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

Repatriation in the early Rastafari movement is often explained through the lens of religion; however, the political dynamics of repatriation can shed much light on the movement’s role in challenging colonialism and imperialism in the West. For early Rastafari leaders, Ethiopia was not only a cultural symbol, it was a model of political ideals. As such, they conceptualized it as the Promised Land. But such conception has facilitated the view that the original Rastafari leadership was committed to physically returning to Ethiopia. A close examination of the political activities of Leonard Percival Howell, during the period of 1932–1940, will reveal that there is an alternative perspective to this view: psychological repatriation. Physical repatriation is the permanent relocation to a place considered home. On the other hand, psychological repatriation is a mental connection to that same place considered home. While physical and psychological repatriation are not mutually exclusive, it is possible to invest in psychological without physical repatriation. It must also be noted that psychological repatriation facilitates visiting the place called home, which can help with maintaining that mental connection that is crucial to the extension of the place considered home to any location. The psychological process therefore provides valuable insight on how Rastafari used repatriation in resisting the displacement created by slavery and expediting the plan to dismantle colonialism in the African diaspora.

While Howell placed a high value on African culture and acknowledged Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie I as the promised return of the Messiah, he believed that he could pay homage to both Selassie and the Promised Land while remaining in Jamaica to build a black nationalist state, one committed to the social and economic development of black people under Selassie’s leadership. In other words, Howell was invested in psychological repatriation, not physical repatriation. After all, Rastafari is a product of black agitation for political and cultural freedom from colonialism and racial suppression in Jamaica, which led to it being one of the biggest black freedom movements that began in the 20th century. Although physical repatriation was prioritized by some Rastafari leaders, such prioritization is mainly seen after 1940. This is not to say that these Rastafari men and women were escapists or religious fanatics, as they developed the view that black rule should be returned to all of Africa and ultimately transcend its borders.1 Yet there were still others who shared Howell’s intentions of remaining in Jamaica, even though asserting the importance of a connection with Africa. The objective of remodeling Jamaica to a black nationalist state remained a central objective of the thinking of some Rastafari leaders, such as the Reverend Claudius V. Henry and Samuel Elisha Brown.

Henry, the self “appointed prophet of God,” introduced his following of the African Reform Church of God in Christ to Rastafari, in the 1950s.2 Nonetheless, Henry promoted black self-defense, in a hostile colonial environment, one that had censored black religious life. He attempted to resuscitate Rastafari’s political agenda of toppling colonialism through a black nationalist ideology. At the time, most Rastafari adherents were reported as “looking elsewhere for their salvation,” and were “not interested in anything that might be done for them in Jamaica.” It was reported by the police that Henry “was collecting money from people for their ‘repatriation’ to Africa,” as they had reported of Howell in 1933. While Howell was arrested for sedition, Henry was arrested on “treason-felony” charges and subsequently sentenced to ten years imprisonment in 1960. The authorities reported the discovery “of arms (mainly crudely-fashioned swords and spears), home-made bombs, uniforms and a letter to Fidel Castro requesting assistance” at one of Henry’s meeting places. Though “no letter from Castro” was found, the discoveries set the stage for Henry’s immediate containment as a threat to Jamaica’s national security.3 Subsequently, Elisha Brown’s Suffering People’s Party, or Black Man’s Party, contested the 1962 elections in the constituency of West Kingston, described then as Jamaica’s “great Back-o-Wall slum,” where many Rastafari lived and congregated.4 Brown, the sole Rastafari candidate, obtained less than a hundred votes.5 Undaunted, in the 1966 publication of his “Treatise on the Rastafarian Movement,” Brown reiterated that Rastafari is “destined to free not only the scattered Ethiopians (Black men) but all people, animals, herbs and all life forms.” His was also a peaceful though radical revolution to replace the capitalist World Order with the rule of God through Haile Selassie’s kingdom, a revolution not to be achieved “by force … of armament,” Brown specified. Like the founders of Rastafari, Brown advocated rechanneling authority from the West through “Word, Sound and Power.”6 These contained Rastafari’s revelations regarding the universal rule of Ethiopia’s emperor, the promised return of the Messiah.

Henry and Brown’s political ideology of Rastafari as a black nationalist and socialistic alternative to a white capitalist system was not new; it was a resurgence of Howell’s political agenda that was established in 1932.7 At the time, Howell was the colonial government’s most feared opponent among Rastafari’s foundational leadership. Between the start of his preaching in 1932 and establishment of his Pinnacle community in 1940, Howell committed himself to extending the Ethiopian emperor’s kingdom to Jamaica. Jamaica, and ultimately the rest of the world, Howell envisioned, would be a part of Selassie’s kingdom. However, Jamaica would be under Howell’s leadership and would become a microcosm of Ethiopia through the cultural, political, and economic principles of Rastafari, which did not necessitate physical repatriation to Ethiopia.

