Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), emphasized the relevance of Haiti's historical past because Haiti was the land where the Negroes repelled the Whites and established an independent republic. In the same vein, writers of the Harlem Renaissance embraced Haiti's history and culture. Claude McKay's work, for example, is replete with tales of Haiti's heroic past. [Langston Hughes], perhaps the most central figure of the Harlem Renaissance movement, having read of "Toussaint L'Ouverture, Dessalines, King Christophe, proud Black names," made a pilgrimage to Haiti.
The French called the Island St. Domingue, and began importing thousands of African slaves to clear much of the land and build plantations. By the late 1700s, there were over half a million African slaves in St. Domingue, and dose to 40,000 whites, as well as almost as many "mulattos." (The word "mulatto" derives from the Spanish term meaning a young mule.) They were the "free people of color," the result of white men taking many slave women. [Adam Hochchild] goes on to tell us how very rich France became through its plantocracy on St. Domingue alone: "The colony's eight thousand plantations accounted for more than one third of France's foreign trade, and its own foreign trade equaled that of the newly born United States." White planters and merchants on the island lived a life of luxury unrivaled in "the New World." Hochchild tells us that on that fateful August night "a large group of slaves representing many plantations met under the night sky in a remote spot called Alligator Woods..." and these are the words reportedly shouted to the throng by a revolt leader: '"Throw away the image of the god of the whites who thirsts for our tears, and listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us."
First, the two armies all but destroyed the French plantocracy on the island then they defeated a Spanish force and huge English and French armies. In Adam Hochchild's book Bury the Chains, we learn that then-U. S. President George Washington and then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners, sent "a thousand muskets, other military supplies, and eventually some $400,000" of U. S. aid to quell the revolt now known as "the Haitian Revolution." Randall Robinson reveals more in his book, An Unbroken Agony: "Some . . . had been brought to Haiti [St. Domingue] from other Caribbean slave colonies men like the storied Boukman from Jamaica and the legendary Makandal from Trinidad, and the great general, Henri Christophe, who was born in Grenada." Blacks who escaped plantations in the United States also joined L'Ouverture's armies. Robinson reports that L'Ouverture had been the intellectual, "the African humanist, the military strategist, the administrator and, not insignificantly, the conciliator." Robinson also writes that [Jean-Jacques Dessalines] "had been, first and last, the hard-nosed soldier who believed that an enemy as manifestly unsalvageable as the French had to be, wherever possible, obliterated."
While helping applicants take their place on the line, Richard Champagne, current President of the Haitian Lawyers Association (HLA)stated, "This is an opportunity for the HLA and participating attorneys to give back to our community. Haitian immigrants have been suffering for a long time, and after the Obama administration granted TPS, it was our duty to assist. It has been a great opportunity to partner with the city of North Miami, given the concentration of Haitian nationals in the city.
"IBM is honored to sponsor this spectacular exhibition that tells the story of a nation's history while giving all of us a broader view of Haiti's cultural heritage," said Gregg A. DeMar, general manager, Great Lakes Area, IBM Corporation. "Through the study of diverse cultures we often learn more about ourselves, our beliefs and values, as well as gain insight into those whose heritage is represented in an exhibition such as `Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou.'" The predominant religion of the Haitian people, Vodou was created by enslaved Africans who transformed their beliefs and rituals according to the conditions they had to face in the New World. These African traditions encountered European traditions -- the art and ritual practices of Roman Catholicism -- to emerge in an original form, Vodou. The word "Vodou," meaning "sacred," was borrowed into Haitian Creole from the Fon language of West Africa. Parallel African-derived religions now flourish in the Caribbean, South America and major cities of the United States and Canada.
Focuses on the illegal entry of Haitians from Bolivia and Peru who traveled from the Caribbean to South America's other side. With Haiti hit by an earthquake on January 2010, Haitians are being exploited physically, financially and sexually in Bolivia and Peru by an illegal underground railroad known as coyotes or "coiotes." Haiti's economy is based on alleged slave labor and natural resources exploitation.
[Leon D. Pamphile], executive director of the Functional Literacy Ministry of Haiti, talked last week about his book, "Haitians' & African Americans' Struggle Against Racism Through the NAACP," as part of Harvard Law School's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice Lecture Series. "Haiti was able to fulfill what the American and the French Revolutions could not do," said Pamphile. "Haiti witnessed the fulfillment of equal rights for all men, and this is what made the Haitian Revolution such a powerful force."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
238 p., Study of the relations between Haiti and black America from the colonial period to the present, the author shows how historical ties between these two communities of the African diaspora have affected their respective histories, cultures and community lives. R
