Haile Selassie (23 July 1892 – 27 August 1975) was the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He is widely considered a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history, and the key figure of Rastafari, a religious movement in Jamaica which emerged shortly after he became emperor in the 1930s. The first President of Kenya, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, was a very good friend of the Emperor and therefore named a street in Nairobi after his name in 1964.