Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie flew into Stillwater in 1954 to thank Oklahoma A & M College officials for the school’s help in his country’s agricultural program.
And to see an American Indian.
It was the first, and probably only, time a king has visited Oklahoma. Veteran reporters could not recall another time when a reigning monarch visited the state.
Selassie, who claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, added the Stillwater stop to a 50-day visit to the United States, Canada and Mexico as his personal repayment for the interest taken in his nation by the late Henry G. Bennett, who visited Ethiopia four years earlier.
Bennett, former A & M president, had taken a leave from his duties to head President Harry S. Truman’s Point Four program that was designed to teach people in other countries “how to get more per acre through better planting, better seeds or better livestock strains.” He, his wife and six other Americans were killed in a Dec. 22, 1951, plane crash that also killed 19 others while flying from Baghdad, Iraq, to Tehran, Iran.
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