Leonard Howell
Jamaican Rastafari preacher (1898–1981)
Leonard Percival Howell (16 June 1898 – 23 January 1981), also known as The Gong or G. G. Maragh (for Gangun Guru), was a Jamaican religious figure. According to his biographer Hélène Lee, Howell was born into an Anglican family. He was one of the first preachers of the Rastafari movement (along with Joseph Hibbert and Archibald Dunkley), and is known by many as The First Rasta.
Born in May Crawle River on 16 June 1898, Howell left Jamaica as a youth, traveling to many places, including Panama and New York, and returned in 1932. He began preaching in 1933 about what he considered the symbolic portent for the African diaspora—the crowning of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. His preaching asserted that Haile Selassie was the "Messiah returned to earth", and he published a book called The Promised Key. Although this resulted in his being arrested, tried for sedition, and imprisoned for two years, the Rastafari movement grew.
Over the following years, Howell came into conflict with all the establishment authorities in Jamaica: the planters, the trade unions, established churches, police, and colonial authorities. Howell was seen as a threat largely due to the anti-colonial message of the Rastafarian movement, which he was perpetuating along with the sermons promoting the idea of a positive black racial identity. Local ruling elites were uneasy with Howell’s popular call for black people to take a stand.
The public source identifies “Leonard Howell” as jamaican Rastafari preacher (1898–1981). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Leonard, Howell and Jamaican.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q372368. VIAF identifies the subject as 15654892. The Library of Congress control number is n93081411. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1981, 1932 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leonard Howell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.