Jamaica’s Fight Against Rastas: An Early History

Written By The Yaad

On this episode, we will track the beginning of the oppression of members of Rastafari by the Jamaica State, which culminated with the event now known as the 1963 Coral Gardens Massacre. The Coral Gardens Story surrounds a series of events which saw from April 11-13, Jamaican police detaining Rastas throughout Western Jamaica, killing and torturing many, after allegedly been given orders from then Prime Minister and future national hero, the Right Excellent Alexander Bustamante - to “bring in all Rastas, dead or alive”.

Additional Knowledge

BOOKS

  • Book of Memory: A Rastafari Testimony by Prince Williams and Michael Kuelker

  • Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica Paperback by Charles Price

  • Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader by Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane

  • Early Encounters in Colonial Jamaica: Hindu and Rastafari Divine Metaphysics by Dominique Stewart

  • Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica by Deborah A. Thomas

  • Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica by Rex Nettleford

  • Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica by Deborah A. Thomas

  • N.W. Manley and The Making of Modern Jamaica by Arnold Bertram

  • Race, Class, and Political Symbols: Rastafari and Reggae in Jamaican Politics By Anita M. Water

  • Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica, 1960-1972 by Obika Gray

  • Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney by Horace Campbell

  • Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity by Charles Price

  • Violence and Politics in Jamaica, 1960-70: Internal Security in a Developing Country by Terry Lacey

  • Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

  • The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and the Rise of Rastafarianism by Helene Lee

  • The Promise Key by Leonard Howell

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

  • The Earth’s Most Strangest Man: The Rastafarian by Mortimo Planno

FICTIONAL BOOKS

ACADEMIC PAPERS

  • Coral Gardens 1963: The Rastafari and Jamaican Independence by Horace G. Campbell

  • Rastafari, Communism, and Surveillance in Late Colonial Jamaica by Deborah A. Thomas

  • Rastafari Dialectism: The Epistemological Individualism and Conectivism of Rastafari by Michael Barnett

  • Leonard P. Howell's Leadership of the Rastafari Movement and His "Missing Years" by Daive A. Dunkley

  • Religion and Justice: Some Reflections on the Rastafari Movement by George Eaton Simpson

  • Social Change and the Development and Co-Optation of a Black Antisystemic Identity: The Case of Rastafarians in Jamaica by Charles Reavis Price

  • Sociological Means: Colonial Reactions to the Radicalization of Rastafari in Jamaica, 1956–1959 by Frank Jan van Dijk

  • The Rastafari Movement In Kingston, Jamaica by M. G. Smith, Roy Augier and Rex Nettleford

DOCUMENTARIES

The Yaad
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