Marcus Mosiah Garvey is viewed as a major prophet of the faith and some even liken him as the John the Baptist of Rastafari. Garvey's ideas have been central to the Rastafari mandate and purpose. He began the "Back-to- Africa" movement in Jamaica in 1914 and brought it to the United States in 1916. Garvey believed that Blacks would never receive justice in countries where most of the people were white. He preached that Blacks should consider Africa their homeland and that they should settle there. He asked:

 

"Where is the Black man's government? Where is his King and Kingdom? Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs. I could not find them. I will help to make them" (Garvey 1986:xiii)

 

Through his activities in the United States he became a chief link, bridging the gap between Africans in the Americas and those on the continent. In 1922 in recognition of the work being advanced by Marcus Garvey's UNIA, Ras Tafari sent a message to its convention inviting those assembled to "come home... back to the homeland particularly those qualified to help solve our big problems." This message sent to Garvey was to resonate with Leonard Howell who started to promote the honouring of this King within the UNIA circles. In 1927 Garvey was deported from the United States to Jamaica where he continued to preach a doctrine of black racial pride and return to Africa. Garvey as a leading Pan-African activist would become lionized within Rastafari as a prophet who told the people: “look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King" as the sign of the African redemption. Marcus Garvey further constructed a play in which he spoke of the crowning of a King and Queen of Africa. Garvey's vision was subsequently manifested in 1930 in the coronation of the Emperor and Empress of Ethiopia.

 

Between 1927 and 1935, Garvey experienced disappointment in his bid to represent the Jamaican people officially. He was briefly imprisoned in 1929, and subsequently failed to win a seat in the Legislative Council, though succeeding in being elected to the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporate Corporation (KSAC). After Garvey's failure to meet with his objectives of national representation, he is thought to have left Jamaica for the United Kingdom in 1935. It is during this period of Garvey's diminished activities that the Rastafari message and movement began to take root in Jamaica. Most writers account for the early development of Rastafari as coming out of the same individuals that were attracted to Garvey's message. In fact, some of the UNIA's members became members of the Rastafari assemblies. In November 1930 when the Emperor was crowned, this was immediately taken as the moment that Garvey had predicted. Over time Garvey has become a key personality within the Rastafari doctrine and development and is even designated part of a Rastafari Trinity, among the Bobo Ashanti Rastafari who often carry the Garvey or UNIA green, black and red flag.

 

Garvey's relocation to United Kingdom after 1935 brought him into the environment of the struggle to free Ethiopia from the Italians who had declared war on the Ethiopians. It is at this time that Garvey is said to have had differences of opinion with Emperor Haile Selassie I, who in defense of Ethiopia, left his country for Europe where he was to stage a major campaign for the return of Ethiopia to peace. He achieved this through assistance garnered from the League of Nations and the government of England in particular. Garvey is said to have described the Emperor as "a toothless tiger", and voiced his disagreement with the Emperor's decision to mount his defense of Ethiopia from overseas. In Garvey's time, no African sovereign had managed to successfully return to his country through the aid of European 'allies' Garvey was to die in 1940, just one year shy of the Emperor's return to rule in Ethiopia.

 

Within the development of Rastafari there has been a consistent recognition of Marcus Garvey as representing a genuine understanding of the condition of Africa and the philosophies and opinions necessary for transforming the condition of its people. Since Garvey's passing and more particularly after Jamaica's 1962 declaration of independence, it is Rastafari who have maintained the dialogue about a vision that Garvey helped to develop. The central tenets of Garvey's philosophy included: teaching the importance of self-reliance, forging a formal and sustainable link with Africa, and developing strong networks among those with whom Blacks in the West can share histories and culture. At its height Garvey had some 44 million persons worldwide within his organization.

 

MARCUS SAID

 

"Never allow anyone to convince you of inferiority as a man. Rise in your dignity to justify all that is noble in your manhood (womanhood) as a race."

 

"You all know how the different West Indians despise each other, how the Jamaican despise the Barbadian and the Barbadian despise the Jamaican and all the other islands hate each other. The UNIA was founded in 1914 after my experience of travel in South America, in Central America, in all the West Indian islands and in Europe, seeing well the need for greater unity amongst the black people of the world. Therefore the American Negroes and the West Indian Negroes are one, and they are relics of the great African race which was brought into the Western world and kept here for 400 years. I told them in Harlem that it is my duty to reunite the Negroes of Africa, to make a great nation of black men."