5 Radical Leaders Who Influenced Bob Marley’s Message of Liberation and Justice for Black People

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Who: Leonard P. Howell

How He Led: Widely regarded as the founding father of the Rastafarian movement, this Jamaican-born world-traveler is the original owner of Pinnacle, the 500-acre village in St. Catherine, Jamaica. Pinnacle, which Howell purchased in the early 1940s, is known as the island’s first self-sustained, thriving Rastafarian community. The one-time member of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was one of Jamaica’s foremost voices against British colonialism and overall white supremacy.

“The white man’s doctrine has forced the Black man to forsake silver and gold and seek Heaven after death. It has brought us to live in disgrace and die in dishonor. Now we the Black man have found out that their doctrine was only a trick, and all their intention was to make themselves strong and to fool the Black man.”

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