Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie visits Jamaica
21 April 1966
DAVID KATZ – author, DJ and reggae historian – describes the Ethiopian leader’s historic 1966 visit to Jamaica and the profound impact it had on the development of music on the island.
An audience with Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert, Rastafari patriarch
23 July 1983
THIS IS an account of the interview I conducted with Father Joseph Hibbert, one of the first people to proclaim the divinity of Haile Selassie and a key figure in the early development of Rastafari in Jamaica in the 1930s.
Driving around Trench Town with Ivan Coore
13 September 2014
IVAN COORE, who died on September 7, 2019, came from one of Jamaica’s elite families. His father David Coore was a lawyer who helped draft the Jamaica Constitution in 1961 and later served as Michael Manley’s deputy in the People’s National Party Government of the 1970s. His younger brother Steven ‘Cat’ Coore is a founder member of the legendary Third World reggae band. Ivan became a Rasta in the early 1970s while still at school and in 1973, at the age of 19, accompanied Vernon Carrington – Brother Gad, founder of the 12 Tribes of Israel Rasta mansion – on a fact-finding visit to Ethiopia. He subsequently decided to stay and study at the University in Addis Ababa. The following is a transcript of Ivan talking about the turbulent times he lived through in Ethiopia following the overthrow of HIM Haile Selassie, recorded while we were driving around Trench Town, Jamaica, in 2014.
The Organisation for African Unity (OAU) established
25 May 1963
THE Organization for African Unity (OAU) was formally established on May 25, 1963 with a permanent headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. HIM Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, was selected as the first President.
The coronation of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie
02 November 1930
ADDISON E SOUTHARD, United States Minister to Ethiopia, was commissioned by National Geographic to cover the former Ras Tafari succeeding to the world’s oldest continuously sovereign throne. His report appeared in the edition of June 1931 and was a major source of information for the emerging Rastafari movement in Jamaica.