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, who argued that the experiences of Rastafari with the legal system highlights the absence of “legal pluralism” in western bureaucratic societies.¹⁴ Legal pluralism refers to making exceptions for cultural diversity as a means to protecting persons from spurious prosecutions under the law. In place of legal pluralism, money can be used to procure good legal defense allowing even guilty persons with money to buy justice. The primacy of money in procuring good legal defense also helps to maintain the susceptibility of the poor to court prosecutions for noncriminal offenses, which do not harm other people. The lack of pluralism meant that Rastafari members had very little hope of getting justice from the courts when their religious beliefs were deemed as conflicting with the law. Their beliefs were barred from use as evidence to defend activities such as holding public meetings to venerate the emperor and empress of Ethiopia as the true rulers of Black people and the world, and since they were not officially recognized as a religion, they were not privy to any of the law’s special exceptions on religious grounds. Patterson and other women recognized their vulnerability to those constraints due to the absence of legal pluralism. Yet these women contested the government’s prosecution of the movement in the courts knowing that there were very few prospects of success.

Patterson’s testimony provided her with an opportunity to publicly denounce class discrimination against Rastafari members, as well as to denounce the legal system. She diverted from the defendants’ religious claims in supporting themselves. To prove their innocence, the defendants used the right to freedom of worship to counteract the Seditious Meetings Act, passed in 1836. The act stipulated that anyone could be charged for sedition once the authorities deemed their meetings as “exciting any person or persons to commit any act of insurrection or insubordination, or to obtain otherwise than by lawful means any alteration or change in the constitution or government.”¹⁵ But in the defendants’ view, not only had they “not done so,” they were being punished for rejecting what they viewed as “the ‘worship of idolatry.’”¹⁶ On the other hand, Patterson emphasized that classism underpinned the litigation aimed at suppressing the Rastafari movement, which comprised mainly peasants. She asserted that Ebenezer Brooks and Enos Gayle, the two main policemen who testified for the prosecution, were in collusion with members of the middle class and upper class of St. Thomas and other parishes, who were committed to the suppression of the Rastafari movement. Although Brooks and Gayle testified that they recorded the proceedings of a meeting that rendered the defendants’ arrests, Patterson insisted that they were in the “drawing room” of Maud Wray during the meeting in question, and “were not taking notes of Howell’s speech as they said.”¹⁷ While testifying for the prosecution, Wray confirmed that Brooks and Gayle were under the influence of alcohol while in her drawing room for a period of time during the meeting. Wray’s drawing room, a feature of houses that symbolized bourgeois status, was used for receiving and entertaining guests. Though Wray’s racial identity is unknown, her testimony supported the petitions to the government from middle-class and upper-class residents asking for the suppression of the Rastafari movement.

The socioeconomic circumstances of most Rastafari members clashed with those of Wray and other middle-class and upper-class residents of Seaforth, a small rural community located near the center of St. Thomas and close to Font Hill and Trinity Ville. These were areas where the Rastafari members had their strongest presence during the 1930s. The movement was well received among the Black population of St. Thomas, which constituted approximately 87 percent of the parish.¹⁸ The Black population was mainly composed of members of the peasantry, and St. Thomas was also where the most recent uprising of the Black peasantry, the Morant Bay Rebellion, had occurred in 1865, a rebellion that was caused mainly by the government’s land tax.¹⁹ This uprising included “a large body, about 800, chiefly women,” who were caught “in the act of demolishing the house of Mr. Duffus,” a local white business owner.²⁰ Further, the killing of the parish’s custos or official guardian, “Baron von Ketelhodt and others,” was attributed to “the atrocities perpetrated by the women,” and in the town of Bath, St. Thomas, it was reported that “women, as usual on such occasions, were even more brutal and barbarous than the men.”²¹

Years later, fears of a Rastafari uprising could be seen in the complaints about the movement from the white and colored population of St. Thomas. The people described as colored were persons of mixed white and Black ancestry. Along with whites, they were generally upset about the strong presence of the Rastafari in the parish and petitioned the government to take serious action to end the movement. In 1933, one such complaint was submitted by Rohan Robison, a white planter and justice of the peace, who warned that due to the influence of the Rastafari, “one of these days, the people working on his Wharf carrying bananas, may strike, and then hampers him.”²² During the same time, Constable Smith was prompted to investigate the complaints from “one Mrs. Samms,” which stated that Rastafari “followers congregate (people of the baser Sort) and talks about Ras taffa Ri as Lord of Lords and King of Kings” on premises she owned.²³ Complaints about congregating on public lands also provided an opportunity to encourage the police to arrest Rastafari members. In 1937, for example, a complaint stated that the Rastafari “attempted to establish a village on some waste ground” owned by the Kingston and Saint Andrew Corporation, a public body, and were “ejected.”²⁴

