Like many people these days, I have Haiti on my mind. Harrowing images of Haitians running through the streets of Cap-Haitien or Port-au-Prince are shown on the news. And now President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has resigned, and Haitians are faced with looting and violence.
But there is more to Haiti than just the sharp sounds of gunfire on theevening news. The country's historical accomplishments are rich and varied, andwe should celebrate them as if they were their our own -- because, infact, some of them are.
Haiti and the United States are both postcolonial nations that resisted the tyranny of their sovereign rulers and developed into nations in the name of freedom and self-determination. By examining the Haitian revolution, which took place from 1791 to 1804, more closely, Americans will have a better understanding of how their own nation was formed.
Did you know, for example, that the United States' purchase of theLouisiana Territory in 1803 was a direct result of the Haitian revolution? When I say this to friends and acquaintances, I usually get one of two reactions: skepticism (followed by an uncomfortable silence) or, "Gee, I never knew that. Um, did I mention that my 8-year-old son just learned how to ride a unicycle?" In other words, anything to change the subject.
Nothing against unicycles (or 8-year-olds), but the reaction of the people I know raises a question that should be as much a concern as Haiti's political unrest: Why is a country that lies only 700 miles from our shore so far off of America's historical radar screen?
Admittedly, and despite the fact that American history was my favoritesubject in school, I only learned about the impact of the Haitian revolution a few years ago. As a teenager, I studied my textbooks carefully, learning important dates, major battles, and foreign-policy doctrines. And as I learned about our history, I felt privileged, as an African American, to be a cultural insider to aspects of the black experience in this country. (Some of my older relatives attended segregated black schools in the South and suffered racial discrimination, so I heard firsthand accounts of what had happened in the past.)
In 2001, I was studying art history (I was at Duke at this time and read Trouillot in a graduate history seminar) and international relations at Stanford University when a professor suggested that I read Michel-Rolph Trouillot's book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Trouillot describes how the Haitian revolution has been "silenced" in American history. As he explains, power differentials between those who write history and those who make it determine which historical events are recorded and which are ignored, or "silenced."
Before the Haitian revolution occurred, scholars did not believe that slaves could successfully revolt against their masters, and therefore did not factor the idea into their theorizations of history or their choices when preserving archival material. Because there was no vocabulary for explaining events that altered traditional power relationships (such as the relationship between the master and his (or her) slaves), they were either oversimplified or left out of history altogether. While reading Trouillot's book, I was shocked to discover that such an important period in the development of the Western Hemisphere could be downplayed, or eliminated entirely, from history textbooks. I was also dismayed to find out that I, too, had been a victim of this historical conspiracy-- despite the fact that I considered myself well-versed in both the good and bad parts of America's past. Since then, I've been determined to learn more about Haiti, and its relationship to the United States.
Both countries began as colonies, generating enormous agricultural wealth based on slave labor. When the slaves of San Domingue rose up against Haiti's elite in 1791, plantation owners in the American South took notice. They were afraid that they, too, would meet the same fate at the hands of their slaves. The establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804 served as a direct threat to slavery in America, proving that blacks were capable of staging successful rebellion. American plantation owners attempted to prevent their slaves from learning about the revolution in Haiti. The news spread quickly, though, confirming for many slaves that their days in bondage were numbered. Itwas a milestone for African Americans -- for all Americans, really.
Yet even today, discussions about black revolutionary potential are tabooin certain social circles. Last week, for example, during a casual dinner conversation in Durham, North Carolina, about my research, several people expressed their surprise -- and some their skepticism -- when I describedthe revolution's impact on the United States. This is partly why I've launched a one-person crusade to educate people about the Haitian revolution.
Some more facts: Abolitionist Frederick Douglass was the U.S. minister toHaiti from 1889-91. And the Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissioned a special project in the 1930s to document the Haitian revolution's impact on New YorkCity during that time. Yet these incidents arealmost always left out of textbooks. Students may learn about Douglass while studyingthe Civil War (or during those "Great Moments in Black History" commercialsthat appear on TV every February), but chances are that the subject of Haitiwill never come up during discussions of the New Deal or the WPA.
It's a shame. Haiti has a rich cultural history that became intertwinedwith United States history, specifically during the longest US occupationthat ended in 1934. For example, playwright Eugene O'Neillwrote the 1920 play, The Emperor Jones after traveling throughout Central America and reading accounts about Toussaint L'ouverture and the Haitian Revolution. The play, which recounted the story of an escaped African American convict named Brutus Jones who becomes the emperor of a Caribbean island, was extremely popular for white and black audiences throughout the United States. And in 1934, marine Captain John Houston Craig wrote a memoir about Haiti entitled, Black Bagdad, in which he described some of the marines' experiences with Haitians while occupying the island. In addition, Zora Neale Hurston completed an anthropological study of Haitian religion (Vodun, often referred to as Voodoo) in 1938 entitled, Tell My Horse.
For an 1930s artistic perspective on the Haitian Revolution, Take a lookat Jacob Lawrence's The Life of Toussaint L'ouverture series, which is located at Tulane University's Amistad Research Center in New Orleans. (Sadly, the series is no longer on view, and you can't see it in its entirety, even online. But you can take see reproductions of Lawrence's work in "Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence," which was published by University of Washington Press.) - When you look at the images, your attention is drawn to a portrait of General Toussaint L'ouverture, one of several leaders of the Haitian revolution. Shown against a dark-green background, Toussaint's focused gaze is striking. Lawrence painted the series in 1938 at the age of 21. Throughout the series, he describes Toussaint's development from slave to general through education and diplomacy. By the time we see Toussaint's portrait in panel number 20, he has evolved into a confident and successful leader, which is supported by his numerous military victories in the previous panels.
In several interviews, Lawrence has mentioned his desire to portray the parallels between the physical pain of slavery in Haiti and the mental anguish and financial destitution created by racial discrimination in America. "We don't have a physical slavery," he states, "but an economic slavery. If these [Haitian slaves], who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing."
On February 24, the United States sent Marines to secure the U.S. embassyin Port-au-Prince. And President Bush recently said that the U.S. CoastGuard will send fleeing Haitians back into their political inferno. With such pronouncements, it's all the more reason for Haiti not to be sent backto the recesses of American minds.
LaNitra Walker is a doctoral candidate in art history at DukeUniversity.
For more information on the U.S. occupation of Haiti, see Mary A. Renda's book, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism 1915-1940, published by the University of Chapel Hill Press.
