA), and the U.S. Department of Labor Records are at the National Archives, Washington, DC. The National Library of Jamaica, Kingston, has copies of the newspapers used in this article. However, copies of the Daily Gleaner are also available online. The laws of Jamaica can be found at http://moj.gov.jm/laws. The author also conducted open-ended interviews with Howellites and other elder Rastafari members between 2010 and 2017, two of which are used in this article.

Horace Campbell, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1994), 3.

Sunday Gleaner, October 30, 1960, clipping found in the file titled, Activities of C. V. Henry & His Back to Africa Movement, The National Archives, UK (TNA), CO1031-3998, 19.

Rastafari in Jamaica, Notes for Mr. Amery, TNA, CO1031-3998, 18.

Barry Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 93.

Colin Clarke, Race, Class, and the Politics of Decolonization: Jamaica Journals, 1961 and 1968 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 22; Rupert Charles Lewis, Walter Rodney: 1968 Revisited (Kingston: Canoe Press, University of the West Indies, 1998), 22n33.

Samuel Elisha Brown, “Treatise on the Rastafarian Movement,” Caribbean Studies 6, no. 1 (1966): 39, 40.

The term socialistic is used here to refer to the collective ownership and equitable distribution of land and capital within black communities to make their inhabitants independent of white capitalism. Socialistic reflects the Rastafari movement’s conception of the community as family, applied more broadly to include the black nation as a whole as family.

To the best of my knowledge, I am not related to the Rastafari founder Henry Archibald Dunkley.

R. A. Leevy, “Ras Tafarianism: Haile Selassie, Emperor of Abyssinia, Inspired a New Religion in Jamaica,” Public Opinion (February 20, 1943): 3 [Part 2].

See, Hélène Lee, The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism, Trans. Lily Davis (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 2003).

Communication of Capital Sentence, “Reports in Case of Edward Rodney for Murder, Encloses Copy Report of Trial, Notes, etc.” (CO57554, Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, JA, 1915), 100, 101.

List or Manifest of Aliens Employed on the Vessel as Members of Crew (Washington, DC: National Archives, U.S. Department of Labor, Records of the Immigration Service), Record Group 85, 85.3.1, New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957.

Robert A. Hill, Dread History: Leonard P. Howell and Millenarian Visions in the Early Rastafarian Religion (Chicago IL: Research Associates School Times Publications and Frontline Distribution International, 2001), 21, 22.

Ibid., 23.

Miguel Lorne, “Introduction,” in The Promised Key, edited by Leonard P. Howell, (Kingston: Headstart Books and Craft, and Frontline Distribution Int., 1995 [Orig. 1935.]), xiii.

Hill, Dread History, 18; Miguel Lorne, “Introduction,” in The Holy Piby, edited by Robert Athlyi Rogers (Kingston: Research Associates School Times Publication and Frontline Distribution International, 2000 [Orig. 1924]), 8.

Acting Inspector General to Private Secretary, July 18, 1936, JA 5073/34; Hill, Dread History, 22.

“Sixaola in Yesterday from New York with Mails and Passengers,” Daily Gleaner (November 18, 1932): 9.

George E. Simpson, “Political Cultism in West Kingston, Jamaica,” Social and Economic Studies 4, no. 2 (1955): 135; George Eaton Simpson, “The Ras Tafari Movement in Jamaica: A Study of Race and Class Conflict,” Social Forces 34 (1955): 168, 169. Simpson noted that the only Rastafari founder that he was able to interview was Joseph Hibbert. See, George Eaton Simpson, “Personal Reflections on Rastafari in West Kingston in the early 1950s,” in Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader, edited by Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer, and Adrian Anthony McFarlane (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1998), 223.

Erin C. MacLeod, Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari in the Search for the Promised Land (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 9.

Leonard E. Barrett, The Rastafarians (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1997), 2.

