The case of Hayti and the present plight of the Haytian people helps us to see the aims of our own American imperialists in the white light of pitiless publicity. A people of African descent, scarcely seven hundred miles from our own shores, with a government of their own, have had their government suppressed and their liberties destroyed by the Navy Department of the United States without even the slight formality of a declaration of war by the United States Congress as required by the Constitution.
In the presidential chair our “cracker” marines have installed a puppet in the person of Monsieur D’Artiguenave to carry out their will; the legislative bodies of the erstwhile republic have been either suppressed or degraded; unoffending black citizens have been wantonly butchered in cold blood, and thousands have been forced into slavery to labor on the military roads without pay.
Here is American imperialism in its stark, repulsive nakedness. And what are we going to do about it?
Excerpted from Hubert Harrison, “Hands across the seas,” Negro World (10 September 1921). Reprinted in Louis J. Parascandola, Editor, “Look for me all around you:” Anglophone Caribbean Immigrants in the Harlem Renaissance (Wayne State University Press, 2005)
Image: Hubert Henry Harrison, ca. 192os. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture /Photographs and Prints Division
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“Here is American imperialism in its stark, repulsive nakedness. And what are we going to do about it?” http://t.co/qgz0aHH0 #Haiti
“Here [in Haiti] is American imperialism in its stark, repulsive nakedness. And what are we going to do about it?” http://t.co/BTgrGBVE
Harlem’s Hubert Harrison on the United States occupation of Haiti: http://t.co/BTgn91Mu
Harlem’s Hubert Harrison on the United States occupation of Haiti: http://t.co/BTgn91Mu #archives #MINUSTAH
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