Race, Class and Reasoning. The Formation of the Early Rastafari
Movement, 1932-1938
To open this discussion we shall first examine conceptual
questions concerning the Rastafarian movement.
Firstly, how do we define Rastafarianism? It has been referred to in the literature as
variously a religion and a cult. But how
satisfactory these categories are is open to question. The Rastafari themselves, would not concur
with such designations, as they are notoriously derisive of what they call
“isms and schisms” and most sympathetic commentators are happy to go along with
them[2]. Still, rather than debate the matter in these
terms it may be more prudent to look at what these definitions can contribute
to the study of Rastafarianism from a sociological perspective. To begin with, one needs to look at what
definitions of cult and religion are, and sociological concepts can be useful
in examining these issues as they can
inform the discussion of this particular form of religious phenomena.
On one level Rastafarianism does satisfy many of the basic
criteria of a religion. It is a system
of metaphysical beliefs that are “a set of coherent answers to… core
existential questions”, codified into “a creedal form that has significance for
it’s adherents”[3]. Or, to take another definition, it can also
be described as a human enterprise by which a particular sacred cosmos is
established[4]. Nonetheless, for the period under
investigation, it would appear that most of the interpretative approaches that
follow on from these models in the sociology of religion can be dismissed out
of hand. Models such as those discussed above, and others such as
Geertz’s semiotic-based 5 point model[5]
tend to assume a mature religion integrated into the fabric of a society, to
the extent that it is integral to it.
Rastafarianism was in the period under investigation, and to some
degree, remains outside of society and diametrically opposed to it.
Another body of literature within the discipline of
sociology of religion that is more useful is the study of New Religious Movements
(NRMs). This branch of sociology
developed from the study of cults, indeed the term “NRM” is meant to supersede
that of “cult” due to its pejorative implications and the assumptions of
secrecy and mental manipulation that were inappropriate to some groups under
consideration[6]
(and quite inappropriate to the Rastafari).
What they do provide are a number of detailed conceptual frameworks for
the origins of religions and religious movements. While these models have been useful, and have
informed much of what is to follow, they are also not without their problems
when applied to the study of the Rastafari. The organisations in the sociological studies which have typically informed such
models, such as the Church of Scientology or the Society for Krishna-Consciousness,
are usually contemporaneous i.e. post world war two, and occurring against a
background of a modern secularising society.
The questions they are supposed to answer, such as how can apparently
rational “modern” people be attracted to backwards-seeming spirituality and
organisations, just do not appear to have any application in the context of
Jamaica in the period under consideration.
If we wonder how the seeds of religious movements can take root in the
barren soil of western culture, then Jamaica by contrast would be a fertile
field with many seeds finding their way their on the winds of the Harlem
renaissance, to bloom under the hot Caribbean sun.
Aside from these specific objections, there is a more
basic objection to the idea of Rastafarianism as a Religion, Cult or NRM. This is the basic openness of Rastafari. The Rasta faith exists without formal power
structures or set rituals or devotions.
Here are a few basic rules but there are no authorities to enforce them,
or inflict penalties. There have been
leaders, usually based on seniority, but again these are informal. There are texts that Rastas consider to be
canonical, but the extent to which they are studied or followed is down to the
individual. Philosophical and
theological discourse is never set or finished among Rastafari, but rather
ideas are there to be continuously examined, contested and re-made in what are
known as “reasoning” sessions[7]. Instead of formal ritual devotions there are
irregular “groundations” all-night sessions of reasoning, drumming, feasting,
“speechifying”, and chanting[8]. The entire system is individually enforced
and self-sustaining, a, “state of consciousness” as much as a system of beliefs[9]. In fact it is quite tempting to conclude
that, Rastafarianism resembles nothing less than an African “Stateless Society”
akin to the Igbo in West Africa (modern Nigeria), or the Kikuyu
in East Africa (Kenya).
Moreover, it could be interpreted that this essentially
anarchic structure and open-ended discourse that spares it from categorisation
as either a religion or a cult that I feel is the crucial factor in the rise of
Rastafarianism. It is this
open-endedness that allowed Rastafarianism to absorb cultural and intellectual
currents (religious and political) already present in Jamaica, as well as draw
on much older traditions and novel developments as they occurred.
