Chapter Eight - A God in the Caribbean

CHAPTER EIGHT

A God in the Caribbean

BY THE 1960S, Haile Selassie was already a global statesman.
He’d outlived Mussolini. Outmaneuvered Stalin. Outlasted Churchill.
He was a king among prime ministers, a relic that still ruled — beard grayer, posture straighter, medals stacked high.

But there was one place where he wasn’t just respected.
He was worshipped.

That place was Jamaica.

Back in the 1930s, a Jamaican preacher named Leonard Howell had been preaching a wild, revolutionary gospel: that Haile Selassie — the newly crowned emperor of Ethiopia — was God in the flesh.

Why? Because prophecy said so.

Marcus Garvey, the Black nationalist prophet of the Caribbean, had once told his followers to “Look to Africa, where a Black king shall be crowned. He shall be the Redeemer.” When Selassie took the throne in 1930, with titles like King of Kings and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, it fit a little too well.

To many in Jamaica’s oppressed Black population, this wasn’t coincidence.
It was revelation.

Thus began the Rastafari movement — part religion, part revolution, part identity reclamation.
They didn’t just admire Selassie.
They believed he was the living God.

And Selassie… had no idea.

For decades, the Rastas praised him, painted him, prayed to him. They studied his speeches, smoked ganja as sacrament, and rejected Babylon — their word for the colonial West. They grew dreadlocks in defiance. They saw Ethiopia not as a faraway country, but as Zion. Home.

In 1966, Haile Selassie finally agreed to visit Jamaica.

No one was ready for what happened next.

On April 21, 1966, Selassie’s plane touched down in Kingston. The tarmac was supposed to be secure. Protocols were in place.

But 100,000 people showed up anyway.

They brought drums. They burned frankincense. They chanted “Jah! Rastafari!” until the air felt electric. Children climbed trees. Grandmothers wept. Dreadlocked men and women danced, wailed, and waited for their God to step onto Jamaican soil.

When the airplane door opened, the crowd exploded.

They stormed the runway.

Police were overwhelmed. Horses reared. The Jamaican Prime Minister panicked. Selassie stayed on the plane. For a full 45 minutes, he refused to come down.

Not out of fear — out of confusion.

He didn’t understand what was happening. He’d been to many state visits before. He’d seen respect. But this was something else.

This was worship.

Eventually, Rita Marley — Bob Marley’s wife, and a committed Rasta — made her way to the plane. She later claimed that when she looked into Selassie’s eyes, she saw a “powerful light.”

The Emperor stepped out.

The crowd lost its mind.

Over the next few days, Selassie toured Jamaica.
He met with leaders. He spoke in calm tones. He smiled politely.

But he also made a quiet request:
Tell the Rastas to stop worshipping me.
He didn’t say it with anger. Just with gravity. He was a Christian. A monarch. Not a deity.

But it didn’t matter.

God doesn’t get to opt out.

Back in Ethiopia, he was a modernizing monarch with political headaches.
In Jamaica, he was Jah.

And when he left, the Rastas declared that the rain fell softer.
That the lions at the zoo bowed.
That history had bent.

Whether he wanted it or not — Haile Selassie had become something more than a man.

He had become a myth in motion.