‘Rastafari in Motion’: Haile Selassie and the Rastafari movement in Britain
The Black Cultural Archives in collaboration with the Rastafari Regal Livity is curating an exhibition titled, ‘Rastafari in Motion’. The exhibition focuses on the appearance of Rastafarianism in Britain and its impact on British society. It also centres on the lives of renowned UK Rastafarian activist, Ras Seymour Mclean and Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia.
Emperor Haile Selassie 1, (1892 – 1975) was the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. Though a Christian throughout his life, Selassie was revered as messiah and representation of God on earth by the Rastafaris, a religious and cultural movement which originated in Jamaica in the 1930s. The Rastafari movement derives its name from Selassie’s pre–coronation title, Ras Tafari Makonnen.
On the Emperor’s visit to Jamaica in 1966, The Guardian noted, a great crowd of Rastafarians surrounded the airport with banners showing the Ethiopian Lion of Judah. “Converging around the Ethiopian plane even as the propellers were turning, they sang praise to their god in human form, who they believed had come to redeem his Jamaican brethren,” it added.