The most basic principle of the movement, virtually the
sole article of faith, is the belief that Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia
was the living Messiah of the Black race who would at some point create the
conditions whereby the black peoples of the new world would return to
Africa. On the surface it would appear
that, like other religious movements that had preceded it such as Bedwardism,
Rastafarianism was a millenarian movement in the tradition of the Ethiopianist
church. The period in which the
Rastafari movement emerged has been noted to be a time of a marked revival in
Ethiopianism. In the King James Bible,
the word “Ethiopia” referred to Africa, consequently since the eighteenth
century black Christian churches in the New World tended to use the word
Ethiopia in their titles. By the end of
the nineteenth century Ethiopia was the last remaining black nation that hadn’t
fallen to the onslaught of the European’s ‘Scramble for Africa’ after having
decisively defeated an Italian raiding force at the Battle of
Adowa. After a short and seemingly easy
conquest of more than three quarters of the continent had been over-run between
1884 and 1900, thanks to European technology, to see Africans fighting back and
winning made Ethiopianism into a Pan-Africanism in the early twentieth century[10]. When Negus Tafari Makonnen was crowned
Emperor of Ethiopia, the event was covered by the world’s media, including a
famous piece in National Geographic in 1931, shades of which can be seen in the
Rasta holy text The Promised Key[11]. For the first time a positive image of
African Negros, complete with colour photography to showcase the lavish
costumes of the coronation ceremony, were available to a black public.
Concurrent with the portentous significance of Selassie’s
accession to the throne of Ethiopia was the prevailing economic situation in
Jamaica. As in much of the rest of the
world, the Great Depression of the 1930s had created an atmosphere of general
unrest, dislocation and confrontation, which the revived Ethiopianism both
thrived on and contributed to[12]. As well manifesting itself, in a fashion
typical for the period, as a Caribbean wide series of strikes and other labour
disputes[13],
the popular mood of class antagonism also exhibited itself in the upper levels
of Jamaican society in speculation among elite circles about putting legal
restrictions on ‘Revivalism’ or ‘Shakerism’[14]. There were even articles in the bourgeois
press mooting the possibility of the Ethiopianist revival leading to a, “Black
war in Jamaica”[15]. Although the Rastafari themselves did not
directly participate in the labour struggle on Jamaica in 1938 (and
particularly in their common articulation of discontent with the colonial
administration), they can both be seen as indicative an emerging national
consciousness across the Caribbean.
Ethiopianism and other Christian[16]
traditions were part of the tapestry of Rastafarianism and informed how people
received its message[17]. What Rastafarianism had that distinguished it
from both earlier movements and other expressions of Ethiopianist revival was
that it was informed by a western radical political sensibility, mediated by
the early North American black power movement, and specifically the politics of
Marcus Josiah Garvey.
Garveyism had been formed in the political hotbed of New
York’s immigrant communities. Influenced
by the radical politics of liberalism, nationalism (including Irish nationalism,
from which he appears to have actively supported and learned from[18])
and Zionism, among others[19],
he formulated a radical black politics based on an inverted racial order (Black
> White, dark > light), the return of the black peoples of the Americas
to Africa and the general improvement of the lot of the Black peoples of the
earth. He also founded an international
organisation to carry out his political programme this was UNIA – The United
Negro Improvement Association.
The most enduring cultural legacy of UNIA, which the
Rastafari in particular were able to capitalise on, was the exorcism of the
legacy of shame at their own physical form.
Even though slavery, had been abolished relatively early on Jamaica – 1834
– in the following century little had happened to loosen the psychological
shackles of racism on which the system depended. As recently as the Bedwardist movement of the
1890s-1920s the leadership preached that their skin colour would be changed to
white on their ascent to heaven, while the follower of the movement, typically
members of the black underclass, prayed to God to wash them “white as snow”[20]. By inverting racial categorisations Garvey
re-awakened the black person’s sense of themselves and as his ideas were
disseminated in print form throughout the Black Atlantic he initiated a
revolution in the mentality of that generation of black people.
There is also a very direct sense in which we can see
Rastafarianism as a continuation of Garveyism.
