Forty years prior to Marley's international ascent, Rastafari was established in Jamaica in the early 1930s following the Nov. 2, 1930 coronation of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I. The 225th descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Haile Selassie was born Ras Tafari Makonnen on July 23, 1892. In the Ethiopian Amharic language the word "Ras" is the equivalent of "Head" and is the third most powerful title in the country's aristocracy, following Negus Negast, (Emperor) and Negus (King); "Tafari" translates as "fearsome one". Upon his baptism in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the oldest in all of Christianity, His Majesty was given the name Haile Selassie (which means "Power of the Trinity") and the titles "King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah".
The dominant tenet of Rastafari is the acceptance of Emperor Halie Selassie I as Lord and Savior, followed by the recognition of Africa as the ancestral and spiritual homeland for all Black people. (Although the majority of Rastafarians smoke marijuana, wear dreadlocks and maintain a vegetarian diet, these practices are variable among the movement's members). Rastafarian ideology is rooted in such texts as "The Holy Piby" written in 1924 by Anguillan born Athlyi Rogers which proclaims Ethiopians (Africans) as the chosen people of God. Another influential document was (Jamaican born) Leonard Howell's "The Promise Key" (written in the early 1930s), which declares Haile Selassie as the Head of Creation. In the early 1940s Howell also established the first Rasta commune, Pinnacle, located in the hills above Kingston.
But the primary draftsman in the construction of Rastafarian principles was Marcus Mosiah Garvey, born on August 17, 1887 in the parish of St. Ann which is also Marley's birthplace. In 1914 Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an umbrella organization for several businesses, with the objective of conducting global commerce among Black communities. Two years later, Garvey moved to New York's Harlem community where the UNIA thrived; at its height the organization's worldwide membership reportedly exceeded six million. A charismatic orator, Garvey recruited thousands of supporters as he traveled throughout the U.S. urging African-Americans to know their history, strive for economic independence and return to the continent.
Garvey founded a steamship company named the Black Star Line as a means of promoting his international business transactions and to facilitate repatriation to the continent. Garvey's immense power was an anomaly for a Black man in segregated America and that made him a target of The Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner to the FBI). In 1922 he was arrested for mail fraud in connection with the sale of stock in the Black Star Line, which by now had failed due to mismanagement and FBI sabotage. Garvey was sent to prison on tax charges and two years later he was deported to Jamaica. In 1935, he moved to London where he died five years later. In 1964, Garvey's body was returned to Jamaica where he was declared the country's first National Hero.
It is a widely held belief that before Garvey left Jamaica for the US in 1916 he prophetically stated, "Look to Africa where a Black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is near." When Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930, for Garveyites (especially in Jamaica) this was the fulfillment of Biblical scripture as written in Acts 2-9: "He shall come through the lineage of Solomon and sit on David's throne."
More than 60 years after Garvey's passing, the significance of his teachings within the creation of Rastafarian doctrine cannot be overstated. As Jamaican dub poet Yasus Afari writes in his book "Overstanding Rastafari, Jamaica's Gift to the World": "The exalted chief architect who helped to engineer this mental and social environment was Marcus Garvey, the founder of the biggest independent Black organization in history. Within the Jamaican experience, the faith and movement of the Rastafarians constitutes the only tangible pluralizing of Marcus Mosiah Garvey. And anywhere in the post modern world, the only movement that can adequately encompass Garvey's works and aspirations is the emerging multi-ethnic global nation of Rastafari."
Decades before a global Rastafarian nation emerged, the lifestyle's earliest adherents faced ongoing harassment from the Jamaican police, which included being arrested, thrown in jail and having their dreadlocks sheared. In 1954, police destroyed Howell's Pinnacle commune but were unable to suppress its essence. Approximately 163 residents of the Rasta camp were displaced and forced into squalid squatter settlements throughout western Kingston. In the 1950s and '60s several Rasta communities were bulldozed by police following the Jamaican government's directive to rid the society of what was perceived as a subversive movement.
"Those were some rough times, we as Rastas was banned as a dangerous people," recalls Bongo Tawney, the Rasta elder whose pilgrimage from his Clarendon, Jamaica home to Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa is documented in the forthcoming film "Africa Unite." "In the early 50s as a Rasta Man you couldn't leave Kingston and go to Spanish Town (a distance of approximately 10 miles) or you might be charged for wandering abroad without any physical means of explanation. Police and soldiers would beat you and trim you (cut your dreadlocks). If they find you with a little seed of herb (marijuana) they would lock you up. Those were the days when they were trying by any means necessary to get rid of Rasta."
Bongo Tawney has spent 53 years as a Rastafarian in the Nyabinghi order, the foundation order from which the other branches (or houses )of Rastafari developed including the Bobo Shanti, founded by Emmanuel Charles Edwards in the 1950s and The Twelve Tribes of Israel founded by Vernon Carrington in 1968. Bobo Shanti Rastas are known for wrapping their dreadlocks in turbans (as worn by popular dancehall artists Sizzla and Capleton) and strictly observing the Sabbath with fasting from Friday evening until Saturday's sunset. The Twelve Tribes of Israel (of which Bob Marley was a member) is more liberal than the other orders and its membership reflects a broader range of societal backgrounds and nationalities. While each house has slightly differing rituals and beliefs, all extol the divinity of Halie Selassie.
Bongo Tawney's home was burned down by Jamaican police in the early 60s, a malevolent act that would have weakened a man with lesser convictions. Undeterred, he maintained his faith and today he is a respected elder who travels the world educating people about Nyabinghi and correcting the many misconceptions about the Rastafarian movement. "It is a pleasure to see certain things manifest now," he observes. "People realize that we are no threat to the government, they were only branding us to get rid of the faith. A Jamaican policeman said if there were more Rastas in Jamaica, it would be a better place. We live a life that they have now come to glorify. It is written in the Bible that the stone that the builder refused shall be the head cornerstone; that is where the faith is now."