Haile Selassie

"Ras Tafari has travelled to Europe and America and is therefore no stranger to European hypocrisy and methods; he, therefore, must be regarded as a kind of a modern Emperor, and from what we understand and know of him, he intends to introduce modern methods and systems into his country."

"When the facts of history are written Haile Selassie of Abyssinia will go down as a great coward who ran away from his country to save his skin and left the millions of his countrymen to struggle through a terrible war that he brought upon them because of his political ignorance and his racial disloyalty... When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[,] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his Rases against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare — "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?"

"Haile Selassie was not an evil man, but his priorities were misplaced. He was so concerned with establishing a strong central government and modernizing the country that he failed to meet the challenge of natural disaster... It was his false pride, this lack of courage to admit mistakes, that brought about his downfall."

"He wanted to avoid bloodshed, so he gave up power for the good of his people and without fighting."

"The Emperor himself amassed his great riches. The older he grew, the greater became his greed, his pitiable cupidity... he and his people took millions from the state treasurer and left cemeteries full of people who had died of hunger, cemeteries visible from the windows of the royal palace"

"Like twentieth-century Iran, the remnant of the Persian Empire, Ethiopia under Haile Selassie attempted to preserve the absolutist state throught an accommodation with modernizing forces in his own terms without completely subduing traditionalists. This was not a strategy of Haile Selassie's own choosing. Instead, he was overtaken by events and forced to deal with contradictions that were from the very beginning too formidable to be managed in the long term."

"Ethiopia has always held a special place in my own imagination and the prospect of visiting attracted me more strongly than a trip to France, England and America combined. I felt I would be visiting my own genesis, unearthing the roots of what made me an African. Meeting the emperor himself would be like shaking hands with history."

"He was 80 years old and a very weak man. We tried our best to save him but we could not keep him."

"We know God is Haile Selassie, Him Mighty God. Now Him save the poor earth right now, and Him save the people. If it weren't for Haile Selassie, would anyone know Rastafari? No one would know Rastafari. So Haile Selassie save the eart', and true dat dem overthrow 'im. In a sense, all a de people around him was really weird. But just how it go — few people overthrow 'im, but 'im save the whole of the people 'pon the face of the earth."

"I've always been curious about why he left Ethiopia in the middle of the war, or what was called the end by Italy. Ethiopia had not officially surrendered. There is one side that says, "Well, he left because this war had to be fought on a diplomatic level, as opposed to a purely military one." Then there's another side that says, "Ethiopia has never fought without their leader, and this emperor fled. He ran away." I wondered about what he might feel, understanding that those were the two sides...I've wondered what he felt like, looking at all these fighters who fought when he didn't, and what he might have thought when he saw the women who were also a part of that. I am pretty sure there were women that greeted him also, female fighters."

"It was always with great pleasure that I met the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie who had shown great patriotic energy in his resistance to Italy. Our conversations were frank and animated and I occasionally hazarded to suggest various reforms to him. I was a young student when I heard him unsuccessfully defend his country from the rostrum of the League of Nations at Geneva. The League of Nations was powerless and today the United Nations is no more effective. What has happened to Ethiopia?"

"Yes, all Africa remembers that it was Litvinov who stood alone beside Haile Selassie in Geneva, when Mussolini's sons flew with the blessings of the Pope to drop bombs on Ethiopian women and children."