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Leonard P. Howell (1898 - ?) is the founder of the Rastafarian religious movement.
Howell was born in May Crawle River, a town in Jamaica on 16 June 1898. In 1933 he began preaching about what he considered as the symbolic portent for the African diaspora of Ras Tafari's crowning as Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. His preaching asserted that Ras Tafari was “messiah returned to earth”. Although this resulted in him being arrested, tried for sedition and imprisoned for two years, the Rastafarian movement grew.
Over the following years he came into conflict with all the establishment authorities in Jamaica: the planters, the trade unions, established churches, police and colonial authorities. Nevertheless his movement prospered, and today the Rastafarians exist worldwide.
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