Ras Tafari crowned Haile Selassie

1930

In a twelve-hour Addis Ababa ceremony laced with Biblical pageantry, Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned emperor of Ethiopia and took the name Haile Selassie, Power of the Trinity. Half a world away in Jamaica, poor dockworkers read the news as prophecy and founded a new religion centered on the Lion of Judah.