Origin from 1966
On 21 April 1966, Emperor Haile Selassie I landed at Kingston's Palisadoes Airport for a state visit; some 100,000 Rastafari who revered him as God gathered on the tarmac, and when the crowd overwhelmed security the Rastafari leader Mortimer Planno was called on to help the Emperor disembark. Selassie never rebuked the crowd's veneration and honored elders of the movement with gold medallions, the only recipients of such an honor that visit. Coming barely three years after the Coral Gardens crackdown, the encounter is still commemorated as Grounation Day and transformed Rastafari's standing in Jamaica.
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How Haile Selassie's 1966 Visit Sparked Grounation Day
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On 21 April 1966 Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia landed at Kingston's Palisadoes Airport for a state visit to Jamaica, and some 100,000 Rastafari who revered him as the returned African king gathered on the tarmac to receive him. The crowd grew so large that it overwhelmed the airport's own security, and officials turned to the Rastafari leader Mortimer Planno to help bring the Emperor safely off the aircraft, a role no state visit protocol had anticipated.
Selassie did not rebuke the reverence directed at him. He went on to honour elders of the movement with gold medallions, the only recipients of that honour anywhere on the visit, a gesture that read to the gathered Rastafari as recognition rather than correction. The visit came barely three years after the Coral Gardens crackdown had turned the Jamaican state against the movement with lethal force, so an emperor's own welcome landed against the memory of very recent persecution.
What the visit changed for Rastafari in Jamaica was standing itself. The day is still commemorated as Grounation Day, observed as one of the movement's central holy days, and the emperor's presence, unrebuking and honouring, gave a movement recently hunted by its own government a moment of open, undisputed legitimacy it had not held since Leonard Howell first preached the doctrine three decades earlier.
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This source names Haile Selassie I directly: "On 21 April 1966, Emperor Haile Selassie I landed at Kingston's Palisadoes Airport for a state visit; some 100,000 Rastafari who revered him as God gathered on the tarmac, and when the crowd..."
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