Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement

Daive Dunkley

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780807176283
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Intolerance, Persecution & Conflict

Winner of the Barbara T. Christian Literary Award Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement is a pioneering study of women's resistance in the emergent Rastafari movement in colonial Jamaica. As D. A. Dunkley demonstrates, Rastafari women had to contend not only with the various attempts made by the government and nonmembers to suppress the movement, but also with oppression and silencing from among their own ranks. Dunkley examines the lives and experiences of a group of Rastafari women between the movement's inception in the 1930s and Jamaica's independence from Britain in the 1960s, uncovering their sense of agency and resistance against both male domination and societal opposition to their Rastafari identity. Countering many years of scholarship that privilege the stories of Rastafari men, Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement reclaims the voices and narratives of early Rastafari women in the history of the Black liberation struggle.

CHAPTER 1

The First Women to Testify in Court for the Rastafari Movement

In March 1934, Leonard Howell and Robert Hinds, two of the founders of the Rastafari movement, were tried in the Morant Bay courthouse in St. Thomas for sedition, that is, creating animosity toward the British monarchy and its colonial government in Jamaica. The defendants, the Daily Gleaner reported, were charged with “abusing the King and the Queen, Queen Victoria, in fact everybody.”1 Although the sedition trial marked the first attempt by the colonial government to publicly suppress the Rastafari movement, it was also one of the earliest pieces of evidence that women were actively and publicly involved in the defense and development of the movement. For these women, namely, Rachel Patterson, Albertha Lalloo, Florence Jackson, and Doris Samuels, the trial was not merely about the suppression of their leaders, it was colonial litigation against the entire movement, a movement they believed could improve the social, economic, and political condition of Black people in Jamaica. But patriarchal tendencies in the movement bred perceptions of these women as submissive and naïve. Consequently, their involvement in the movement was initially peripheral to the agenda of the government and was therefore given little attention during the sedition trial. Similarly, the Gleaner, which provided daily coverage of the trial, treated women’s involvement in its proceedings with indifference, even though they were instrumental in the fight against colonial rule, one of the main objectives of the Rastafari movement.

In his memoir on the early Rastafari, Douglas Mack, a Rastafari elder, noted that “the sisters were a tower of strength in the daily activities of the camps,” activities they directed.2 The movement, Mack stated, had relied on women to ensure that children were protected from Babylonian or colonial indoctrination, including its avarice, selfishness, and egocentrism. These women schooled children in the socialist lifestyle of Rastafari, that is, the equitable sharing of land, work, and capital, used to promote its Black nationalist ideology. Florence Stewart, also known as Sister Irone, a resident of the Pinnacle community, noted that they were “taught everything” by Tenet Bent, Howell’s wife, and other women. “As children,” they “all mixed” and were taught that “no one was better than the other.” In the community, Stewart added, “Everyone planted and everyone had his own field or garden plot.”3 Mack also stated that the women “would teach the brothers how to cultivate crops to sell at the market.” They “assisted in confronting the police when they raided the camps,” and furthermore, “They knew how to use their feminine charms to persuade [police] officers to drop the charges.”4 Agency, that is, their sense of empowerment and independence, was therefore displayed by early Rastafari women in various respects.

This chapter discusses the agency of Patterson, Lalloo, Jackson, and Samuels, the early women who were directly involved in the sedition trial as witnesses for the defendants. While the sedition trial was one of the earliest pieces of evidence that women were actively and publicly involved in the defense and development of the movement, the historical records on these as well as other early women vary in length and mainly include court documents, police surveillance files, and newspaper reports created by the colonial government and the local press. This variation in the length and number of sources indicates the scarce attention that Rastafari women received during the colonial period, largely because of patriarchal perceptions. In light of the patriarchal tendencies in the early Rastafari movement, one can understand why some observers would have perceived Patterson, Lalloo, Jackson, and Samuels as submissive actors in the sedition trial in 1934. However, such a view is a conventional and simplistic generalization that stifles the historical inquiry. Indeed, the Rastafari women who testified at the sedition trial were protecting their leaders, but they also interpreted the trial as an attack against their movement. The trial provided a chance to publicly demonstrate their ability to defend the movement from its major opponents, which to them also meant defending themselves as members of the movement.

