For lo­cal Rasta­far­i­ans, April 18th is one of the most im­por­tant days in their cal­en­dar. 58 years ago, on the day, the late Ethiopi­an Em­per­or Haile Se­lassie vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go up­on an in­vi­ta­tion by For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams.

Se­lassie ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion, see­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain sup­port from Caribbean lead­ers for the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of African Uni­ty. Hun­dreds of peo­ple lined the route from the air­port to Port-of-Spain. It was the first vis­it by an African king to the coun­try. It was al­so the ar­rival of a sig­nif­i­cant fig­ure rep­re­sent­ing the strug­gle against colo­nial­ism.

One of the many peo­ple who saw Se­lassie dur­ing his vis­it was the Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary of the All Man­sions of Rasta­fari Glen­roy “Bon­go Grease” Halls. “It did in­crease the num­ber of Rasta­far­i­ans in the coun­try be­cause even I - at the age of sev­en went to see his majesty in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do - am a Ras­ta to­day. So the im­pact was tremen­dous. The 18th April 1966 is en­shrined in the Rasta­fari an­nals through­out the Caribbean,” the Nyabinghi el­der said.

Se­lassie, dur­ing his two-day stay in Trinidad and To­ba­go, stopped in Ari­ma and then at the Ethiopi­an Or­tho­dox Church in Arou­ca. At the church, there was a cer­e­mo­ny where the Em­per­or read a Bib­li­cal ex­cerpt and kissed the Book - a scene passed down through sto­ries by lo­cal Rasta­far­i­ans.

On April 19th, Se­lassie de­liv­ered a speech to par­lia­ment, say­ing “The sys­tems of Gov­ern­ment which have sought to im­pose uni­for­mi­ty of be­lief have sur­vived briefly and then ex­pired, blind­ed and weak­ened by ob­ses­sive re­liance up­on their sup­posed in­fal­li­bil­i­ty. The on­ly sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment which can sur­vive is one which is pre­pared to tol­er­ate dis­sent and crit­i­cism, and which ac­cepts these as use­ful, and in any case, in­evitable as­pects of all so­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­la­tions.”

While the Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day looks back on the Em­per­or’s vis­it as a di­vine oc­ca­sion, in 1966, there was no es­tab­lished Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty in the coun­try as yet, Halls said. He said the com­mu­ni­ty would come lat­er, with the emer­gence of the Black Pow­er Move­ment and then the Na­tion­al Union of Free­dom Fight­ers some­time be­tween 1966 (af­ter Se­lassie’s vis­it) and 1975.

“There was a strong Pan-African­ism com­mu­ni­ty in­volved in ac­tivism (at the time), like CLR James, El­ma Fran­cois, George Pad­more, Sylvester Williams, that suc­ceed­ed in the lib­er­a­tion of Africans from colo­nial­ism and high­light­ed all the ills that were hap­pen­ing in Ethiopia and be more aware of their African iden­ti­ty.

"I be­lieve more youth can ben­e­fit from the teach­ings of Haile Se­lassie be­cause knowl­edge of self is every­thing. If you don’t have a knowl­edge of self, then you are lost. We are now faced with a gen­er­a­tion of youth that is lost,” Bon­go Grease said.

Se­lassie al­so vis­it­ed Bar­ba­dos, Haiti and Ja­maica dur­ing his Caribbean tour.