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The content of the present pages will be disapprea shortly
THIS SECTION OF THE WEBSITE (besides the rastafarians introduction below) HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR SISTER WEBSITE:
http://www.rootsreggaeclub.com/culture_reggae_afro/the_rastafarians/the_rastafarians_main.htm
INTRODUCTION TO THE RASTAFARIANS CULTURE AND HISTORY (see RASTAFARIANS FULL VERSION):
THE RASTAFARIANS:
Chapter 3 / Ethiopianism in Jamaica
Ethiopia and Ancient Thought
Ethiopianism and the Black Struggle
Ethiopianism in Jamaica
The birth of the Rastafarian Movement
The Struggle
Rastafarians Turned Maroons
Message from the King of Kings
The First Nyabingi
The Aborted Repatriation
The Rastafarians Get a National Hearing
The emergence of the Rastafarians will remain a puzzle unless seen as a continuation
of the concept of Ethiopianism which began in Jamaica as early as the eighteenth
century. The enchantment with the land and people of Ethiopia has had a long
and interesting history. From biblical writings through Herodotus to the medieval
fantasy with the mythic King Prester John right down to our day, Ethyiopia has
had a hypnotic influence on history, which has been retained by the imagination
of Blacks in Diaspora. Ine the nineteenth century, when the defenders of slavery
tried to divest Blacks of every dignity of humanity and civilization, Blacks
appealed to the fabled glory of Ethiopia. When confronted by stalwarts of religion,
philosophy, and science who sought to falsify history in teh service of Western
slavery, black preachers - though for the most part unlearned - discovered in
the only book to which they had access (the bible) that Egypt and Ethiopia were
in Africa, and that these counties figured very importrantly in the history
of civilization. They eveidently read and pondered the meaning of Psalm 68:31
-"Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her
hands unto God" ; and with some reflection they must have read Jeremiah
13:23 - "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"
They no doubt figured out that Simon of Cyrene, who helped Christ to bear his
cross on the way of the crucifixion, was an African and that the Ethiopian eunuch
of the Acts of the Apostles was a man of great authority. Such references to
a Black race in the Bible were probably the key to the dynamic mythology which
became known as "Ethiopianism" and which energized Black religion
in slavery. From South Africa to the Caribbean to North America, the concept
of Ethiopianism has remained a part of black religious thought.
Because few writers have connected Ethiopianism with the rise of Rastafaiansism,
in this chapter first we will explore the concept of Ethiopia in ancient history;
second the concept as used in Black religious reaction to proslavery propaganda;
and third, the term as used by Black leaders such as Marcus Garvey, who inspired
the Rastafarians. Then we will look at the beginning of the Rastafarians and
how they adopted the concept as a model for social transformation in Jamaica.
Ethiopia and Ancient Thought
Rivers of ink have been spilled trying to obscure the identity of the Egyptians
and the Ethiopians. This became especially necessary as it grew fashionable
to foster a "sociology of knowledge" in the nineteenth century which
claimed that Blacks were by nature uncivilized and have remained so throughout
written history. At all costs, it became necessary to prove that all areas of
highly developed civilization, in which Blacks were numerous, were originated
by the White race. If White origin was impossible to prove, it was necessary
to de-negrify the blacks in these civilizations by calling the inhabitants White,
even if such a description denied acientific objectivity. To "scientifically"
prove these notions, nineteenth-century scholars divided the Black race into
various categories of skin colour; thus the people of West Africa were true
Negroes - based on the melanin in their pigmentation. Under such categories,
the people of Egypt and Ethiopia, who were of lighter colour through centuries
of miscegenation, were not Negroes but Hamites. Others who were less mixed butt
obviously too Black to be called Hamites were deignated Nilotics. Even today,
Africa and its people suffer from these confusing racial classifications, though
modern scholarship has long since destroyed their credibility.