Howell was considered as the first person to preach the Rastafari doctrine and ideology in Jamaica, and he was, arguably, the most influential of the four known founders of the movement: Howell, Robert Hinds, Henry Archibald Dunkley, and Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert.8 R.A. Leevy’s four-part article, for example, published by Public Opinion, a Jamaican weekly newspaper, in 1943, contained the first documented claims that Howell “instituted the Rastafari cult here [Jamaica] in 1932.”9 In addition, French journalist Hélène Lee concluded that Howell was the first Rasta, a title that graced the cover of her popular book, The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism, originally published in 1999.10 More importantly, however, Howell provides more insight on the politics of the foundational period of the Rastafari than any other founder. Furthermore, the colonial establishment of Jamaica targeted Howell in suppressing the original movement. Howell and Robert Hinds were the only founders tried for sedition in the 1930s, the first decade of the movement, but at the time, Hinds was Howell’s deputy and was given a lighter sentence. Osmond Shaw, another of Howell’s deputies, was also tried at the same trial.

The colonial archives show much evidence of why Howell threatened the political stability of Jamaica; he intended to rule Jamaica. Colonial archives, which do not tell us the full story of black lives under white supervision, have been put under the microscope of scholarship by critical race and postcolonial theory. By placing an emphasis on the processes of collecting the knowledge of colonial archives, the present article shows that these stories have to be reconstructed through the close reading of archival knowledge, and by reintegrating documentation whose separation has created alternative realities. Such realities would shape the portrayals of historic black figures and their movements. Indeed, beneath the surface of this distorted history is the urgent call to reckon with the ruins of the past that has perpetuated black suppression. A literal reconstruction of this history is needed to recover that which has been lost. And so, we come to Leonard Howell, found guilty of sedition on grounds of telling the people to express their disloyalty to the colonial government and British monarchy by leaving for Ethiopia.

From Common Laborer to Rastafari Founder

Leonard Howell was born to a black peasant family in Clarendon, Jamaica, on June 16, 1898, but was sent away by his parents at a young age. He would return to Jamaica to establish a movement comprised of mainly poor black peasants, who had been struggling against the remnants of slavery. His father, Charles Howell, was a farmer and tailor, and his mother, Clementina Howell (born Bennett), was also a farmer. He was the eldest of their ten children, and received an education, possibly at church schools, at the primary and secondary levels. However, in 1916, when he was eighteen years old, his parents would have him leave Jamaica. He had been called as a witness at the trial of Edward Rodney, who was accused of committing a murder. He testified at the trial, held in October 1915, that he “saw the prisoner Edward Rodney coming out of the house of Caroline Francis the deceased” on the “day” that she was “found dead” in the house, but when cross-examined, Leonard Howell testified that he was fearful of being implicated in the murder, and furthermore, “Mrs. Rodney,” the wife of the accused, was considered his “Aunt.”11 He was subsequently sent away to Colón, a Panamanian city that had a large number of West Indian migrants, who sought work from the construction of the Panama Canal, 1903-1914. Howell enlisted into the British Navy during the Great War, 1914– 1918, and after the war ended, began working on ships of the American-owned United Fruit Company. While working for this company, he visited Canada, but, in 1919, he was listed as a “3rd. Cook” on the “U.S. Army Transport [vessel] ‘Logan,‘” and had visited New York City and San Francisco.12 In 1924, after moving to Harlem in New York City, he filed for American citizenship.13

Howell spent the next eight years in Harlem, where he was exposed to the cultural, economic, and political life of African Americans and fellow black West Indian immigrants during the development of the New Negro movement, Harlem Renaissance, and Garvey movement, all of which emphasized black self-reliance and self-determination. Harlem, as the black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois indicated in 1927, was “not all color, song and dance.” It was a place of “chiefly homes” and “work, thrift and sacrifice” by its black residents. While the 1920s cultural and political landscape of Harlem helped to shape Howell’s interest in black nationalism, historian Robert Hill has noted that there is a “strong likelihood that in New York Howell might have come under the influence of George Padmore, the Trinidadian who was after 1927 a rising star of the American Communist Party.”14 Even after returning to Jamaica, Howell was still in communication with Padmore and sought his help in building the Rastafari movement. Howell’s socialist inclinations manifested in Pinnacle, a community he established in 1940. Miguel Lorne, a well-known Rastafari practitioner and lawyer, estimates that Pinnacle was eventually occupied by “over three thousand brothers and sisters living and working together in one communal spirit.”15 Additionally, Howell was influenced by Robert Athlyi Rogers’s Holy Piby, also referred to as The Black Man’s Bible, published in 1924, and Reverend Fitz Balintine Pettersburgh’s The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy, published in 1926.16 Rogers, born in the eastern Caribbean island of Anguilla, and Pettersburgh, a fellow Jamaican, were Ethiopianists and black nationalist religious leaders, who had discussed the notion of black supremacy in their books, which proposed sovereignty within Africa, as well as the African diaspora. Howell reproduced the propositions of black supremacy by Rogers and Pettersburgh in his own publication, The Promised Key. A book detailing his conception of Rastafari, The Promised Key was published by Howell in Jamaica after he returned from New York City. While in Harlem, Howell was convicted on charges of grand larceny in 1931, but Howellites have argued that his arrest was to suppress his herbal business, or a “tea room,” as described by Hill, that he operated.17 After spending eighteen months in a New York City prison, he agreed to return to Jamaica in exchange for early release, and arrived in the island on November 17, 1932.18