At the accession of Ras Tafari to the throne of Ethiopia[21]
Garvey wrote an article for his The
Blackman welcoming the new emperor, who was then the only Black leader to
sit at the head of an independent state in all of Africa. Typically of a UNIA publication, he reports
that the Emperor is “ready and willing to extend the hand of invitation to any
Negro who desires in his kingdom”[22]. What's more in the oft-quoted final paragraph
he evoked the Biblical scriptures[23]
in calling for the support of, “us as the Negro race to assist in every
way…Emperor Ras Tafari[24]”. For a deeply religious people, absorbed in a
protestant bible reading culture, it was only a short leap from an evocative
reference to scriptural prophecy to a direct reading of the event described as
the actual fulfilment of that
prophecy.
The status of UNIA as a religious movement is contested in
some quarters[25],
we can say that it was imbedded in a black culture that was deeply religious
and had many organisational forms that were consciously or unconsciously
religious. Indeed some[26]
have gone so far as to describe it as an attempt to create a black civil
religion. One of the points emphasised
in the Entrepreneur Model of Cult Innovation proposed by Bainbridge and Stark[27]
is that the cult leader (or in this model entrepreneur) will have gained skills
and experience through contact with an earlier successful cult organisation,
thus creating lineages between organisations.
This actually provides us with some insights into the character of the
founder of the Rastafari, Leonard Howell that is unfortunately absent from the
source record[28]
and indicates the sort of relationship that exists between UNIA and
Rastafarianism. Like Garvey before him,
Howell emigrated, via Panama to the Harlem of the Jazz age and the Harlem
renaissance[29]. He had been a member of UNIA in the period he
lived there, and was quite active in the movement. He was well enough known to Garvey to lunch
with him shortly after his return to Jamaica.
There has been some suggestion that he knew Garvey personally and that
the two were good friends[30],
however this is based on the recollection of an elderly relative of Howell’s
who was obviously quite enamoured with him at the time so its hard to say how
credible this account of the encounter is.
Another version of the meeting[31]
has Howell going to visit Garvey to request that he be allowed to distribute
his 1 Shilling pictures of Haile Selassie at or around UNIA meetings on the
island, which Garvey refused.
One of the other models proposed by Bainbridge and Stark,
the Sub-Culture evolution model of cult innovation, contains another point that
also illuminates some of the complex relationship between Garveyism and
Rastafari. Point 3 of the model is that
religious movements “are the result of side-tracked or failed attempts to
obtain scarce or non-existent rewards”[32]. Taking this as our point of departure we can
see that the Rastafari movement emerged contemporaneously with the failure and
decline of UNIA and the Garveyist project and its promise of bettering the lot
of the poor Blacks of Jamaica. The black
star shipping line, which was intended to transport the Black peoples of the
Americas back to Africa, had ended in a financial shambles in 1922, and Garvey
himself had been deported to Jamaica just a few years before Howell himself arrived
there, possibly under simmilar circumstances[33].
In a sense, Rastafarianism flourished against the
background of the failure of the institutions of the Garveyist project in
Jamaica to connect to the rural poor and the working class in a meaningful way. Though itself a deeply religious movement[34],
given to biblical references in its speeches and literature, Garveyism was
deeply contemptuous of Rastafarians. It
seems that while Garvey and his movement were all for reversing the western
assumptions of an ordering of racial superiority based on skin colour they
shared western assumptions about the superiority of western cultural
forms. For instance Garvey famously
organised a concert of classical music for a black audience in Edelweiss park
to make the point that poor black Jamaicans could appreciate western high
culture just as well as anyone else.
Ironically it seems that what the Jamaican Garveyists found abhorrent in
the Rastafari were the aspects most in opposition to white cultural hegemony,
the use of the “dangerous weed”[35]
Ganja, the peculiar (possibly heretical) interpretation of Christianity and the
divinity of Haile Selassie etc.