But who are the Hamites? Today, this question is very controversial and might
best be left unanswered. but many black scholars are becoming restless to answer
the question and would like to see some new discussion. If the true history
of the Black race is to be written, the dogmatic statements of the nineteenth-century
scholars need to be challenged. Despite the avoidance of the question and the
emotion surrounding it, great emphasis is placed on the mythical origin of the
Hamites by fundamentalist Christianity and racist bigots. It is therefore of
interest to millions of Blacks that this question be reconsidered.
The first mention of the name Ham occurs in the Christian Bible; here the myth
of the origin of human races is recorded and their place of habitation allotted
to them. Although learned scholars interpret the myth of total assertion of
ancients' minds which gain meaning only through interpretation, naive and unlearned
minds believe them to be truths at face value. And they are true to the extent
that mythical statements make total assertions of the world in "beginning"
time, and even more so when we consider that the book of Genesis is considered
by some to be the revelation of God.
Most Hebrew dictionaries agree that "Ham" or "Cham" mean
"heat" or "hot" , a designation that fits well into the
climatic theory that is supposed to cause blackness. In Hebrew, "Cush"
is the word for "Black" and wherever "cushite" is used it
refers to people of Black Africa. "Mizraim" is still used in the Near
East for Egypt, whose people wer described by the ancient text as Black. "Phut"
or Put" is a reverence to Ethiopians. From Bibilica references, then, one
may conclude that the Hamites or Cushites were Black and that both Egypt and
Ethiopia were inhabited by Cushites or the Black race. One can further conclude
that Blacks, contrary to the attempts of Western writers to deny the evidence,
were the founders of one of the greatest civilizations history has recorded.
To discuss Ethiopia without discussing Egypt is impossible. The author believes
that they were both inhabited by one and the same people. The word "Ethiopia"
as we now know it is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for the Blacks.
In Greek, "Ehiop" means "burn" or "black"; when
the old testament was translated from Hebrew to Greek, "cush" was
changed to "Ethiop". The flowering of Black civilization arose in
Nubia on the banks of the Upper Nile and has come down to us as the meroitic
civilizatoin, from which both the Egyptians and the Ethiopians drew their cultural
dynamics. An early eyewitness of the Egyptians and Ethiopians was Herodotus,
according to whom "the natives of the country (Egypt) were black with the
heat." On another occasion he states "they are black-sinned and have
wooly hair". On comparing a tribe of India with the Ethiopians he said,
"they all, also have the same tin of skin which approaches that of the
Ethiopians." Numerous sources from ancient history exist which testify
to the fact that the Ethiopians and the Egyptians were one and the same people.
Both wre of the Black race and the forerunners of one of the wolrd's great civilizations.
It amy be argued that the present people of Egypt and Ethiopia do not qualify
as Blacks. This cannot be denied, but when Herodotus met the Egyptians in the
fifth century b.c. a lot of miscegenation had already taken place. The Persian
blood had been added to the stock, followed by the greeks under Alexander, the
Romans, and finally the Arabs.
"Nowhere was dionysus more favoured, nowhere was he worshipped more adoringly
and more elaboratedly than by the Ptolemies, who recognized his cult as an especially
effective means of promoting the assimilation of the conquering Greeks and their
fusion with the native Egyptians."
In time, the conquering armies of Eurasia would modify the African stock, but
our history of reativity went back ten thousand years before that, and even
at this Herodotus was not misled -unlike the writers of history and our modern
day anthropologists. Count Constantin de Volney (1747 - 1820) spoke about the
race of Egyptians that produced the Pharaohs and later paid tribute to Herodotus'
discoery when he said:
..."the ancient Egyptians were true Negoes of the same type as all native-born
Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries
with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original
colour, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can
even state as a a genral principle that the face (this is the Sphinx) is a kind
of monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence
on the origins of the people."
The Egyptian monument depicting the fact that the African race caused Volney
to reflect:
"What a subject for meditation... just think tha tthe race of black men,
today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe
our arts, science, and even the use of our speech."
Needless to say, many scholars later sisputed Volney's observatino. One of these
was the brother of the decipherer of the Rosetta Stone, Champollion-figeac,
who declared that black skin and wooly hair are not sufficient characteristics
to designate a man Black. Since that time, proponents of this kind of doubletalk
have come and gone.