When Howell returned to Jamaica in 1932, he had already devised a philosophy based on black supremacy. This philosophy was used to guide his political aspirations of leading Jamaica and toppling colonialism on the island. Such aspirations, however, meant that he had to garner the support of the masses, most of whom were black people living in socially, economically, and politically deprived circumstances, which resulted from colonialism and African enslavement. They were desperate for a better life, even if this meant migrating to a place outside of Jamaica. The great black nationalist and pan-Africanist leader, Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican who had lived in the United States, had provided the African diaspora with the option of physical repatriation to Africa, an option that earned him immense support. Howell would use the same approach, but over time, it became apparent to his followers and the colonial government that he was invested in occupying Jamaica. A number of Howell’s listeners questioned the credibility of his back-to-Africa message, while the colonial government realized his strategic usage of physical repatriation. Furthermore, Howell would reveal that he did not plan to physically repatriate, at his trial for sedition held in 1934. Essentially, Howell capitalized on the back-toAfrica campaign so that he could lead Jamaica. Within such a context, his intentions for physical repatriation should not be taken at face value. Howell was a proponent of Ethiopianism, but he was not committed to a back-to-Africa campaign to physically repatriate to Ethiopia. For Howell, repatriation meant largely a psychological connection. It might be difficult, and perhaps even provocative, to consider that the most influential founder of the Rastafari movement did not actually intend to physically repatriate to Africa. However, if we put Howell’s political activities under a microscope, the difficulty should lessen.

Perspectives on Repatriation

Various studies have reiterated the understanding that Rastafari have always espoused physical repatriation, but only some, arguably the most notable, will be discussed here. George E. Simpson, the first scholar to assert that physical repatriation was always a tenet of Rastafari, only started his research on the movement in 1953, one year before the second major police raid on Pinnacle, the community established by Howell and his followers in 1940. Following the raid in 1954, Howell removed himself from the public domain and interacted with few people, mainly relatives and his most trusted associates. Perhaps this was why Simpson was unable to secure an interview with Howell to support his conclusion. In addition, the government records pertaining to Howell were confidential. They were released to the Jamaica Archives, established in 1955, but were unavailable to the public until the island attained its political independence from Britain in 1962. Simpson, therefore, did not have access to any official documents to support his description of Howell’s understanding of repatriation.19

The Rastafarians by Leonard Barrett, believed to be “the first extensive study,” has been widely quoted to support claims that Rastafari always intended to physically return to Ethiopia.20 However, it is supported by observations made during a period that began in “1946,” and Barrett did not have dialogue with Howell. Barrett stated that he only “carried out systematic research among” the Rastafari “from 1963 to 1966,” when Howell’s leadership was no longer prominent in the movement.21 Ken Post’s “The Bible as Ideology: Ethiopianism in Jamaica, 1930–38,” and Arise Ye Starvelings: The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath, have substantially added to the view that the leadership of the first Rastafari, principally Howell, espoused physical repatriation. Post’s analysis is supported by the sedition trial of 1934, yet he does not reflect on Howell’s defense during the trial, in which he attempted to denounce the conduct of the colonial police force. In addition, the 1933 surveillance files that the police used to charge Howell with sedition are absent from Post’s studies. The police surveillance files have shed much light on Howell’s political intentions for Jamaica. Post also used the private notes of Edward Denham, governor of Jamaica. But the police notes are more likely to illuminate Howell’s motives. Denham arrived in Jamaica in October 1934, several months following Howell’s sentencing for sedition.22

The work of Barry Chevannes on Rastafari has further highlighted the inadequacy of the claim that Rastafari, in general, always wanted to physically repatriate. Chevannes situated Rastafari perspectives on Garvey in a discussion about “Garvey Myths among the Jamaican People,” the title of an essay originally published in 1988, which was subsequently republished in his seminal 1994 book, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology.23 In a later interview published in 2009, Chevannes indicated that he, too, was unable to interview Howell, and had relied on other Rastafari for the information pertaining to Howell’s political activities.24 Chevannes also stated that twenty-eight of his thirty male and female informants only “joined the Rastafari movement no later than 1938 and two in the early 1940s.” He also consulted the aptly named “Youth Black Faith,” established in 1949, for information on repatriation. But these Rastafari, he explained, “were young, and they were on fire with the doctrine. They were for the most part the young men who had entered adolescence in the late 1930s, left the countryside for Kingston city, and embraced the faith in the following decade.”25 Furthermore, the group had departed from the strategies of Howell and was making decisions independently of other founders.

In a 2015 book, Exodus!: Heirs and Pioneers, Rastafari Return to Ethiopia, Giulia Bonacci asserts “the structuring role of the processes of popular and collective organization” or the framework for repatriation was established in the 1930s, but as she pointed out, it was “one that was sometimes more rhetorical than practiced.” In Howell’s case, it was clearly rhetoric rather than practice, or strategy rather than objective or intention. Bonacci herself did not provide any plans by Howell to materialize physical repatriation, and whether Howell ever made such plans still remains to be seen. Bonacci merely asserted that “The Rastafari were obliged to wait until the 1940s for the claims to reach the government in a more official manner.”26 However, no such claims made by Howell in the 1930s or even afterward are apparent. Howell consistently preached a doctrine of repatriation based on the claim that Ethiopia’s emperor was the ruler of the world, who would connect Jamaicans to his kingdom when the time comes. It was this message of returning home through the connection to Ethiopia that fueled the colonialists’ anxiety over Howell, who also developed the largest following in the early 1930s, and set the stage for his prosecution on sedition.