WOMEN AND THE CONTEXT OF THE TRIAL

Women decided to join the Rastafari knowing that they championed the liberation of Black people under the leadership of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and his wife Empress Menen. They pledged their loyalty to and supported the foundational leadership of Rastafari, thereby increasing the growth of the emergent movement. This growth, numbering hundreds from around the island, induced the suppression of the movement by the colonial government. On December 23, 1933, the police inspector in charge of Jamaica’s easternmost parish of St. Thomas, W. C. Adams, wrote in his surveillance report that the “movement has continued to grow and develop,” and in many parts of the island was “well received mostly by the lowest elements in each district.”5 Later, in the same month, Owen F. Wright, the inspector general of Jamaica, wrote to Acting Governor Arthur S. Jelf asserting his concerns over the growth of the movement and his support of its disbandment by the government. “I am satisfied with regard to the importance and seriousness of this matter at the present time,” Wright stated, “and from personal conversations with men of standing from St. Thomas I am firmly of opinion that some sort of legal action should be taken,” action that would stop the movement from growing any further.6

Although Patterson, Lalloo, Jackson, and Samuels decided to testify for the Rastafari leaders at the sedition trial, they operated within a framework based on the intersectionality of race, class, and gender that obscured their agency. The movement emerged under colonialism and the patriarchy of the Jamaican society. Creole nationalists, namely Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, future leaders of the Jamaican government, proposed decolonizing Jamaica within the Westminster political system adopted from Britain, while the Rastafari movement advocated a pro-Ethiopian Black nationalism through allegiance to the Ethiopian emperor and empress. Despite the growing focus on enfranchisement and political representation in the 1930s, women had no voting rights, arguably one of the most powerful tools of patriarchy in the Jamaican society. Moreover, the society perceived Rastafari women as docile based on patriarchal tendencies in the movement. In other words, the marginalization of Rastafari women was compounded by their membership in the movement. As noted by Merriam Lennox, an early Rastafari woman, the women of colonial Jamaica, in general, were “almost low rate in this country,” but the treatment of Rastafari women, “such as poor unto I, Merriam and others,” was worse, for “we no recognize. We just come like we are have nots people. We are forgotten people, like out of mind.” The women “in society,” or non-Rastafari women, experienced variable degrees of discrimination based on gender, class, and race.7 However, the early Rastafari women contended with these kinds of discrimination as well as discrimination based on their religious identity and advocacy of Rastafari’s pro-Ethiopian Black nationalism.

This was the context within which the women testified at the 1934 trial. Moreover, the government and press were key factors in shaping such a context. While the colonial government directed the social, economic, and political climate of Jamaica, the Gleaner newspaper, which was the only media outlet to cover the trial, highly influenced public opinion on the early Rastafari movement. In the 1930s through 1950s, the Rastafari posed a serious threat to colonial rule. But government officials emphasized the suppression of the leaders, especially the founders. Considering the patriarchy embedded in the Jamaican society itself, the government’s approach was not surprising, but it would have also been beneficial to the government to create the impression that Patterson, Lalloo, Jackson, and Samuels were the victims of chauvinistic Rastafari men. Such an impression had the potential to gain support from the public, especially from non-Rastafari women, to end the movement. Nonetheless, cases of other Rastafari women challenging colonial authorities lends plausibility to the perspective that Patterson, Lalloo, Jackson, and Samuels asserted their independence at the sedition trial. Not only did early women defend the movement against non-Rastafari members, they also physically defended themselves against the police, a reality made apparent by Daisy Shaw and other women.

