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Saturday,
December 19, 2015

6:51 PM

BLACK HISTORY: Leonard P. Howell the first Rasta

Published:Sunday
| February 2, 2014 | 12:00 AM

An
artist's (B. Howell's) impression of Leonard P. Howell, widely regarded as The
First Rasta and the settler of the first Rastafarian village in Jamaica,
located at The Pinnacle in St Catherine.

Paul
H. Williams, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Sligoville, St Catherine:On
November 2, 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I of
Ethiopia in Africa. His supporters believe that he was the earthly
manifestation of God or Jah. His birth, it is said, was foretold in the Bible
and his lineage goes back several centuries before the birth of Christ.
Selassie was born in 1892.

Six years later, in 1898,
Leonard P. Howell was born in the parish of Clarendon, on June 16. At an early
age, he migrated to the United States, where he joined Marcus Garvey's
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Soon, Howell became one of
Garvey's top-brass members, but Garvey and the UNIA were constantly under the
radar of US authorities, which eventually arrested and charged Garvey for
various crimes. Garvey was deported in 1928, and Howell was to follow him in
1932.

But Howell's activism switched
from Garveyism to one that focused on the importance of Selassie I. He saw
Selassie as the great Black Messiah, and he established the King of Kings
Mission out of respect for Selassie, and appointed himself Selassie's representative
in Jamaica. He also wrote the first book about Rastafarianism, The Promised Key.

In 1933, soon after his return
to Jamaica, Howell stepped up his preaching on Selassie, which, in addition to
his faith healing practices, earned him a huge following. In his book, Overstanding Rastafari - Jamaica's Gift to the World,
Yasus Afari says, at the beginning of the 1930s, "the
streets of Jamaica (Kingston and St Catherine in particular) were energised by
the inspired preaching and teachings of the Honourable Leonard Howell, one of
the earliest Rastafarian pioneers".

Howell was preaching
'doctrines' that were considered by the authorities as anti-Church and
anti-government.

He was charged and sent to
prison for sedition. But imprisonment did not shake the foundation of Howell's
beliefs. Upon his release from prison in 1940, he set up the first Rastafarian
village in Jamaica on 400 acres at Sligoville, St Catherine.

CAMPS TARGETED

The settlement was called The
Pinnacle because of its high hilltop elevation, and the residents became
self-sufficient farmers. Howell's influence spread outside of The Pinnacle, and
Rastafarian communities were set up across the country. The original Rasta
camps were also regularly raided and dislocated by the police "as the governing class and conservative sectors
of the Jamaican society became alarmed by the grossly misunderstood
Rastafarians".

In 1941, government forces
swooped down on Pinnacle and arrested many of Howell's followers. Howell fled,
but he was eventually arrested, and on August 20, he was tried again for
sedition and sentenced to two years in prison. When he was released in 1943, he
returned to Pinnacle.

For almost a decade after his
return, Pinnacle flourished as the residents were left alone to carry on their
lives.

Trading and farming were their
major sources of income, of which they earned a lot. The population also boomed
as people saw Pinnacle as a place where they could go to prosper on their own.
But the good life was not to last forever.

DESTROYED

In 1954, government militia
invaded Pinnacle and completely destroyed the village. The residents fled, but
they were to subsequently return. Yet, Pinnacle never really got back to its
heyday. However, the movement continued to proliferate in Jamaica and many
parts of the world, but the persecution itself wasn't waning.

In Jamaica, the animosity
involving the wider society and the Rastafarians culminated in bloodshed in
1963, in Coral Gardens, St James, when some Rastafarians and other civilians
were involved in disturbances. The Jamaica Defence Force was called in and,
"consequently, many Rastafarians were killed, beaten, intimidated
brutally, trimmed, ridiculed, harassed and arrested", Afari says.
"This unfortunate and brutal episode represented the most horrific
experience of the Rastafarians in Jamaica."

As horrific as it may have
been, the tragedy did not kill the resolve of the community which continued to
expand in many ways. Howell died in 1981 at age 82, leaving a legacy of a
movement that transcends races and classes, which has electrifying tentacles
all over the world, and which is the subject of many studies, research, and
college and university papers. Howell perhaps had no idea that the movement
which he started on the streets of Kingston and St Catherine, and for which he
was incarcerated, would have become one of the most influential movements of
the 20th and 21st centuries, but, it is indeed.

- P.H.W.

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