Repatriation and the Pursuit of Sedition

The sedition trial of Howell and his deputies in 1934 was the first attempt by the colonial government to suppress the Rastafari movement. After a jury, comprising middle-class individuals with vested interests in the colonial system, concluded that Howell was guilty of sedition, Robert William Lyall-Grant, Jamaica’s new chief justice, sentenced him to two years in prison at hard labor. The conviction was based on the police surveillance of Howell, particularly speeches mentioning repatriation to Ethiopia, recorded over the course of 1933. The prosecution, led by king’s council and assistant attorney general, H.M. Radcliffe, was intent on documenting that Howell told the people to go to Ethiopia, in order to prove he was guilty of sedition. The problematic trial has been used to bolster claims by scholars, such as Post, that Howell advised the people to go to Ethiopia. This dilemma requires revisiting the manner of organizing and conducting the police surveillance, processes we can establish from their reports highlighting that Howell was guilty of sedition. At first, the relationship between sedition and repatriation might seem complex. However, the analysis that follows will show that the government believed Howell was using repatriation to incite blacks into toppling the colonial establishment.

According to the laws of colonial Jamaica, sedition was one of the most serious crimes against the government, second only to treason. Sedition meant “stirring up or exciting any person or persons to commit any act of insurrection or insubordination, or to obtain otherwise than by lawful means any alteration or change in the constitution or government.”27 Though this law made no reference to repatriation, it provided the grounds for almost a year-long police investigation. The police decided to prove that Howell was advocating the disruption of the government, but Howell argued against the charge on the grounds that the sedition law prohibited the free exercise of the people’s inalienable rights to freedom of speech and representation by their government. He asserted that the colonialists lived by these rights in England, but abandoned them in Jamaica. Consequently, they no longer had the right to rule Jamaica. By neglecting the people, they disqualified themselves from representing God’s people in his earthly kingdom. For Howell, the only way out of such a travesty was to fully acknowledge the transfer of the people to the Messiah, Emperor Selassie. Howell assumed the responsibility to organize the replacement of the colonialists. However, Howell’s political actions inspired an investigation to show that he had been undermining the government’s ability to govern, and the evidence gathered specified that he told the people to go to Ethiopia, expressing disfavor for the government’s legitimate authority over the people.

Howell was not the first Jamaican black nationalist that was charged with sedition. In 1930, Garvey was convicted for an article published in his Blackman newspaper, titled “The Vagabonds Again,” deemed “sedition” and “in some respects criminally libelous.”28 However, an Appeals Court overturned the ruling on grounds that the attorney general failed to procure suitable cause showing that Garvey could be charged.29 The mistakes made in this case were not to be repeated in the case against Howell. He had become a concern to the police in December 1932, shortly after he started holding political meetings in Kingston. However, it was the meeting in Market Square in Trinity Ville, St. Thomas, on April 18, 1933, that prompted the police to create the case file, Rex vs. Leonard Howell, in June 1933, to charge him with sedition.

After attending the meeting in April 1933, Constable Thomas Kelly indicated that Howell denounced the king while expressing disapproval of the West India Regiments’ disbandment in 1927. While Howell told his audience, an estimated 200 people, that George V, the English king, “had to break up the black Regiment,” he did not assert that his movement was connected to the ex-servicemen.30 In April 1933, members of the regiments had written to Jamaica’s governor that “they are in earnest about their application” for migration to Africa, since “nearly all” of them were “ordinary labourers,” who “cannot get employment here.”31 In a subsequent letter, they remarked that their “request to Emigrate to Africa” was “based on Racial rights of just cause.”32 While it is possible that Howell spoke to these members of the regiments and had obtained information that they had been petitioning to go to Africa, at his meeting in Trinity Ville, Howell did not express any interest in repatriation or petitioning the government to repatriate. He merely referred to the regiments’ disbandment in denouncing the English king over his neglect of the people, prompting the anxiety over rebellion. But the police knew that the regiments had an interest in returning to Africa, and believed they could show that Howell was collaborating with the ex-servicemen, who had military training and combat experience, on the basis that they shared an interest in Africa.

It was at this point that the police began collecting evidence from civilians to support their case that Howell was using physical repatriation to incite black people to end colonialism on the island. A statement was collected from Madalin Kildare, a dressmaker of Kingston, who swore that she witnessed the events of the meeting. However, she only recalled Howell stating that “the White men disbanded the black Regiment, the West India Regiment,” to replace it with a “Regiment of whitemen,” because black people now had “His Majesty Ras Tafair as our Ruler.”33 Considering such reports, the police inspector in charge of St. Thomas, W.C. Adams, was not convinced that “Howell intended to leave Jamaica,” as he had launched a diatribe against the government, and showed strong interest in ex-military personnel and in spreading his movement across the island. To expedite an investigation of Howell, Adams wrote to the island’s inspector general, Owen Wright, affirming that he was “prepared to issue proceedings for sedition.” Adams pointed out that Howell’s “speeches have been on the borderline-line, but at Trinity Ville on Tuesday night the 18th April, 1933, he seems to have let himself go.”34 Responding to this letter, Wright circulated a memo to the inspectors of several parishes, advising that if Howell “visits your Division you should keep a strict eye on him and have notes made of any speeches he may make.” He told them to “make a full report in the matter to this Office as early as possible,” and to “consult the Clerk of Courts with regard to any action which it may be advisable to take.”35

