Leonard Percival Howell was born on June 16, 1898 at May Crawle in the Bull Head Mountain district of Clarendon. He was the eldest of 10 children born to Charles Theophilus Howell, a tailor and peasant farmer, and Clementina Bennett. While details of his early life are sketchy, Robert Hill in his publication Dread History: Leonard P Howell and Millenarian Visions (2001) reported that Howell claimed to have been a soldier in Panama and at Kingston’s Up Park Camp. Leonard P. Howell Howell is also reported to have said that he was once a guard at Bumperhall Hospital, near Kingston, before being sent back to Colon, Panama. On his second assignment in Panama he was a cook in the United States Army Transport Service. Records from the Federal Records Centre in Bayonne, New Jersey, indicate that on May 19, 1924 he filed a Declaration of Intention to become a United States citizen. He also worked on various construction sites and even operated a tea room in Harlem, New York. Howell also had his run-ins with the law while in the United States. In January 1931, he was convicted by the Queens County Court at Long Island City, New York, on charges of burglary, grand larceny, and receiving stolen property and he served a two to four year sentence in the state prison at Ossining (popularly known as Sing Sing prison). In November 1932, he was, however, deported to Jamaica “on the grounds that he was sentenced, subsequent to May 1st, 1917, to imprisonment for a term of one or more for a crime involving ‘moral turpitude’ George Padmore (obtained from stabroeknews) It was during these latter years in the United States that Howell is reported to have come under the influence of Trinidadian scholar and politician George Padmore, a prominent member of the American Communist Party. Robert Hill suggests that Howell may have internalised socialist ideologies which were the foundation of his Rastafarian movement in Jamaica. Howell’s return to Jamaica coincided with an upsurge of religious revivalism and the attendant criticisms for the colonial establishment. Hill points out that such resistance ranged from proposed legislation aimed at stemming its growth and island wide spread, to intellectual arguments such as that poised by one E.A. Glen Campbell who stated “it is regrettable that our labouring population especially in towns and villages are drifting away from the civilizing influence of the Christian Church; and following no end of strange religion that can do them no good.”[i] Jamaica in the 1930’s was, thus, an environment which was not conducive to radical religious teachings and anti-establishment philosophies, such as that already being espoused by Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Incidentally, Howell met Garvey while in Harlem and had become a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) while in the United States. Howell’s socialist background was merged with his immersion in Ethiopianism, the concept that Ethiopia is the birthplace of the human race and more specifically the African/Black Ethiopian race. Ethiopia was also recognised by its adherents as being a sacred place, a place where God found favour on earth and where He loved to “dwell”, according to the Psalms. As a corollary to that philosophy was the belief that Ras Tafari Haile Selassie I was a divine being. This belief was articulated in publications such as The Holy Piby (the Blackman’s Bible), which was published in New Jersey in 1924 and The Royal Scroll of Black Supremacy, published in Jamaica in 1926. Howell, himself, was to publish The Promised Key in 1935 in which he boldly asserted the divinity of Ras Tafari as follows:
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:35:48 +0000
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