But to conclude this short review of the ancients, we must quote Diodorus of
Sicily who gave us an important view of the Ethiopians:
"The ethiopians call themselves the first of all men and cite proofs they
consider evident. It si generally agreed that born in a country and not having
come from eslewhere, they must be judged indigenous. For it is likely that located
direclty under the course of the sun, combing with the humidity of the soil,
produces life, those sites nearest the Equator must have produced living beings
earlier than any others. The Ethiopians also say that they instituted the cults
of the Gods, festivals, solemn assembles, sacrifice, in short, all the practices
by which we honor the gods. For that reason they are deemed the most religious
of all men, and they believe their sacrifices to be the most pleasing to the
gods. They claim that the gods have rewarded their piety by important blessings,
such as never having been dominated by any foreign Prince. In fact, thanks to
the great unity that has always existed among them, they have always kept their
freedom."
Here we may obswerve that, even before the findings of modern archeologists,
the ancients expressed the belief that humanity originated in Africa and tha
tall religion began there. The ancient enchantment with Ethiopia is addictive,
but this short discussion must suffice. We have tried to show that Egypt and
Ethiopia figured greatly in the building of civilization, and that the earliest
and the most creative peoples of this civilization were Black Africans. The
testimony of the ancients and many Egyptologists have confirmed that this black
civilization, howerver, was uanble to wthstand the barbaric hordes which surrounded
the Mediterranean basin. by 814 b.c., with teh Roman vicory over Carthage, the
Black civilization lost its power. Therafter, they were oppressed by all races.
Oppression by strangers no doubt sparked migration of Blacks south and west
from the Nile basin to be regrouped in empires west of Egypt. Meanwhille, Egypt
and Ethiopia were to undergo radical change, but despite the vicissitudes of
history, they remain a part of Africa. Although there have been various attempts
to Europeanize these people, Blacks all over the world still find the origins
of their ancestral creativity in these two great civilization in history, in
Black tradition, the word "Ethiopia" has come to designate all of
Africa including Egypt.
Ethiopianism and the Black Struggle
It is now impossible to know with certainty when Ethiopianism emerged in Americn
Black religion. but is is certain that all American Blacks knew themselves as
Africans before and after the emancipation. Thus, when the first Black churches
began to emerge in the ante-bellum period, almost all placed their nationality
ahead of the various denominations with which they became afiliated. The first
Baptist church organized by Blacks in the South was named the first African
Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia (1788). This appellation became the norm
throughtout the United States, whatever the denomination. The Blacks in America
saw themselves as a nation entirely separate form other Americans until long
after emancipation.
By the time of the emergence of the Black churches, Africa (as geographical
entity) was jsut about obliterated from their minds. Their only vision of a
homeland was the biblical Ethiopia.It was the vision of a golden past - and
the promise that Ethiopia should once more stretch forth its hands to God -
that revitalized the hope of an oppressed people. Ethiopia to teh Blacks in
America was like Zion or Jerusalem to the Jews. It began to take on an eschatological
dimension. As the Black churches developed in America, the spirit of missonis
developed. This course was part and parcel of the denomination to which they
belonged, but for the Black church, the mission grew increasingly concerend
with the Blacks in the New World, of which Haiti was the first, and Africa the
second and more important.
As a result of the missionary outreach, Ethiopianism began to take on more realistic
dimension. Pioneered by the Rev. Edward Wilmot Blyden, who was sent to Liberia
as a missionary by the American Colonization Society, the new dimension began
to take shape. His wide training gave him a grasp of African culture far beyond
that of his contemporaries. He saw the Pan-African dimension of the Black race
worldwide, and began to structure it in a series of books and articles. The
eyes of Blacks in both America and Africa began to open. For a knowledge of
Africa he went to the classical sources of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs
where he discovered that Africa was not the barbaric, inferior culture projected
by ewhites, but the founder of all civilizations. From Ethiopia the Blacks had
penetrated the desert westward to find the great West African civilization and
it was from these great civilizations of the west that slaves were taken in
the sixteenth century to the New World. Although a Christian missionary, Blyden
believed that Christianity was a destroyer of the dignity of Blacks. He even
advocated Islam as a better religion fr the Africans.