Ken Post, “The Bible as Ideology: Ethiopianism in Jamaica, 1930–38,” in African Perspectives: Papers in the History, Politics and Economics of Africa presented to Thomas Hodgkin, edited by Christopher Allen and R. W. Johnson (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 195; Ken Post, Arise Ye Starvelings: The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978), 166, 165.

Barry Chevannes, “Garvey Myths among the Jamaican People,” in Garvey: His Work and Impact, edited by Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1994 [Orig. 1988]), 124; Chevannes, Rastafari, 99–110.

D. A. Dunkley, “Leonard P. Howell’s Leadership of the Rastafari Movement and his ‘Missing Years,’” Caribbean Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2012): 16. The original source is Jérémie Kroubo Dagnini, “Remembering Rasta Pioneers: An Interview with Barry Chevannes,” Journal of Pan African Studies 3, no. 4 (2009): 23.

Chevannes, Rastafari, ix, 154.

Giulia Bonacci, Exodus!: Heirs and Pioneers, Rastafari Return to Ethiopia (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2015), 8, 154, 155.

“The Seditious Meetings Act [1836],” Amended 1961, 1969, 1973, Government of Jamaica, Section 2, L.N. 480/1973. Note that this law was not amended until Jamaica was on the verge of political independence from Britain.

Attorney General to the Colonial Secretary, January 14, 1930, Confidential: “Blackman”—Seditious Articles in Governors of Jamaica, JA 1B/5/79, 1.

Tony Martin, The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond (Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1985), 125–26; Robert Hill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, vol. VII November 1927—August 1940 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 381n2.

Statement of District Constable Thomas Kelly, Taken by Corporal Leonard M. Thomas, Trinity Ville Station, April 19, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Minutes, Colonial Secretary’s Office, Inspector General Owen Wright to the Colonial Secretary, April 20, 1933, JA 1B/5/77/394, 2.

G. R. McKenzie, J. A. Atkinson, J. W. Wright, E. Harley, C. Thomas and Others, Ex-soldiers, to Sir Alexander Ransford Slater, Governor in Chief of Jamaica and its Dependencies, May 1, 1933, JA 1B/5/77/394, 3.

Statement of Madalin Kildare, Taken by Corporal Leonard M. Thomas, April 19, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Inspector W. C. Adams to Inspector General Owen Wright, May 14, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Inspector General Owen Wright, Circular Memo, to the Inspector in charge of St. Elizabeth, June 5, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Statement of Corporal E. Coombs, June 11, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Detective Inspector R. Charles to Inspector General Owen Wright, July 31, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Statement of Jane Empty, Taken by Corporal Leonard M. Thomas, April 19, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Detective Inspector R. Charles to Inspector General Owen Wright, July 31, 1933, JA 1B/5/79. All currency conversions are to 2005’s prices and were done using The Currency Converter of The National Archives, London, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/ (accessed November 3, 2016).

Crown Solicitor to the Attorney General, July 11, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Inspector W. C. Adams to Inspector General Owen Wright, June 14, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Inspector W. C. Adams to Corporal E. Coombs, September 9, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

Corporal E. Coombs to Inspector W. C. Adams, October 15, 1933, JA 1B/5/79, 1-2.

Lee, The First Rasta, 67.

Elder W. E. Barclay to Inspector W. C. Adams, October 31, 1933, JA 1B/5/79, 1-2.

Inspector W. C. Adams to Inspector General Owen Wright, December 23, 1933, JA 1B/5/79, 1, 2.

Acting Inspector General to the Private Secretary, Colonial Secretary’s Office, July 18, 1936, JA 1B/5/79.

“Leonard Howell, On Trial Says Ras Tafari is Messiah,” Daily Gleaner (March 15, 1934): 20.

Ibid.

Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, 166.

“Chief Justice Denounces Leonard Howell as a Fraud,” Daily Gleaner (March 17, 1934): 6; Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, 166, 165.

