Leonard Howell

Leonard Percival Howell, also known as The Gong, was a Jamaican religious figure and one of the first preachers of the Rastafari movement, known by many as The First Rasta. Beginning in 1933 he preached that the 1930 crowning of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was the Messiah returned to earth, publishing his teaching as The Promised Key, and he was tried for sedition and imprisoned for two years as a result. He founded the commune of Pinnacle in Saint Catherine Parish, which became a center of the growing Rastafari faith. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/