Part
of the reason for the estrangement of these two, seemingly mutually
complimentary groups, was of course the class basis of the movements. Whereas the Rastas at that time were mainly
from the rural peasantry and the urban underclass, the UNIA organisation on
Jamaica was mainly composed of an urban working class in its rank and file and
it’s leadership if not from the petit bourgeoisie then at least aspiring to
that level of respectability. In 1934
the Kingston UNIA convention denounced, “new cults that were entirely
contradictory to the true religion”[36]. It seems that this wasn’t the first time one
of Howell’s projects had fallen foul of UNIA’s cultural bigotry. In Harlem he had been running a “tea room”
which had been “declared against” by UNIA, possibly because he was serving
beverages based on traditional Jamaican herbal medicine that would have
contained ganja, which had been used on Jamaica in that capacity for
centuries. It was even implied that he
was an Obeah-man,[37]
a practitioner of an (apparently non-existent) African black magic, Obeah, that
has the same position in Jamaican culture as Satanism had in European before
the industrial revolution.
The
significance of all this is two fold. To
begin with, it indicates an un-bridgeable cultural gap between the Garveyists
and the Jamaican peasantry who they were trying to reach. It also marks a difference between the
open-ended Rasta discourse and the more closed dogma of Garveyism which it was
able to absorb, and points to why Garveyism as a political movement is extinct
while Rastafari continues to attract followers right into the present day. While the reverse racial series of racial
categorisation should have favoured the black working class, lightness of skin
colour and straightness of hair, indicating some white ancestry being a mark of
class difference and class identity on Jamaica as elsewhere in the Caribbean. In practice UNIA came to be the articulation
of the grievances of middle class blacks who despite being near the top of the
class hierarchy in their own communities, still could not reach the level of
obtaining the benefits of capitalist society relative to their station as they
were held back by the colour of their skin from obtaining the level of whites
within the capitalist system who were basically doing the same occupation as
they were[38]. The ideology of Garveyism implicitly accepted
the system of capitalist economic relations and sought to make accommodation
within it for black people, which is why it could not accommodate those for
whom the capitalist system itself was the problem. On the other hand the Rastafari, with their
open discourses, were able to adopt a critique of the capitalist system and
fuse it with Garveyism and other traditions to create an outlook that would
make sense of this and reject the system of capitalism and so articulate the
racial and social grievances of the Black underclass. The Anthropologist George Eaton Simpson in
his early visits to Kingston in 1953 to investigate the movement, saw at first
hand this deeply rooted resentment of racial and economic grievances
articulated at Rasta meetings[39].
Another
surprising source of symbolism that Howell and the other early Rastas were able
to draw on was that of British colonial culture. As a holding in the British Empire, the
state, education system and much of the rest of civic culture[40]
was predicated on the iconography of the British monarch as the head of
state. Also, through the Anglican
Church, the monarch held a quasi-religious status as head of the State
religion. Against a background of
growing Black racial consciousness, it was then only a logical step to substitute
one foreign monarch living on the other side of the Atlantic with another with
whom they could more readily identify and give allegiance. This theme was quite evident in Howell’s
early sermons. According to the Jamaican
police files dating to early 1933[41]
Howell would begin by stating that “The Lion of Judah has broken the
chain…George V is no longer our king, Ras Tafari is King of Kings, Lord of
Lords”[42]. He then went on to invoke the old colonial
idea of the distant Monarch as the protector from local oppression by telling
his congregation that “If anyone has any grievance, he must write to Ras
Tafari, King of Kings[43]”. The he would end with the National anthem,
god save the King, but of course not for George V but for the new king in
Ethiopia[44].
In
the sermon sketched out above we can see how the symbolism and pomp relating to
the person of the monarch, on which the British Colonial system relied, was
subverted. We can also see this in how
Howell emphasised and interpreted the presence and actions of Henry Duke of
Gloucester at the Coronation of Haile Sellasie.
In his religious tract, The
Promised Key he gives the presence of the son of the King a tremendous
occult significance, claiming that he had gifted Tafari a golden sceptre and
pledged in the kings name that he would “Serve him to the end” and calling him
“master”[45]. Thus in the accepted language of monarchical
symbolism and deference, handing the power to the new king. Monarchical powers, like Religion, operate on
a symbolic level and are often given equal credence. As one historian points out, “the legitimacy of the British crown as the
constitutional power on Jamaica was of great concern to Rastafarians”[46]. Indeed, events surrounding the British
Monarchy were followed and used by Rastafarian leaders and ideologues to
further prove the legitimacy of Haile Selassie I. During the abdication crisis of 1936 for
example, Robert Hinds would argue that since the new King George VI had not
been properly crowned the British Empire no longer had a king at all.
