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The Rastafarian Brethren of Jamaica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Sheila Kitzinger
Sheila Kitzinger
Affiliation:
The Toby House, Freeland, Oxfordshire
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Extract

The Rastafarians have been a social problem for Jamaica ever since 1933, when one of their earliest leaders, Howell, sold 5000 postcards of the Emperor Haille Selassie at a shilling each making them out to be passports to Ethiopia. They gained greater publicity in 1941 when the police raided Howell's community at Pinnacle and arrested seventy of his followers on charges of growing ganja (marijuana) and of violence. In the 1950's many more were arrested, and - Rastas assert - flogged and forcibly shaved by the police; some were imprisoned on charges of rioting, and there were two separate cases charging that children were sacrificed by fire in Trenchtown, a slum area of the capital.

Type
Religious Movements
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , October 1966 , pp. 33 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1966

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References

1 For further background material, see the three articles by Simpson, G. E.: “Political Cultism in West Kingston, Jamaica”, Social and Economic Studies, June 1955, 133–149Google Scholar; “The Rastafari Movement in Jamaica”, Social Forces, December 1955, 167–170Google Scholar; and “The Ras Tafari Movement in Its Millenial Aspect”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Supplement No. 2 (1962), 160–165Google Scholar.

2 Published by the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies.