Jah Provides the Bread

Somewhere up above Bob Marley is smiling. For those that don’t know, Marley was for a time the most known reggae performer on the music scene. He brought reggae music into mainstream, middle class America. I still recall listening to Bob Marley and the Wailers sing “Rastaman Vibrations” and “No Woman, No Cry” on my stereo as a college freshman back in 1977.


His music was born of struggle and oppression, music from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. It was exotic, rhythmic and spiritual.

Marley was a Rastafarian. Rastas, a quasi-Christian sect, consider former Ethiopian King Haile Selassie to be the Messiah restored. They also smoke marijuana religiously (sorry for the pun). Rastas also are known to wear their hair in long dreadlocks.

In 1999 Virginia DOC implemented a hair profile for inmates. Prior to that time inmates were allowed to wear their hair to any length. Facial hair, full beards, sideburns and goatees were permitted. DOC deemed long hair and beards a security risk. Inmates, they reasoned, could hide knives, razor blades or contraband in their hair. Inmates with full beards could escape their shave and make it difficult to track them down.

The new hair policy required hair to be kept close cut, above the collar, off the ears. All facial hair was prohibited except groomed mustaches.

A number of Rastafarian inmates objected. On religious grounds they refused to submit to cutting their dreadlocks. DOC responded as they typically do: the protesting Rastas were placed in solitary confinement until they agreed to cut their hair and comply.

1999 became 2000. 2000 became 2001. Each year came and went but eleven Rastas held to their protest. There had been more, but men were released, their sentences served, their dreadlocks still in place.

Eleven men, kept separate, deprived of many basic needs most take for granted: daily human contact, fresh air, daily showers, access to telephones. DOC’s goal was to break the Rastas. Their tool was isolation and deprivation.

Word went through DOC prisons about the Rastas. Inmates who didn’t know the name of the Governor knew of the Rasta 11. Other Rastafarians in the system shaved their heads (a practice followed until this day). The Rastas were heroes. They were “buckin the man” for Jah.

2005, the ACLU agreed to file suit on behalf of the Rastas. Meanwhile, one man died while in solitary. Ten remained. Ten continued to refuse to cut their hair.

What is your limit? How much will you endure for your religious convictions? I realized, as I learned of the Rastas early on in my prison stay, how truly courageous these men were. In my entire life of “freedom” I had never met anyone willing to risk it all on principle. My life had been one of compromise. “It’s not worth it!”

My friend “Black” is a Rasta leader. I’ve watched the Rastafarian community (it is a recognized “religion” according to DOC) continue on as their brothers remained “in the hole”.

In “No Woman, No Cry”, Bob Marley, in his haunting Jamaican accent sings

“Good friends we had
Good friends we lost along the way
In the great future
You can’t forget your past
So dry your tears I say.”

Then later in the song over and over he sings

“Everything’s gonna be alright
Everything’s gonna be alright.”

I often wonder what makes ordinary people do extraordinary things. What would make a young man run head long into enemy fire to rescue a friend? What would make Big S go to trial instead of pointing out the real defendant? What would make eleven Rastafarians accept the hole for years rather than cut their hair? What would make me sign everything I owned over to my wife?

Character is revealed, not when things are easiest, but when we have he the most to lose.

Thursday, November 18, 2010. The front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch announced “Inmates Released From the Hole”. DOC gave in, surrendered, to ten dreadlock Rastafarian inmates. They were being released from solitary confined and transferred together to serve the remainder of their sentence in two-man cells with daily rec time at Keen Mountain Prison. They’ll be kept separate from the rest of the inmate population because the hair policy remains in force for all other inmates.

In a documentary about Marley’s life he is heard telling an interviewer “Jah provides the bread”. Jah, to the Rasta, is the name for God. It is a basic tenet of faith, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Rastafarian, that “God provides”.

So often we think everything we have, everything we’ve accumulated is a direct result of our own hard work. We fail to understand that at our weakest we are truly strongest. No power can overcome Jah. Eleven years in solitary. Eleven years deprived. Eleven years Jah provided the bread.

I started playing a CD. Bob Marley’s singing “everything’s gonna be alright.” I can tell he’s smiling.