An
example of how the Rastafari discourse was able to absorb novel developments
was the phenomenon of Nya-binghi. It is
of particular interest as it shows how the Rastafari could absorb the negative
media portrayal of international events that were specifically targeted at
causing the movement harm. The origins
of Nya-binghi lie in an article in the Jamican Times, which reproduces a
sensational account of a far-reaching murderous international black conspiracy,
with Haile Selassie at its head. The
article itself is fascinating as an artefact of Racist propaganda, undoubtedly
concocted by the Italians Fascists to provide a spurious popular justification
for their quite unpopular invasion and annexation of Ethiopia. It can also be read as part of a wider
literature of conspiracies, along side texts like the infamous, “Protocols of
the Elders of Zion”. It draws on
traditional racial tropes of African savagery, anti-communism (with its
allusions to an international congress in Moscow) and a reactionary paranoia
against the rising in black consciousness and the immigration of blacks into
western cities. A telling phrase in this
respect is the author’s assertion that, “Hitherto…the stupidity of primitive
peoples prevented such an amalgamation”[47].
The
article, picked up by The Jamaican Times from the international press[48],
was clearly intended to discredit the person of Selassie and was deployed by
the paper as an attack on the Rastafari, but to the Rastas themselves it had
the effect of confirming their faith at a time when, as a movement, they were
under considerable pressure (physical and ideological). The section about the nefarious hordes of the
Nyabinghi, whose eyes gleam at the word “Negus”, and worship him as the Messiah
of the coloured people[49],
might almost have been written about Jamaicas own Ethiopianists. Many Rastafari found the idea appealing and
began to identify themselves as Nya-Binghi or Nyah-men. This was after all the
period, after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia when the Italian military
machine, complete with tanks, aeroplanes and mustard gas, did what a previous
generation of Italians had failed to do and defeated the modernised Ethiopian
armed forces and captured Addis Ababa.
Selassie was living as a Monarch-in-exile. Even Marcus Garvey, had bitterly condemned
Haile Selassie for failing to repel the Italian invasion in an editorial for
The Blackman[50],
which contributed to the falling away of interest in the movement among most
sections of Jamaican society (with the possible exception of the rural
underclass)[51]. The thought of Selassie at the head of a
secret order of 190,000,000 was heartening to the Rastafari. Some actually went so far as to embellish the
conspiracy into Selassie having a huge secret inland navy with which to repel
the invaders[52]. “Nya-Binghi”, which was (erroneously[53])
given by the article to mean, “Death to the Whites”, struck a similar cord then
to that which, “Kill Whitey”, would three decades later.
The
essentially anarchic structure of Rastafari discourse and society came into
existence as a result of the historical process that drew it together and the
events of the early movement. If it is a
small wonder that Garvey’s biblical allusion would be taken literally by a
proportion of readers, then we shouldn’t be at all surprised that several
people emerged independently of each other at around the same time preaching
exactly this message. By the time
Leonard Howell arrived on Jamaica, Archibald Dunkley, another migrant labourer
from Jamaica, had been studying the King James Bible, inspired by Garvey’s
“Prophecy” and had come to the conclusion that Haile Selassie was the Son of
God, (though not the father himself[54]).
As
well as developing in isolation, Rastafari was often received in isolation from
the controling influence of those preaching the cause. Much of the dissemination of the Rastafari
message was done through the media. As
we have already seen in the case of the Nyah-Binghis or the National Geographic
article on Haile Selassie I’s coronation, the print media was crucial in the
spread of Rasta ideas. While a typical
large meeting may have only a few dozen people in attendance[55],
press coverage of Leonard Howell’s trial in 1934 would have been across the
entire island in a few hours thanks to the extensive coverage given to it by
the Jamaican Gleaner[56]
in three consecutive reports, and like the aforementioned, were among the
formative texts of the movement. Again there is nothing surprising about this
considering that before this was before the general availability of radios on
the island in the late 1950s[57],
when the majority of Jamaican cultural consumption was based on cheap printed
materials.
