Editing Leonard Howell (section)

== Early life ==
Howell was born on 16 June 1898 in May Crawle village in the Bull Head mountain district of upper [[Clarendon Parish, Jamaica|Clarendon]] in Jamaica. He was the eldest of a family of 10 children. Charles Theophilus Howell, his father, worked as peasant cultivator and tailor. Clementina Bennett, his mother, worked as an agricultural labourer.

During the [[World War I|First World War]], Howell worked as a seaman and served as part of a Jamaican contingent sent to [[Panama]]. Before temporarily settling in Panama in 1918, he travelled back and forth between [[New York City]] and Panama several times. While in New York he became a member of [[Marcus Garvey]]'s [[Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League|Universal Negro Improvement Association]] (UNIA) after being confronted with his identity as a black man in [[Harlem]] for the first time and meeting Garvey, the revolutionary UNIA leader, in person.<ref name=":1" />

Howell lived abroad for a total of some twenty years in his early life, during which time he was arrested and jailed for his involvement with the UNIA because the organization's pro-black messages were viewed as threatening. After migrating to Panama and the United States, he eventually returned home in December 1932 at the age of 34 after being deported from the US.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Leonard Percival Howell and the Genesis of Rastafari|date=2015-09-30|publisher=University of the West Indies Press|isbn=9789766405496|editor-last=Hutton|editor-first=Clinton A.|language=en|editor-last2=Barnett|editor-first2=Michael A.|editor-last3=Dunkley|editor-first3=D. A.}}</ref> He was deported because of his involvement with the UNIA, which was perceived as threatening by the US government, due to the organization's messages of black power and anti-colonialism. Upon returning to his homeland, he decided to leave his family home and spread the word about Rastafari. This decision to break away from his home was due to a conflict between Howell and his family, presumably because of his controversial belief in the divine nature of Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Charles|first=Christopher A. D.|date=2013-12-26|title=The Process of Becoming Black: Leonard Howell and the Revelation of Rastafari|ssrn=2372178|location=Rochester, NY|publisher=Social Science Research Network}}</ref>