When the Prophet was angry with the Emperor: On Marcus Garvey's critique of Haile Selassie I, and the aligned legacy of both their logic

Sobers, Shawn

Abstract

Discussing the challenging moment in 1937 when Marcus Mosiah Garvey strongly criticised Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie for moving to Bath in the UK, to rally for support for Ethiopia's liberation from Mussolini's fascist invasion. Garvey attacked the Emperor for failing to use the opportunity to galvanise support from the African diaspora worldwide. With the Rastafari movement considering Garvey a Prophet, and the Emperor their God, this is a very difficult and controversial period in the history of Rastafari and Pan-African discourse.

I discuss how from his residence Fairfield House in Bath, Haile Selassie and Dr Malaku Bayen founded the Ethiopian World Federation, which unexpectedly but directly energised the newly founded Rastafari movement in Jamaica, and subsequently worldwide, and sympathisers thereof. I argue that through these chain of events, generations later we we can now see that even though Garvey's and the Emperor's strategies differed at the time, with generations passed we can see their aims and impact have aligned.

Citation

Sobers, S. (2019, August). When the Prophet was angry with the Emperor: On Marcus Garvey's critique of Haile Selassie I, and the aligned legacy of both their logic. Presented at Do you Remember? Commemoration for Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Kuumba Centre, Bristol

• Presentation Conference Type: Speech
• Conference Name: Do you Remember? Commemoration for Marcus Mosiah Garvey
• Conference Location: Kuumba Centre, Bristol
• Start Date: Aug 17, 2019
• End Date: Aug 17, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 2, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 3, 2019
• Keywords: Pan-Africanism, Haile Selassie, Ethiopia, Bath, Fairfield House, Rastafari, Rasta, Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, Jamaica, Ethiopian World Federation, EWF, Dr Malaku Bayen
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/2320077