Howell’s speech had indicated to Adams that he wanted to challenge the government, but Adams also saw it as an omen of a rebellion. Furthermore, Howell continued his polemic against the authorities, interpreted by the police as creating an atmosphere conducive to rebellion. In May 1933, at a meeting in Port Morant, St. Thomas, Howell remarked that the “dirty vagabonds in Jamaica keep more Police than should be here.”36 Subsequently, he visited the central police station in Kingston, where he told the inspector in charge, Detective Inspector Charles, that he intended to continue holding his meetings.37 However, he rejected the allegation that he was profiting from the pictures of Emperor Selassie, which the police reported he sold as “passports” to Ethiopia. A statement collected from Jane Empty, a dressmaker of Trinity Ville, claimed that Howell sold the pictures as postcards, and advised the people “that the cards are to be filled up and sent to Ras Tafair our new King.”38 The police knew that these pictures were not passports, but believed that they presented an opportunity to arrest Howell for telling the people to pledge allegiance to Emperor Haile Selassie and forsake the British monarchy. Furthermore, the police reports indicated that “selling picture Post Cards which cost about 1½d [around £0.28 today] to people for a shilling [around £1.67 today] comes very close to a criminal act.”39

Nonetheless, the crown solicitor, having viewed the reports, indicated that the pictures were merely “the commercial side of his [Howell’s] venture,” and were insufficient grounds for a charge of sedition.40 Likewise, the attorney general indicated that better reports were needed showing that Howell intended sedition, and in order to pursue this charge, he told Adams to preside over submitting such reports.41 In September 1933, Adams resumed the investigation, directing Corporal Coombs and Constables Parnell and Holmes in shadowing Howell and Hinds.42

In his report, Coombs warned that Howell has been “very cautious of his sayings,” but he was now telling the people about “ships provided for the purpose” of taking them “to Africa next August.” Coombs said that Howell “stressed it that Jamaica is not black people country and they should leave and go to Abyssinia their country.”43 The report also specified that afterward, Howell “urges [the people] to support his movement for the Negro King Ras ta Fari is doing great things for them and they will be taken to Africa next year August by ships provided for the purpose” (emphasis mine).44 In addition, letters from members of the public, such as W.E. Barclay, pastor of the Church of God of Port Morant, St. Thomas, asserted that Howell and his deputies were “receiving money by false pretence [sic] claiming themselves ambassadors of this African King.” He added that they were “collecting funds from the people, and promising them free transportation to Africa if they pay a certain sum.”45 However, Adams submitted this letter to his superiors to show that Howell had convinced the people that they must go to Africa. On December 23, 1933, Adams produced his final report, which stated that Howell’s movement “has continued to grow and develop and whilst in some districts he has met with no response and in fact opposition,” it was clear that “in others he is well received mostly by the lowest elements in each district.”46 Such elements, Adams intimated, not only supported Howell’s back-to-Africa rhetoric, but civil disobedience and disturbance of the public peace could be anticipated from such elements. Immediately following these statements, Adams noted that a meeting, attended by about 300 people, was held on December 10, 1933, attended by Corporal Ebenezer Brooks and Constable Enos Gayle, who could shed further light on the growing influence of the Rastafari, due to Howell’s back-to-Africa campaign.

The Sedition Trial

Howell was eventually arrested for sedition on January 1, 1934. The prosecution maintained that he told the people that Emperor Haile Selassie would come to take them to Ethiopia. But Howell asserted that he did not tell the people that they would be physically repatriating to Ethiopia. Asked by the crown prosecutor, “Did you advise the people to go to Abyssinia [Ethiopia] where Ras Tafari is?” Howell answered “No, sir.” The prosecutor reiterated, “Never?” And Howell, again, answered, “No.” Subsequently, Howell denied selling pictures as passports and any effort to use these pictures to bring his followers to Ethiopia. One might ask why was Howell meant to be consistent and reasonable in the trial. However, we must remind ourselves that Howell’s innocence is not being debated. What is important here is that both parties knew that repatriation was a powerful tool in controlling black politics. After all, Garvey had developed a large following through repatriation. The colonial government wanted to remain in control of Jamaica and Howell threatened this control with his idea that Jamaica could be a part of the Ethiopian kingdom overseen by Emperor Selassie. If Howell merely wanted to physically repatriate, why would he deny it? While we can consider the possibility that Howell could have been trying to evade prison, we must also consider that he would be risking his prominence among his followers. He had invested a great deal in developing a reputation as someone fearless and ready to sacrifice for the liberation of the people. While it’s certainly worth considering the possibility that Howell was mendacious when he denied that he promoted physical repatriation, his experiences prior to the trial and afterward showed that he was not daunted by incarceration. He still continued holding meetings even while on bail awaiting trial for sedition.47 His subsequent activities led to further imprisonments and even to confinements at the Bellevue mental asylum, Kingston, adding to the vulnerability of the argument that he might have been afraid of being imprisoned or otherwise confined.

