Mutabaruka: Remembering Leonard Howell //THE GONG|G.G. Maragh|The First Rasta|Cutting Edge 16/6/2021

In the 1930s, Jamaica was under the colonial rule of Britain, and the descendants of the slaves faced a tough and terrible life.

Subsequent to the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865, the Government built prisons and the Bellevue asylum to lock away not only those who ran afoul of the law, but those who lashed out against the unbalanced social and economic order which saw a colour/class bias relegatory blacks to a landless, illiterate and marginalised sect.

Out of that quagmire rose a few courageous Jamaicans who resolutely fought to make black beautiful and uplift the minds of their brothers and sisters who had been suppressed by centuries of oppression.

One of those black men whose Leonard Percival Howell, who came face to face with his blackness while in Harlem, New York, where he met National Hero Marcus Garvey and enlisted in the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Howell was born June 16, 1898, the first of 11 children to parents Charles Theophilus Howell and Clementina Bennett in Red Hills, Clarendon.

At age 13, Howell witnessed the murder of a woman by her boyfriend.

Source: https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/…