Ethiopianism did not take on any really revolutionary dimension in teh United
States. It merely existed as a mild ideology, foreceful but unstructured. Then,
toward the close of the nineteenth century this ideology assmed a revolutionary
aspect in Africa and carved out a new Ethioppian church movement from the missionary
churches. This reaction ot missionary Christianity was a direct rejection of
the European orientation of Chirstianity and a search for an African Chirstianity
which would more adequatley answer the needs and aspiration of their people.
This Ethiopian ideology set off a tidal wave of independent movements in Africa.
The last estimate of these movements amounted to six thousands different schisms.
Ethiopianism in Jamaica
Long before Ethiopianism came to America, the term had been adopted in Jamaica
by George Liele, the American Baptist slave preacher who founded th efirst Baptist
church in the island in 1784 - which he named the Ethiopian Baptist Church.
This church (discussed in Chapter 2) grafted itself onto the African religion
of Jamaican slaves and developed outside of the Christian missions, esxhibiting
a prue native flavor. It has continued to do so under various names and is still
the church the most acceptable to the masses because it was the religious expression
most suitable for the political and social aspirations of the slaves. From it
came the grassroots resistance to oppression.
But the movement that was to embody the Ethiopian ideology par excellence was
the Back-to-Africa Movement of Marcus Garvey. It was in Garvey - the prophet
of Arican redemption - that the spirit of Ethiopianism came into full blossom.
Through his writings and speeches, the glory of Ethiopia-africa became the glory
of things to come. We must look at some of his most inspired words. Speaking
on the image of God, he wrote:
"We, as Negroes, have found a new ideal. Whilst our God has no colour,
yet it is human to see everything through one's own spectacles, and since the
white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now
started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own sspectacles.
The God of Isaac and the God of Jacob let him exist for the race that believe
in the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. We Negoes believe in the God of Ethiopia,
the everlasting God - God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the oneGod of all ages.
That is the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship him through the spectacles
of Ethiopia."
From this statement by Garvey most Black God movements have drawn their roigin.
Among these are the Church of the Black Madonna in Detroit, the Black Muslims
of America, and the Rastafarians.
Marcus Garvey was bold and virulent about the defense of African history. He,
like Blyden, saw African civilization as anterior to all others, and he seemed
to have been well versed in the ancient references to Ethiopia. In one of his
strongest speeches he asserted:
"But ehen we come to consider the hisotry of man, was not the Negro a power,
was he not great once? Yet, honest students of history can recall the day when
Egypt, Ethiopia and Timbuctoo towered in their civilization, twered above Europe,
towered above Asia. When Europe was inhabited by a race of Cannibals, a race
of savages, naked men, heathens and pagans, Africa was peopled with a race of
cultured black men, who were cultured and refined, men who, it is said, were
like gods".
Marcus Garvey returned to the theme of the superiority of the ancient Black
race time and again. There was no equivocation in his belief about the dignity
of the Black race; this dignity was only to be ignited for the Blacks to assume
the true leadership of the world as they had in times past. He realized that
the Western world was so demoralized that there was no need to appeal to its
conscience.
When reflecting on the nature of twentieth-century man, Garvey stated:
"as by the action of the world, as by the conduct of all the races and
nations it is apparent that not one of them has the sense of justice, the sence
of love, the sense of equity, the sense of charity, that would make men happy,
and God satisfied. It is apparent that it is left to the Negro to play such
a part in human affairs - for when we look at the Anglo-Saxon we see him full
of greed, avarice, no mercy, no love, no charity. We go from the white man to
the yellow man, and see the same unenviable characteristics in the Japanese.
Therefore we must believe that the Psalmist had great hopes of this race of
ours when he prophesied "Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall
stretch forth his hands unto God".