Throughout the trial, Howell asserted that the police reported his words out of context. Gayle and Brooks, he insisted, had fabricated their notes because the handwriting on the reports and the handwriting from a diction test administered in court were inconsistent. Furthermore, one of Howell’s witnesses, Rachel Patterson, highlighted the fact that Gayle and Brooks were inside the “drawing room” of a Ms. Maud Wray during the meeting in question. Arguing that the policemen “were not” merely “taking notes of Howell’s speech as they said,” Patterson indicated that middle-class and upper-class citizens and the police were working together to diminish the Rastafari. Gayle testified that they he and Corporal Brooks were in Ms. Wray’s drawing room but were able to take “notes of Howell’s speech in longhand.” Howell heard Gayle also state that he made careful note of “those parts which he considered to be seditious,” and then when he “tried to procure one of the photographs” of Emperor Selassie, Howell himself told him that they “would be used as passports when the time came for the people to go BACK TO AFRICA” (emphasis in original). But Howell questioned “the perfectly carved writing” in the notes, and then “put Gayle under a diction test” that was “subsequently submitted” by Howell “to the Court for the purpose of comparison with the reproduction of the witness” at his meeting. Nonetheless, the chief justice dismissed his test.48

In addition, Howell argued that the prosecution presented contradictory information about his message, and insisted that he was always consistent in telling the people that eventually the king of England would also acknowledge that Emperor Selassie’s reign included Jamaica. He further explained that he merely indicated that the emperor had come to “redeem” the people through a process that would connect them to their “home,” a reference that signified origin. He therefore stated that the British crown “would turn them over to their King,” because the emperor had returned for the world.49 As Post himself had noted, Howell, as well as other leaders, preached that Selassie’s “kingdom ‘shall have no end—a kingdom that all kings of the earth had to bow down to as he was the only king in the world today as an ancient king.’”50 Jamaica was a part of that kingdom, which the emperor would visit. On such reasoning, Howell indicated that he had only presented the people with the possibility of seeing the emperor, a promise he would finally get to fulfill in 1966, when he financed trips to the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston so that his people could see the emperor during his state visit to the island. Interestingly, Howell himself did not go to see the emperor, a visit that attracted hundreds of Rastafari adherents, but was facilitated by the Jamaican government.

Similar to Howell, Hinds was also accused of telling the people that “after the 1st of August, 1934,” they “would know when they were going to Ethiopia, because the King of England and King Ras Tafari were going to hold a consultation over that matter, and the King of England would take them over in ships to Ethiopia and hand them over to their king.” However, he explained that the people’s meeting with Haile Selassie was simply a ceremonial occasion that would officially signal the handing over of the people of Jamaica to their true ruler. Therefore, the people merely wanted “to see the king.”51 The prosecution did not present any evidence of plans or implementation thereof by Howell or Hinds to help lead the people on a journey to Ethiopia. Nevertheless, their remarks while campaigning to grow the movement were used to indicate disloyalty to the British monarchy, thereby suggesting how the prosecution used sedition. Hinds was also found guilty and sentenced by Lyall-Grant to one year at hard labor. In sentencing Hinds, the chief justice remarked, “I take into account, in your case, that, to a considerable extent, you were led away by Howell.”52 However, in 1935, following release from prison, Hinds formed his own King of Kings missionary organization. But Hinds, as noted by Chevannes, also “left” his followers only “with the hope of returning to Africa one day,” as “there was no evidence that Hinds at any time prophesied repatriation on or by such and such a date.”53

It would be imprudent to argue that the police reports or Howell’s arguments were invalid. But it is important to note that Howell’s actions did not bear out a desire to leave for Ethiopia. From 1932, Howell had made plans to build his Pinnacle community in Jamaica. While he believed that Ethiopia was the ancestral homeland of black people, Pinnacle would start the transformation of Jamaica into a kingdom of Ethiopia, which he would lead.

The Promised Key and Building Pinnacle

For Howell, physical repatriation was not necessary to show allegiance to Emperor Selassie. More importantly, he believed that black supremacy, the rule of the Messiah in Ethiopia, could be achieved from anywhere, a belief confirmed by his ideological framework, outlined in The Promised Key and manifested in Pinnacle. The book was written while Howell was in New York City, but was published while he was in Jamaica. According to R.A. Leevy, who interviewed Howell in 1939, he had returned with an unpublished copy of “a paper-covered book of queer dimensions and very unattractive appearance.”54 This book, The Promised Key, presented psychological repatriation to the people. It proposed the establishment of “Black Supremacy on triumphant soil of the world’s capital” of Ethiopia. Its establishment in Jamaica would be through the far-reaching powers of Ethiopia’s emperor. Howell urged the people to look toward Ethiopia in order to institute black supremacy in “The same country that the Anarchy called Jamaica British West Indies.”55

