Rising from the proliferation of Ethiopianism and Pan-Africanism, Rastafarianism took root in Jamaica following the coronation of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1930. A spiritual movement based on the belief in Selassie’s divinity, its followers congregated around preachers like Leonard Howell, who founded the first prominent Rastafarian community in 1940. Additional branches surfaced by the 1950s, and within two decades the movement had earned global attention thanks to the music of devoted Rastafarian Bob Marley. Although the deaths of Selassie in 1975 and Marley in 1981 took away its most influential figures, Rastafarianism endures through followings in the United States, England, Africa and the Caribbean.
The roots of Rastafarianism can be traced to the 18th century when Ethiopianism and other movements that emphasized an idealized Africa began to take hold among black slaves in the Americas. For those who had been converted to Christianity, the Bible offered hope through such passages as Psalm 68:31, foretelling of how “Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”
The ethos was strengthened through the late 19th-century rise of the modern Pan-African movement and particularly the teachings of Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, who reportedly told his followers to “Look to Africa where a black king shall be crowned, he shall be the Redeemer.” Additionally, the 1920s brought such influential proto-Rastafarian texts as “The Holy Piby” and “The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy to Jamaica.”
A turning point for Rastafarianism came in 1975 when Emperor Selassie died and forced his followers to confront the contradiction of a living deity passing away. In 1981, the movement lost its second major figure with the death of Marley from cancer.
Always a decentralized faith and culture, Rastafari attempted to introduce a unifying element with a series of international conferences in the 1980s and ’90s. Smaller divisions, such as African Unity, Covenant Rastafari and the Selassian Church, emerged around the turn of the millennium, the same period which brought the passing of longtime leaders Prince Emanuel Charles Edwards (1994) and the Prophet Gad (2005).
As of 2012, it was estimated that there were approximately 1 million Rastafarians throughout the world. Its traditions continue in communities in the U.S., England, Africa, Asia and Jamaica, where the government has co-opted much of its symbolism through efforts to market tourism. Attempting to make amends for past transgressions, the Jamaican government decriminalized marijuana in 2015, and in 2017 Prime Minister Andrew Holness formally apologized to Rastafarians for the Coral Gardens debacle.
