I live in a time of racism, discrimination, violence and exclusion. My community, the community of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, is the poorest and most vulnerable, subject to the cruelest denial of their rights. Throughout my life I have worked for human rights in my country, especially for the migrants from the community […]
Tag Archives: race
Joseph-Anténor Firmin
Certainly, the most important champion of Haiti’s modernist internationalism in the nineteenth century is the Haitian essayist Antenor Firmin. No other intellectual seemed so able to follow through on the revolutionary universalism of Haiti’s war of independence. J. Michael Dash, The Disappearing Island: Haiti, History, and the Hemisphere (April 2004). We can now draw a […]
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Also tagged africa, anthropology, Haiti, history, independence, racism, sovereignty
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Mademoiselle Desgots de Saint Domingue et son nègre Laurent
A prodigal luxury was, indeed, the most striking feature of life. “Everything at San Domingo,” writes Moreau de Saint-Méry, “takes on a character of opulence which astonishes the European.” People dined “‘á la creole’ — that is to say, with profusion,” and their tables were served by such numbers of waiting-men as cut off the […]
Haiti: Le Serment des Ancêtres
Lethière Guillaume Guillon, Le Serment des Ancêtres (1822), Museée National d’Haïti, Port-au-Prince, Haïti Lethière Guillaume Guillon (1760-1832)
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Also tagged 1804, 1822, art, Dessalines, Haiti, Petion, representation, revolution, sovereignty
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Haiti: History
It is on ancient record, that negroes were capable of repelling their enemies, with vigour in their own country; and a writer of modern date has assured us of the talents and virtues of these people; but it remained for the close of the eighteenth century to realize the scene from a state of abject […]
Haiti: History
A movement toward a restoration of black pride had been stirring in Haiti before Franklin Roosevelt ended the US occupation. But Haiti, styled a “black republic” by outsiders, was never monochromatically that. Madison Smartt Bell, “The Lost Years,” The Nation (August 11, 2009)
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Also tagged blackness, class, elites, Haiti, history, independence, state
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Haiti: Liberty or Death
Never again shall a Colonial or an European set his foot upon this territory with the title of master or proprietor. This resolution shall henceforward form the fundamental basis of our constitution. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Liberty or Death: Proclamation,” Balance and Columbian Repository (June 19, 1804)
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Also tagged 1804, constitution, Dessalines, Haiti, history, independence, revolution, slavery, sovereignty
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Roger L. Farnham of the National City Bank of New York on Haiti
I think that the Haitian can be taught to become a good and efficient laborer. If let alone by the military chiefs, he is as peaceful as a child, and as harmless. In fact, today they are nothing but grown up children, ignorant of all agricultural methods and they know nothing of machinery. They must […]
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Also tagged 1915, 1922, administration, banking, Haiti, history, independence, intervention, occupation, sovereignty
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