Rastafari Movement Looks to Ethiopia
In November 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, and the ceremony in Addis Ababa was noticed far beyond Africa. In Jamaica, a small number of preachers took it as the fulfillment of a prophecy, and from that conviction grew Rastafari, a religious and cultural movement that would later spread worldwide through reggae music and a distinctive way of life.
The background lay in the Atlantic world's long history of slavery and colonialism. Ethiopia held special significance for many people of African descent because it had resisted European colonization, defeating an Italian army at Adwa in 1896, and because it appears repeatedly in the Bible. The verse in Psalm 68 about Ethiopia stretching out her hands to God was widely read as a promise of African redemption. This tradition, often called Ethiopianism, mixed with the Pan-African ideas of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican activist who urged Black pride and self-reliance. A saying often attributed to Garvey, that a Black king would be crowned in Africa, was later repeated by Rastafari, though whether he said it in that form is disputed.
When Ras Tafari was crowned, he took the throne name Haile Selassie, meaning "Power of the Trinity," and used traditional titles such as King of Kings and Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Early Jamaican preachers, including Leonard Howell, Joseph Hibbert, and Archibald Dunkley, began proclaiming him as a divine figure, the returned messiah, and many followers called him Jah. Their exact roles and the sequence of events are debated by historians, and the early movement was never a single organization. Howell founded a community called Pinnacle in the 1940s, which authorities repeatedly raided.
Rastafari developed in the face of hostility from the Jamaican state and from much of respectable society. Followers were harassed and jailed, and their beliefs and practices, such as growing dreadlocks, using cannabis as a sacrament, and adopting a diet called Ital, set them apart. Central themes included repatriation to Africa, rejection of "Babylon" as a symbol of oppression, and dignity for Black people.
The movement's reach grew sharply from the 1960s. Haile Selassie's visit to Jamaica in 1966 drew enormous crowds. Musicians such as Bob Marley carried Rastafari imagery and ideas to a global audience. Haile Selassie himself, a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, never publicly accepted the claims made about him, and he was deposed in 1974. Rastafari nonetheless endured, with communities today across the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and no central authority governing its varied beliefs.