Another
factor in the development of the Rastafari was that the leaders were under
constant police pressure and were often arrested and imprisoned. This had the effect of regularly decapitating
the various threads in the movement at important junctures in its
development. That the movement was given
to periodic organisational dormancy, for example during Leonard Howell’s first
period of imprisonment from 1934-1936, meant that the membership was forced
back onto their own skills of reasoning.
The
regular pruning of the Rasta leaders by the forces of officialdom also meant
that the movement was always disparate and never fell entirely under the sway
of any one individual. While Howell was
the most important of the leaders of the early movement, his lieutenant Hinds
had a large following of over 800 people at his King of Kings mission[58]. While Howell’s communal settlement at The
Pinnacle in the hills near Sligoville, at its height, could boast a population
of 18-1600 men, women and children[59],
the Rasta communities in Kingston were also of great significance to the
development of the movement.
The
actions of the authorities were in an odd sense actually helpful to the
movement in that they de-railed the process of cult formation[60]
and ameliorated or at least delayed some of the negative behavioural phenomena
associated with New Religious Movements.
Left relatively unmolested, as The Pinnacle was between the end of
Howell’s second imprisonment in 1946 and the last major police raid on The
Pinnacle in 1954, Howell’s gathering took on some of the more unpleasant
characteristics of more recent NRMs, “communal” un-paid labour, sexual
exploitation of women and eccentric megalomanical conduct by the leader[61]. It’s interesting to note in light of this
that after Howell was released from being imprisoned after the 1954 raid few of
the Rastafari looked to him for leadership and he effectively dropped out of
the Rasta-consciousness for the remaining two decades of his life, while the
movement grew beyond its founding generation towards what we would recognise as
Rastafarianism today.
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Secondary
Leonard E. Barrett Sr., The
Rastafarians (Boston; Beacon Press, 1977)
Randal K.
Burkett, Garveyism as a religious
movement (Scarecrow Press; Metuchen, 1978)
Lloyd Bradley, Bass
Culture; When Reggae Was King (Penguin; London, 2001)
Barry
Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology
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David T.
Courtwright, Forces of habit: drugs and
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Dawson (ed.), Cults and New Religious
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-Roy Wallace ‘Three Types of New
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-William Simms Bainbridge and Rodney Stark
‘Cult Formation; Three Compatible Models’
Ennis Barrington Edmonds, Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers (OUP; Oxford, 2003)
Robert
Hill, ‘Leonard P. Howell and Millenarian visions in Early Rastafarianism’ Jamaica Journal (February, 1983) pp24-39
Nelson W. Keith and Novella Z. Keith, The Social
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Stephen A.
King Reggae Rastafari and the rhetoric of
social control (University Press of Mississippi; Jackson, 2002)
Helene Lee, The First
Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism (Chicago Review Press;
Chicago, 2005)
G, Llewllyn
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Samuel N. Murrell (ed.) Chanting
Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader (Temple University: 1998)
-B.
Chevannes, ‘Rastafari as the Exorcism of the Ideology of racism and
classism’ pp55-71
- E.B.
Edmonds, ‘The Structure and Ethos of Rastafari’ pp349-360
-R. Lewis, ‘Marcus Garvey and
the early Rastafarians’ pp145-158
-G. E. Simpson, ‘Personal reflections on
Rastafari in West Kingston in the early 1950s’ pp217-230
-William David Spencer, ‘The First Chant: Leonard
Howell’s The Promised Key with
commentary by William David Spencer’ pp361-389
Velma Pollard, Dread talk: The Language of Rastafari
(Kingston; Canoe Press, 1994)
Ken Post, Arise Ye
Starvlings; The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 (Martinus Nijhoff; The
Hauge, 1978)
William J. Rolston, ‘Bringing
it all Back Home: Irish Emigration and Racism’ Race
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P. Sherlock and H. Bennett, The Story of the Jamaican People (Marcus Wiener inc.; New Jersey,
1998)
George
Eaton Simpson, ‘Religion and Justice: Some
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pp. 286-291
Bryan Turner, Religion
and Social Theory (Humanities Press; London, 1983)
Frank Van Dijk, Jahmaica:
Rastafari and Jamaican Society 1930-1990 (ISOR; Utrecht, 1993)
Anita M. Waters Race
Class and Political Symbols; Reggae and Rastafari in Jamaican Politics
(Transaction Publishers: New Jersey, 1989)
[1] Eg. S. A. King Reggae Rastafari and the rhetoric of social control, A. M. Waters Race Class and Political Symbols; Reggae and
Rastafari in Jamaican Politics, (on the use of Rastafari in the political
sphere) and E. B. Edmonds, Rastafari:
From Outcasts to Culture Bearers
[2] E.g. L.