In the first chapter, Howell indicated reverence toward the emperor. The Duke of Gloucester, he noted, attended the 1930 coronation “to represent his father The Anglo Saxon King,” and after handing the emperor a “Sceptre of solid gold and Twenty-seven inches long,” the duke “fell down on bending knees before His Majesty Ras Tafari … and said ‘Master, Master, my father has sent me to represent him sir. He is unable to come and he said that he will serve you to the end Master.’”56 Similarly, the chapter titled “The Promised Key” highlighted such reverence: “The glory that was Solomon greater still reigns in Ethiopia. We can see all the Kings of the earth surrendering their crowns to His Majesty Ras Tafari.” “His Majesty Ras Tafari is the head over all man for He is the Supreme God,” and instructs the “Dear inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, the King of Kings warriors can never be defeated.” Later, Howell discusses “Ethiopia’s Kingdom” with a black nationalist fervor. The emperor and the empress, he declared, “are the Pay Masters of the world,” who would deliver righteous rewards—liberation and lasting peace—to wherever the people were situated. They were the “Bible owners and money mint” and “Do not forget they are Black People if you please.” Furthermore, “Ethiopia is the succeeding Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.”57

Howell did not treat repatriation as a physical occurrence in his book, but as Leevy indicated, he told his followers to see Ethiopia as heaven, and his followers “hope[d] to be loyal and happy subjects of the Emperor in Manghesta, Itiopia (The Kingdom of Ethiopia), in the sweet bye-and-bye.”58 For many, if not most Jamaicans, “the sweet bye-and-bye” was and still is today a heaven in the sky.59 But Joseph Owens wrote in the 1970s, after Howell’s prominence faded, that Rastafari “reject the idea of a ‘heaven in the sky.’”60 It would appear that Howell relieved himself of the expectation of taking his followers to Ethiopia; however, Howell’s intention of ruling Jamaica makes for a more plausible explanation. As reported by Alphonso Gallimore, a resident of Pinnacle, Howell told the people to “go and find back them root on the fig tree, for you must have to link back to you nation when the time comes.” He also told them that Selassie was their “father,” but had granted him (Howell) “all the power.”61 Years later, Owens indicated, “Most Rastas condemn the ideas of saving up one’s money and then migrating to Ethiopia on one’s own initiative. In the first place, such action would evince despair of God’s saving power, and, furthermore, one could not hope to be any more than an immigrant in such a procedure.”62 While some Rastafari were interested in physical repatriation, we must be careful not to suggest that they were escapist or religious fanatics. Howell certainly had a plan to create a state that would lead to black rule. He did not believe crossing the Atlantic was necessary in achieving black success.

Pinnacle, a community situated in the hills of St. Catherine’s parish, would fortify Howell’s leadership of Rastafari and facilitate his plans of leading the people as the emperor’s anointed. For Howell, Pinnacle symbolized the attainment of solidarity and freedom from British rule. Howell even promised the people freedom from taxation.63 Under his leadership, the people could have such freedom in Jamaica. He started the fundraising, such as the sales of Haile Selassie’s picture that were mentioned in the police reports, to buy land for Pinnacle from as early as 1932, and was finally able to purchase it for £1,200 in 1939. The same year, Howell had also written to George Padmore requesting twenty copies of a 1938 pamphlet by Padmore, “Hands off the Colonies!”64 In the pamphlet, Padmore called upon British workers “to hasten the downfall of Imperialism by helping the colonial peoples in their struggles for national freedom as the first step towards real social emancipation.”65 In 1939, Owen Wright, then commissioner of police, reported that Howell was also acting “against the Labour Union” by telling workers to pledge their loyalty to Ethiopia’s emperor.66 Alexander Bustamante, president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, wrote to the colonial secretary of Jamaica asking that Howell be sent back to prison or the asylum. Bustamante recognized that Howell was a threat to his leadership of the country. A creole nationalist, Bustamante advocated maintaining political, economic, and cultural links to Britain and the capitalist system of the West in order to pursue the decolonization of Jamaica. In 1939, Howell had established his own Ethiopian Salvation Society (ESS) as a “Christian” mutual-aid society that would not only help him to realize the implementation of his Pinnacle plans, but also aided the unemployed, sick, infirm, and bereaved to make ends meet in their times of hardship.67 The ESS competed with the trade union movement by providing assistance to members confronting economic hardship, whether from low wages or the loss of jobs or breadwinners. Feeling threatened by Howell’s efforts to make himself the most successful defender of the people, Bustamante wrote that “Serious trouble is brewing at Port Morant, in St. Thomas, owing to the mischievousness of a man whose name is Howell, Leader of this terrible thing that is called ‘Rastafari.’”68 According to Charles Price, Howell was also a leading figure in the first Jamaican chapter of the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF), formed in New York City in 1937, which opened a Jamaican chapter in 1939.69 The principal focus of the EWF was “Ethiopia for Ethiopians at home and abroad,” which inspired other Africans on the continent and the African diaspora to support the resistance against the 1935 Italian occupation of Ethiopia.70 Bonacci also indicated that repatriation was not apparent from the efforts of the first EWF chapter in Jamaica. According to Bonacci, the chapter was racked by disputes over its proper direction and was simply unable to “channel Rastafari’s passion for Ethiopia.”71 Clearly, Howell’s focus was a source of the disputes. As Price stated, Howell quickly “left” the chapter “in 1939 to form his own organization, the Ethiopian Salvation Society, a race-focused mutual aid society.”72 In addition, the police reported that Howell was focused on using World War II, started in 1939, to declare that the time had arrived for black people to take the power from whites and become the rulers of wherever they were situated in the world. He held a meeting at Port Morant, on December 3, 1939, “attended by approximately 500 people,” and “informed the crowd that the white man time was ended and that soon black men would sit on the throne of England.”73 In 1940, police observers also reported that Howell had declared that “Jamaica, which he styles as Jericho, belongs to him,” and that “this year is really 1933, but that white men having advanced the time 7 years now is called 1940.” He was using Ethiopia’s calendar, which dates the world as seven years younger than the Gregorian one used by the West. Four months before implementing Pinnacle, he told the people that “100 acres of land are available for the habitation of all black people in Jamaica,” and he had “£4000 for construction of their houses and planting vineyards when the time comes.” He also announced that “Europeans will be wiped out and the King of Kings shall come in and rule the world.”74