Mrs. Albertha Lalloo, the second woman to testify at the sedition trial in 1934, provided information that was unknown to the defendants before the trial and further alleged misconduct by the policemen. Lalloo had decided to testify at the trial based on information that only she knew about the police, information that she used to defend the movement and its leaders. She decided to reveal a personal conversation that she had had with Constable Gayle, one of the policemen at the Rastafari meeting held in Seaforth on December 10, 1933. She knew that the conversation could help to confirm what she described as the biased and distorted investigative practices used by the police force. Gayle, as Lalloo related to the court, had disclosed to her that the charges against the Rastafari leaders were unjustified. Shortly after the meeting held on December 10, 1933, Howell and Hinds were arrested on the basis of warrants issued on January 1, 1934.²⁵ But in her testimony, Lalloo said that Gayle told her “that the charges against Howell with reference to Port Morant was weak, but the other, the present one, which had to do with the meeting at Seaforth was strong, and that it was the Inspector who had caused Brooks and himself to make the case.”²⁶ Neither Howell nor Hinds had knowledge of the alleged conversation between Gayle and Lalloo. Considering her revelations, Howell requested that Gayle be recalled for additional questioning. As reported by the Gleaner, “Gayle was re-called at the request of the accused,” who then indicated that “the conversation” with Lalloo “had not been suggested to him in cross-examination” of the policeman. Gayle denied “the allegation” that he had disclosed any information about the investigation when he spoke with “Mrs. Lalloo” and had previously testified that he had only spoken to the defendant about the postcards that the latter sold with the image of Emperor Haile Selassie for one shilling per copy (about £3.58 in 2020).²⁷

It is possible that Howell and Hinds were trying to manipulate the court into thinking that they were unaware of Lalloo’s conversation with the policeman, but Lalloo could have kept the conversation to herself. Moreover, Lalloo’s story bore similarity to the records of the policemen that were collected during their investigation of the Rastafari over the course of 1933. Adams, the inspector of police for St. Thomas, was previously instructed by both the Crown solicitor and attorney general to collect stronger evidence and warned that Howell himself “appears to be a ranter who would revel in the advertisement of a prosecution.”²⁸ Both the Crown solicitor and attorney general suggested that better evidence would be needed to pursue sedition charges and told Owen Wright, the inspector general, to instruct Adams to submit such reports. Wright subsequently directed Adams to pursue sedition charges but also insisted that stronger evidence should be collected.²⁹ Lalloo was not privy to this information, but Howell was aware that the police had been attending his meetings and taking notes. In July 1933, R. C. Waters, a detective inspector of the police division in Kingston, the island’s capital, reported that Howell visited their office to complain “that the Police attended his meetings and made notes,” and was told “that this is one of the duties of the Police and he should make no complaint at all.”³⁰

Florence Jackson, the third witness to testify, was unwavering in her protestation that the defendants were innocent. She testified that the police were present at the meeting on December 10, 1933, but she did not see them taking any notes. As Jackson stated, “she did not see the Policemen making notes,” and similar to what the other women had said, “denied that Howell made at the meeting the seditious utterances with which he is charged.”³¹ Jackson asserted that whatever notes the policemen collected did not correspond with what Howell or Hinds told the people at the meeting. The notes were collected either before or after the meeting, rendering these notes mostly the personal opinions of the policemen, who were known to be biased against the Rastafari movement. One clear implication of Jackson’s testimony was that it could corroborate Patterson’s claims that the policemen took their notes before coming to the meeting or while in the drawing room of Maud Wray. Jackson clearly indicated that Howell and Hinds began addressing the people only after the policemen had left Wray’s residence. One of the main questions Jackson’s testimony raised was if the notes of the policemen were not based on what they heard from the speeches of the defendants, then what was the basis of the information in the notes that the policemen submitted to the court? Howell used the testimonies of both Jackson and Lalloo to question “the perfectly carved writing” in the policeman’s notes, and then “put Gayle under a diction test” that was “subsequently submitted” by Howell “to the Court for the purpose of comparison with the reproduction of the witness” at the meeting held on December 10, 1933. However, the chief justice dismissed his test. Howell asked, “Was the Court satisfied with the results of the Constable’s ‘test’?” and the chief justice responded, “You can’t ask the Court that.”³²