In October 1933, Daisy Shaw was reported to the police as “a member of the Ras Ta Fari gang,” who had been “defying the British laws, saying they have their King in Africa.” Shaw was also reported as a person who was “thoroughly against all ministers of the Gospel, also Churches and white men.”8 Though she was identified as a follower of Howell and Hinds, she also independently promoted the beliefs of the movement. Consequently, Shaw made enemies among churchgoers, such as Mary Gayle, a member of the Church of God in Port Morant, St. Thomas. When Hinds was arrested for “disorderly conduct” on December 16, 1933, another woman named Iris Francis was described by the police as one of “the chief ones amongst others who resisted and assault[ed] the Police to get away Hinds.”9 Francis had attended a meeting held in Trinity Ville, St. Thomas, where Hinds and other men were arrested, but Francis and other women and men absconded, leading to the issuance of warrants for their arrest. Warrants issued for the arrests of Rastafari members became public knowledge through the newspapers of the time, particularly the Gleaner, which also played a central role in informing the public of the government’s stance toward the Rastafari movement.

Until the University College of the West Indies published the 1960 Report on the Ras Tafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica to facilitate an objective understanding of the movement, the Gleaner’s reports on the movement remained focused on the government’s suppression of Rastafari men.10 The newspaper’s accounts of the Rastafari began in 1932 with Howell’s return from the United States. “Messrs. Leonard Howell and Alvin Lindo,” the Gleaner published, “arrived in the Sixaola, having been deported from America by the United States Emigration Department on the ground that they overstayed their time.”11 During the sedition trial, held two years later, the Gleaner recorded and published the proceedings but regurgitated the government’s understanding that women were inconsequential to the operation of the movement. It reported a great deal on the testimonies of Howell and Hinds and the questioning and criticisms by the prosecution led by H. M. Radcliffe, the Crown prosecutor, who was assisted by M. V. Camacho, the deputy attorney general of Jamaica. The newspaper highlighted the appointment of Robert William Lyall-Grant, the chief justice of Jamaica, to preside over the trial.

Even more interesting, it provided a discussion of Miss Maud Wray’s testimony for the prosecution, which Patterson had disputed in her denouncement of the class discrimination against the movement. Wray was not a Rastafari and served as a key witness for the prosecution. Her testimony was significant to the trial as were the testimonies of the Rastafari women. But the Gleaner merely identified the Rastafari women as residents of the district of Seaforth, St. Thomas, and supporters of the defendants and provided less than a summary of all the testimonies under the grammatically incorrect subtitle of “WOMAN’S STATEMENT.”12 Some of these women had even presented their accounts of events leading up to the trial, but their accounts did not make publication in the newspaper. Essentially, the Gleaner’s reproduction of the government’s patriarchal stance in its reports on the Rastafari movement benefited the impression that Rastafari women were unimportant in the society. Furthermore, it benefited the impression that they were merely pawns of the male leaders and male members of the movement.

ON THE WITNESS STAND

At a glance, it would seem that the women at the sedition trial were merely loyal to the leaders of the movement; however, they negotiated their involvement in the trial by using the court as a platform to discredit the government and as an opportunity to show their commitment to the dismantling of British rule. Patterson was the first woman to testify. In fact, this was just one public record of her attempts to defend the movement by contesting the government’s discrimination against fellow Rastafari members. Six months later, she defended Delrosa Francis, another Rastafari woman in Seaforth. Patterson complained that the colonial judges discriminated against poor Black people such as herself and Francis and refused to admit their evidence in court. “These Majestrate[s] [sic] would not allowed a word of statement nor accept a word of evidence from your petitioner’s witnesses,” Patterson asserted, and accused the judges of “hurriedly” imposing penalties on them, especially imprisonment.13

Rastafari members were highly susceptible to imprisonment. Their relationship with the legal system has been discussed by several scholars, such as William Lewis,...