In response, the Emperor empowered his personal physician Dr. Malaku E. Bayen as his special emissary. Bayen at first worked with United Aid for Ethiopia, but the next year he dissolved that body and founded the TEWF, INC. to take its place. TEWF,INC. was formally established on August 25, 1937, in New York City as THE ETHIOPIAN WORLD FEDERATION, INCORPORATED. It’s preamble is “We, the Black People of the World, in order to effect Unity, Solidarity, Liberty, Freedom and self-determination, to secure Justice and maintain the Integrity of Ethiopia, which is our divine heritage, do hereby establish and ordain this Constitution for The Ethiopian World Federation, Incorporated.

THE ETHIOPIAN WORLD FEDERATION, INCORPORATED was at first made up primarily of Ethiopian students who came to America to study abroad, after the official coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie. It gained support from the Black community of Harlem and deprecated the term “Negro” from Negroland, in favour of African and Ethiopian identity, the lost Hebrew tribes of Yisra’el scattered throughout the shores of North America and abroad. Dr. Bayen set up the TEWF’s newspaper, The Voice of Ethiopia, and led the project of federating the EWF. The first branch of the TEWF,INC. outside the United States was set up in Kingston, Jamaica, and is heavily supported by the Rasta communities up until today. And by 1940 there were TEWF,INC. chapters in various parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. Bayen died in 1940 and was succeeded as leader by Lij Araya Abebe, then in 1943 by Elks Exalted Ruler Finley Wilson, by which time it had become a Black American organization rather than an Ethiopian-led one.