Doris Samuels, who closed the testimonies of the women, was the youngest of the women who testified. Samuels asserted that Howell “was not arrested there [in St. Thomas] on a warrant by Detective Scott, as Scott said.”³³ Samuels was arguably the most threatening to the prosecution’s case, as she disputed that Howell was arrested on a warrant. The law stipulated that a warrant was needed to execute an arrest. If the prosecution indeed made the arrest without a warrant, it would have nullified the case. The Gleaner described Samuels as a “girl.”³⁴ It is not known what age she was, but children were not allowed to testify in court unless authorized by a judge, and there were no reports of such authorization or suggestion by the prosecution that she was a child. One can understand the courage it must have taken to sit on the witness stand and testify against colonial officials, especially the police. This would not have been an easy task for a young Black woman who was also poor, much less a minor. However, Samuels translated any possible apprehension into courage to defend the Rastafari movement. Lyall-Grant, the chief justice, reckoned with the force of Samuels’s testimony, but he knew that her testimony provided grounds for a mistrial. The chief justice’s response was to prohibit both Howell and Hinds from calling any other witnesses.

VESTED INTERESTS

Testifying at the trial was just one of the ways in which women indicated their vested interests in the Rastafari, a movement they believed would relieve them of their social and economic deprivation through radical political change in the Jamaican society. But they had to contend with patriarchal impressions about the movement, one of which included the assumption that they were coerced into defending their leaders at the trial. Indeed, one can understand that these women would have been willing to oblige, since the defendants helped to form the movement. However, the nature of the charge of sedition did not necessitate coercion. The charge of sedition was used to indicate the encouragement or enunciations of antigovernment sentiments, which were found to be expressed in the anticolonial rhetoric of the Rastafari movement. It would be absurd to believe that the women were being forced to testify for a movement that promoted their liberation from injustice and poverty due to colonialism, which were among the main reasons they had joined the movement.

Even while the Rastafari faced backlash from the government and other individuals in the society, women decided to join and remain as members. This continued even after the sedition trial, which ended with the convictions of the leaders. After taking “approximately fifteen minutes” to deliberate, the six-member, all-male jurors, tax paying property-owners in the parish of St. Thomas, returned with guilty verdicts, and the chief justice sentenced Howell to two years in prison at hard labor and Hinds to one year at hard labor, as he was deemed to have been led by Howell.³⁵ Regardless, the Rastafari movement expanded following the trial.³⁶ The Howellites also expanded and created the Ethiopian Salvation Society, registered in Jamaica in 1939, followed by the purchasing of land in St. Catherine’s Parish for the establishment of the Pinnacle community in 1940. This was the first self-sufficient Rastafari community, where hundreds of women resided among an estimated 700 residents who joined the relocation to the community in November 1940, and whose number continued to grow following the inception of the community.³⁷ One resident, Gertrude Campbell, claimed that the number of residents grew to over a thousand people even before the end of 1940.³⁸

Commenting on the women who joined the community in 1940, Florence Stewart related that “some of them come through them man and some of them come through them own choice,” and part of what encouraged women to join the community was because “In those days, man used to a beat woman, but none of that could happen up in Pinnacle.” Stewart also stated that while her father facilitated their relocation to Pinnacle, her mother was steadfast in her decision to be a Rastafari member. Explaining this decision, Stewart noted that her mother “never turned a Rasta. When you turn something, you turn and turn back,” but her mother was certain that she wanted to be a Rastafari woman and emphasized that her mother “was a Rasta same like my father” when they met, thus indicating her belief that both of her parents were equally interested in and committed to the movement.³⁹ A similar interest in the movement resulted in Sister Elvie, the mother of Lennox—whose religious beliefs are discussed in chapter 4—joining the early Rastafari movement in the 1930s, followed by her relocation to Pinnacle in 1941. Alphonso Gallimore, another resident of Pinnacle, stated that Sister Elvie did not have a spouse.⁴⁰

Although the number of women who joined the early movement as single women and single parents is unknown, there is evidence to show that such women were part of the movement. Similarly, there is evidence to show that women represented a notable portion of the early movement in the 1930s. Women were noted in the police reports on the public meetings of the movement, including the one that was held in Seaforth on December 10, 1933, which attracted an estimated 200–300 followers.⁴¹ It was at this meeting that the leaders were also arrested on sedition charges, and women were among the persons who later went to court to protest the actions of the police and colonial elites. They used their testimonies to shield the movement from suppression by the government, despite knowing that the prospect of obtaining exoneration for the defendants was low. A similar case is examined in the next chapter, in which women defended themselves against policemen and judges. This case unfolded six months after the sedition trial. By that time, the police had clearly taken note of the women’s testimonies at the sedition trial and had begun to take women’s participation in the Rastafari movement more seriously. Incarcerating only men would not disband the Rastafari movement, or the incarceration of men largely did not deter women from continuing the movement.