Bradley Bass Culture; When Reggae was
King pp77 & Helene Lee, The First
Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism pp5
[3] D. Bell,
quoted in B. Turner Religion and Social
Theory pp244
[4] P.L.
Berger, quoted in B. Turner pp244
[5] C.
Geertz, quoted in B. Turner pp244
[6] L.L.
Dawson, Cults and New Religious Movements, A Reader
pp5-6
[7] E.B.
Edmonds, ‘The Structure and Ethos of Rastafari’ in, in Samuel N. Murrell (ed.) Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader,
pp353-4
[8] Ibid.,
pp355
[9] K. Post,
Arise Ye Starvlings; The Jamaican Labour
Rebellion of 1938 pp165
[10] R. Hill, ‘Leonard P. Howell and
Millenarian visions in Early Rastafarianism’ Jamaica Journal (February, 1983), pp28
[11] W. D. Spencer, ‘The First Chant:
Leonard Howell’s The Promised Key
with commentary by William David Spencer’ in Samuel N. Murrell (ed.) Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader,
pp365
[12] K.
Post, pp379
[13] P.
Sherlock and H. Bennett The Story of the
Jamaican People pp364
[14] R.
Hill, pp30
[15] Ibid.,
pp34
[16] And
specifically protestant.
[17] R.
Hill, pp26
[18] W. J.
Rolston, ‘Bringing it all Back Home:
Irish Emigration and Racism’
Race and Class, (October
2003), pp 49-50
[19] P.
Sherlock and H. Bennett, pp299
[20] B.
Chevannes, pp57
[21] When he
would take the name Haile Selassie I
[22] M.
Garvey, The Blackman 30/11/1930
Quoted in Lewis pp145
[23]
Specifically Psalm 68:31 “Princes
shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her
hands unto God”.
[24] M.
Garvey, The Blackman 30/11/1930
Quoted in Lewis pp146
[25] R. K. Burkett, pp2
[26]
Justifiably in my opinion,
[27] W.S.
Bainbridge & R. Stark, pp63-4
[28] See for
example the chapter in H. Lee about Howell’s life in New York and the almost
complete absence of any records relating to him – ‘Harlem’ pp27-36
[29] H. Lee,
pp30-34
[30] Ibid.,
pp47
[31] F. Van
Dijk, pp85
[32] W.S.
Bainbridge & R. Stark, pp67
[33] H. Lee,
pp36
[34] R. K. Burkett, pp1-44 & pp195-6
[35] M.
Garvey, Editorial “The dangerous Weed”, New
Jamaican, 13/10/1932 Quoted in R.
Lewis pp152
[36] H. Lee,
pp47
[37] Ibid.,
pp32
[38] K.
Post, pp206
[39] G. E.
Simpson, pp219
[40]
Including youth organisations like the Boys Brigade.
[41] As
quoted in H. Lee, pp63-67
[42] Ibid.,
pp64
[43] Ibid.,
pp65
[44] Ibid.,
pp65
[45] L.P.
Howell, http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/tpk/tpk01.htm
[46] F. Van
Dijk, pp96
[47] Ibid,
pp95
[48] H. Lee,
pp92
[49] F. Van
Dijk, pp95
[50] M. Garvey, Editorial
"THE FAILURE OF HAILE SELASSIE AS EMPEROR"
[51] K.
Post, pp191
[52] R.
Hill, pp38.
[53] H. Lee,
pp92
[54] K.
Post, pp164
[55] F. Van
Dijk, pp93
[56] H. Lee,
pp71
[57] L.
Bradley, pp90-91
[58] B.
Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology pp127
[59] F. Van
Dijk, pp98
[60] W.S.
Bainbridge & R. Stark, pp67
[61] See the
accounts in B. Chevannes, Roots and Ideology, pp122-124 & F. Van Dijk,
pp98-104
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