The importance of this verse of Psalm 68 cannot be overestimated. It was the
theme of the Garvey movement and has remained the most quoted text in th Rastafarian
movement. The style and ardor of Garvey's speeches and writings were those of
a prophet of Israel. His clarity of speech and his reiteration techniques were
such theat he could bring the spirit of an odience to boil. No wonder he became
the inspirer of such men like Kwame Nkumah of Ghana and numerous other African
leaders.
The messianic dimension of Garvey's movement has not only a revolutionary thrust,
but indeed a high ethical force. His movement was disigned to restructure a
fallen race and, like a prophet, he was impatient for its accomplishment. In
his address Who and What is a Negro?, we can feel this impatience:
"The power and sway we once held passed away, but now in the twentieth
century we are about to see the return of it in the rebuilding of Africa; yes,
a new civilization, a new culture, shall spring up from among our people, and
the Nile shall once more flow through the land of science, of art, and of literature,
wherein will live blackmen of the hightest learning and the highest accomplishments."
Here is the language of a prophet. Notice the reference to the Nile. No accuracy
of geography exists here; the emphasis is on racial uplift, not scientific precision.
Garvey never visited Africa. His knowledge of the continent was biblically oriented.
Despite this, his followers both in the New World and in Africa perceived the
meaning of his message. The fulfillment of this quotation in our day cannot
be denied. The movement he organized was known as the Universal Negro Improvement
Association. In a speech delivered in Madison Square Garden in New York, March
16, 1942, he described the movement in these words:
"The Universal Negro Improvement Association represents the hopes and and
aspirations of the awakened Negro. Our desire is for a place in the world, not
to disturb the tranquility of other men, but to lay down our burden and rest
our weary backs and feet by the banks of the Niger and sing our songs and chant
our hymns to the God of Ethiopia."
Here again we find the Ethiopian theme: not heaven with its rivers of milk and
honey, but by the banks of the Niger. Here the Niger replaces the Nile, but
that makes no difference. The songs and chants shall be sund to the God of Ethiopia.
In this smae vein we shall be able to understand the ideology of the Rastafarians
who also use the term Ethiopia in what seems to be a contradiction. This is
religious language - a language aimed at inspiration, not information.
In Marcus Garvey, Ethiopianism reached its highest development. From ideology,
it became a movement. In this movement Ethiopianism was a lived experience.
Its leader was named the Provisional President of Africa. The god worshipped
was the God of Ethiopia, and all structures and orientation were aimed toward
African redemption. Finally, even the national anthem of the Garvey movement
- which has been adopted by the Rastafarians - expresses the mythic dimension
of this ideology in military fervor. Ine the Fortieth Article of the "Declaration
of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World" (adopted in New York in 1920),
one can find the original anthem in the following reference and context:
"Resolved, that the anthem "Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers' etc.
shall be the anthem of the Negro Race." Entitled "The Universal Ethiopian
Anthem," it was based on a poem by Burrel and Ford. The words are as follows:
Ethiopia, thou land of our fathers,
Thou land where the Gods loved to be,
As the storm cloud at night suddenly gathers
Our armies come rushing to thee.
We must in the fight be victorious
When swords are thrust outward to gleam;
For us will tghe victory be glorious
When led by the red, black and green
Chorus:
Advance, advance to victory,
Let Africa be free'
Advance to meet the foe
with the might
of the red, the black and green
Ethiopia, the tyrants falling,
Who smote thee upon thy knees,
And thy children are lusty calling
From over the disitant seas,
Jehovah, the great one has heard us,
Has noted our sighs and our tears,
With his spirit of Love he has stirred us
To be one though the comint years.
THIS SECTION OF THE WEBSITE (besides the rastafarians introduction below) HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR SISTER WEBSITE:
http://www.rootsreggaeclub.com/culture_reggae_afro/the_rastafarians/the_rastafarians_main.htm
INTRODUCTION TO THE RASTAFARIANS CULTURE AND HISTORY (see RASTAFARIANS FULL VERSION):
|
