That a large volume of almost 1000 pages can be reduced to 100 pages and be called someone’s mind is shocking to me.  When I realized how few speeches by His Imperial Majesty were available a generation later I had to question how we can say we love humanity and education. The book of sayings I knew was a university publication.  That book was the size of my English version of the Mishnah.   A tiny booklet titled “The Wise Mind of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie” shows how impoverished the Pan-African or Rastafarian can be.  The book I knew contained complete speeches.  The contents of that book were a  huge mine of imperial majesty and it is the book I credit with  a most important passage for a dispersed African.

When I was a young Rastafarian I had access to a book of speeches by his Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I.  At the time I was wading through this large volume I had already been reading the Bible regularly and was particularly doing so in those late teenage years.  The book helped to transform me into a committed and passionate pan-africanist, but it also brought me to my faith and my love of writing. 

A volume in circulation

In any case this book was borrowed from one or two mentors and beloved brothers in those days, either one brother Haile or brother King Frank-I.  The book did its rounds, reaching even the semi-literate brothers. The man I met from gobbling up that book was a person of unusual depth of fatherliness, a man of wisdom and displaying the capacity to care tenderly.  The book gave the benefit of context – date and occasion – and fulsome speeches, not merely handpicked sentences. I cannot believe that a tiny booklet can be a healthy source of the wisdom of the highest crowned head of his times. There has to be more, lest we think of this giant of humanity, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, as a tiny mind indeed.