Mortimer Planno
Mortimo St George "Kumi" Planno, (6 September 1929,
Early years
He was born in Cuba, the youngest of four children. His mother was Jamaican and she took the family back to Jamaica when Planno was still a young boy in the early 1930s. His father was Cuban and his given name was Mortimo, not Mortimer.
Rastafari activism
He became a prominent Rastafari teacher in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1950s and helped found the Rastafari Movement Association as well as the Local Charter 37 of the Ethiopian World Federation. He also instigated the first "Universal Grounation of the Rastafari", a drumming and chanting ceremony held in the slum of Back-O-Wall in March 1958.
1961 visit to Ethiopia
After repeated harassment by the authorities and ostracism by the Christian public, Planno and his colleagues approached the University College of the West Indies to request an official study of the Rastafari movement, in an effort to establish a better relationship with the wider Jamaican society. The in-depth study led to Planno and two other prominent Rastas' being sent on a "fact-finding mission" to Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other African countries in 1961. During the trip, Planno met Haile Selassie in person in Ethiopia.
The Jamaican government had decided to send a delegation of both officials and Rastafari leaders to Addis Ababa to meet Emperor Haile Selassie. Planno, Douglas Aiken Mack, and Fillmore Alvaranga were the three in the Rasta delegation. Their Minority Report of the mission differs in several significant aspects from that of the non-Rastafarian delegates,[2] e.g.:
- 16 April 1961: "Later in the afternoon the Rases were invited to visit His Holiness Abuna Basilios, the Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church at his residence. The other delegates came along too. We discussed H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie, being the returned Messiah. His Holiness the Abuna told us at the conclusion of the discussion that the Bible can be interpreted that way. We had tea and honey with him."
- 21 April 1961: "The Mission was granted audience with H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie I at the Imperial Palace, Addis-Ababa. We were introduced to H.I.M., by the Minister of the Imperial Guard. Emperor Haile Selassie I welcomed the delegation warmly. Speaking sugar canefactories making sugar and rum. H.I.M. replied that in Ethiopia there was a refinery making sugar but not rum. H.I.M. thanked the delegation and presented each of us with a gold medal."
- "All the rest of the delegation left His presence except the three Rastafarian Brethren (Bros. Fil, Mack, Planno, as we had presents for H.I.M.). Alvaranga presented H.I.M. with a wood-carved map of Afrika with a portrait of the Emperor on one side of the wooden case. The Emperor then spoke in English for the first time to us. He said, “That’s Afrika. Is it from the Rastafari Brethren?” (That showed that he knew us before). We said “Yes”. Brother Mack presented photographs of the Rastafari Brethren in Jamaica. H.I.M. said again in English, “Photographs; thank you”. Mack also gave H.I.M. a painting of Errol Flynn’s island in Jamaica (i.e. Navy Island, off the mainland of Port Antonio). Brother Planno gave H.I.M. a woven scarf in red, gold and green. H.I.M. said “Is it you that wove it”. He said “Yes”. He said “Thank you again”. We also gave H.I.M. a photograph of a widow and six children—her husband, a Rastafari Brethren, was shot and killed by the Police in Jamaica. H.I.M. asked us to who was taking care of them now. We told H.I.M. that we took the case to Jamaica’s Premier but left the island before it was settled. The Emperor said that he would do what he could to help. We then took leave."
The full story of the 1961 Jamaican delegation in Ethiopia is told in Dr. Giulia Bonacci's book Exodus, Heirs and Pioneers, Rastafari Return to Ethiopia (University of the West Indies Press, 2015).
Bob Marley and the Wailers
On April 21, 1966, the Ethiopian Emperor, His Imperial Majesty
Bob Marley and other members of the group already knew Planno quite well. The Rastafarian elder lived in the same neighborhood as the vocal group on 35 Fifth Street in West Kingston's Trench Town ghetto, where he kept a
Planno was later involved in the One Love Peace Concert, an event headlined by Marley in 1978.
References
- ^ Katz, David (25 April 2006). "Obituary: Mortimer Planno, revered Rastafarian leader". The Independent. London: independent.co.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2012.[dead link]
- ^ Minority Report of Mission to Afrika April 4, - June 2, 1961
External links
- CIFAS Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study website. The link leads to the book that Planno authored. This website is run by perhaps one of the foremost authorities on Planno and his life, Lambros Comitas. Comitas, a professor at Columbia University, was endearingly called "Professor Kumi-tas" by Planno.
- Mortimer Planno Obituary - The Independent U.K.