“Chief Justice Denounces Leonard Howell as a Fraud,” 6.

Chevannes, Rastafari, 127, 129.

R. A. Leevy, “Ras Tafarianism: Haile Selassie, Emperor of Abyssinia, Inspired a New Religion in Jamaica,” Public Opinion (February 13, 1943): 3 [Part 1].

Howell, The Promised Key, 27.

Ibid., 1, 2.

Ibid., 5, 6, 7, 8.

Leevy, “Ras Tafarianism,” 3 [Part 1].

Two Jamaican pastors confirmed this claim, Reverend Dr. Devon Dick of the Boulevard Baptist Church, Kingston, and Reverend Garth Minott, Anglican Chaplain, University of the West Indies, St. Andrew.

Joseph Owens, Dread: The Rastafarians of Jamaica (Kingston: Sangster’s Book Stores Ltd, 1976), 225.

Alphonso Gallimore, interviewed by author, Pinnacle and Tredegar Park, St. Catherine, Jamaica, July 20, 2016.

Owens, Dread, 237.

Statement of Constable Edward Parnell, June 11, 1933, JA 1B/5/79.

L. P. Howell to George Padmore, March 21, 1939, JA 1B/5/79, C74.

George Padmore, “Hands off the Colonies!,” New Leader (1938), https://www.marxists.org/archive/padmore/1938/hands-off.htm (accessed December 28, 2016).

Commissioner of Police Owen Wright to the Colonial Secretary, July 15, 1939, JA 1B/5/79, 9.

W. P. Foster-Sutton, Rules of the Ethiopian Salvation Society, February 18, 1939, JA 1B/5/79/735, 57A.

Alexander Bustamante to the Colonial Secretary, July 6, 1939, JA 1B/5/79/735.

Giulia Bonacci, “The Ethiopian World Federation: A Pan-African Organisation among the Rastafari in Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2013): 77, 79.

Campbell, Rasta and Resistance, 76.

Bonacci, Exodus!, 160.

Charles Price, Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 63.

Owen Wright to the Colonial Secretary, January 15, 1940, JA 1B/5/79, 35.

Sgd. B. A. Palmer, January 8, 1940, Report of Speech made by Leonard Howell, leader of the Ras Tafari Cult, at a meeting held at Port Morant on 7.1.40., JA 1B/5/79, 62A. Also see A. F. Richards, Governor of Jamaica, to Malcolm McDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, April 9, 1940, Confidential, JA 1B/5/79, 20; and Owen Wright to the Colonial Secretary, January 15, 1940, JA 1B/5/79, 35.

John Carradine, “The Ras Tafarites Retreat to Mountain Fastnesses of St. Catherine,” Daily Gleaner (November 23, 1940): 26.

Campbell, Rasta and Resistance, 95.

Gerald Lloyd Downer, interviewed by author, Tredegar Park, St. Catherine, Jamaica, August 24, 2011; Audrey Elizabeth Lewis, interviewed by author, Salt River, Clarendon, Jamaica, May 5, 2013.

R. A. Leevy, “Ras Tafarianism: Haile Selassie, Emperor of Abyssinia, Inspired a New Religion in Jamaica,” Public Opinion (1943): 3 [Part 2].

John Blake, “Is Black Lives Matter Blowing It?” CNN (2016), http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/29/us/black-lives-matter-blowing-it/index.html, accessed October 25, 2017.

James Cairns, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 34.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

D. A. Dunkley

D. A. Dunkley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Dr. Dunkley’s publications include the two anthologies, Leonard Percival Howell and the Genesis of Rastafari (2015) and Readings in Caribbean History and Culture: Breaking Ground (2011). Dunkley’s monograph, Agency of the Enslaved: Jamaica and the Culture of Freedom in the Atlantic World (2013), examined black resistance during slavery. In addition, he has published several journal articles and book chapters on the Rastafari movement, black nationalism, and decolonization in the Anglo-Caribbean.