Howell took an estimated 700 followers to Pinnacle, in November 1940, where he was installed as chieftain. Both critics and adherents expressed an understanding of Pinnacle being a socialist unit. John Carradine, in a report in the Daily Gleaner newspaper, pointed out that Pinnacle was “another case of the inevitable merging of Socialism into tyrannical Communism.”75 Similarly, historian Horace Campbell described Pinnacle as an experiment in “communalism and collective work.”76 Gerald Downer (Brother Bunny), who moved into Pinnacle with his mother in 1940, recalled its socialist culture by simply stating that they were “living as a family,” and Audrey Lewis, who also lived there in the 1940s, remembered it as “good treatment from Mr. Howell.”77 Howell was also described by Leevy as Pinnacle’s “Chief Apostate,” indicating Howell’s renouncement of the church, but essentially Pinnacle as Howell’s ultimate declaration of the independence of black people.78

Conclusion

Although some Rastafari adherents developed an interest in physical repatriation, it has been used by critics to stifle the political agency of early Rastafari leaders, who started to implement black nationalist plans against the British colonial system and, later, the creole nationalists. Furthermore, it has been used to promote the notion that Rastafari’s adherents were religious fanatics, who served and depended on their Messiah, Haile Selassie, to take them from Jamaica for a better life. While physical repatriation was considered by some Rastafari adherents, we should be careful not to limit their thinking to escapism or subvert their political agency. Psychological repatriation, on the other hand, recognizes Rastafari’s reverence for Ethiopia and political agenda for Jamaica. Essentially, this type of repatriation has provided us with a framework for understanding the complex nature of Rastafari’s black nationalism that was implemented by Howell in response to colonialism.

The use of physical repatriation to stifle Rastafari’s resistance to colonialism is similar to the use of moral turpitude and entitlement to suppress black resistance against racism that we see today in the United States. The resistance of Black Lives Matter, for example, has been portrayed as “just angry and uninformed.”79 Furthermore, it has been portrayed “as being overly entitled.”80

Rastafari’s belief in Ethiopia as the Promised Land was reduced to the view that they served and depended on Haile Selassie to facilitate entitlements due to them. Howell resisted such efforts by the colonial government to constrain the religious and political views of his movement to escapism and a sense of entitlement. Howell recognized that black people, pressured by the economic, cultural, and political repression in Jamaica, were willing to emigrate for a better life. He used the back-to-Africa message to inspire the people to join his Rastafari movement, and told them that the crowning of Emperor Selassie was the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of the Messiah’s return to redeem the people from oppression. Howell preached that the Messiah’s kingdom extended to Jamaica, where black sovereignty and prosperity were not entitlements but divine providence or God’s promise to his people. Howell used repatriation as a form of resistance against British colonialism, which is why it was also essential to resist the portrayal of his movement as dependent and escapist.

In his book, The Promised Key, Howell declared the emperor’s coronation as the start of the liberation of black people around the world. The book prescribed psychological repatriation to prepare the people to join the liberation struggle, and reminded them that they were under the protection of the divine authority of Ethiopia’s emperor. Howell initiated what Padmore hoped for in the longer term, social emancipation, and he was put on trial for initiating this process among his followers. The police reports on his meetings used his efforts to psychologically repatriate the people to prove that Howell was promoting sedition against the British authorities. They embarked on a campaign to not only suppress Howell, but the entire Rastafari movement by undermining its importance to the people’s struggle for self-determination and self-rule. Intelligence generated around Howell’s suppression was continuously used to discredit the Rastafari’s political message to the people. In using repatriation rhetoric, Howell inadvertently initiated the government’s suppression of his political agenda for the struggling Jamaican masses.

Moreover, Howell’s black nationalism earned him enemies even among local creole nationalists, such as Bustamante. He expressed a great deal of interest in Howell and ultimately described his movement as a serious and terrible threat to society. Consequently, Bustamante proposed a censorship of Howell. Bustamante did not tell the government to simply ignore Howell. He petitioned for Howell’s confinement. A large and growing body of the people already recognized Howell as a leader. Bustamante, a future chief minister and prime minister of independent Jamaica, was pursuing a similar future. Howell’s black nationalist and socialist outlook overwhelmed the ideological divide of the colonialists and creole nationalists, who both resolved to condemn the Rastafari as a dangerous menace to society. As a result, Rastafari was seen as an outcast of the society by the time that Claudius Henry and Samuel Elisha Brown came into the national spotlight. Rastafari’s radicalism—its black nationalism and socialism—was superseded by the creole nationalist acquisition of political decolonization through a coalition with the West. The civil rights movement in the United States also created an international context in which it made sense to some Rastafari leaders to allay the hope for an alliance with Ethiopia to produce a black nationalist future in Jamaica.

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.