"I say that I'm Haitian first, and then we go from there," said Patrick Marcelin, the U.S.-born son of Haitian immigrants who raps in Creole and English as "Mecca a.k.a. Grimo." "I just happened to be born in America, but really I'm a Haitian brother. And Haiti is the direct daughter of Africa." The Black History Months he remembers studying never mentioned Haiti's history, even though Haiti was a destination for Black Americans searching for their cultural roots. Marcelin now also teaches in the Haitian Heritage Museum's school outreach program, exposing students to the American history he never learned. For example, when talking about writers from the Harlem Renaissance, Marcelin points out that [Zora Neale Hurston] wrote her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" in Haiti in the 1930s, and the poet [Langston Hughes] wrote admiringly of the Haitian peasants who walked down mountain roads barefoot, balancing baskets on their heads, to sell their wares. "They should have been teaching this in school, that soldiers from Haiti came to fight in the American Revolution," Marcelin said. "I read about [Frederick Douglass] in the history books but I don't remember anything about him being the ambassador to Haiti. Or that the founder of Chicago was a Haitian brother."
In this context, the achievements of yesterday and of today are intimately linked. Sojourner Truth thundered against slavery so that Frederick Douglass could agitate. Douglass agitated so that Thurgood Marshall could argue the law. Marshall argued so that Rosa Parks could sit. Parks sat so that Martin Luther King Jr. could stand. King stood so that young people could march. Young people marched so that Shirley Chisholm could dare to aim for Congress. Rep. Chisholm dared so that Jesse Jackson could run. Jackson ran so Barack Obama could win. And Obama won because a majority of voting Americans - red, yellow, brown, black and white - were ready to finally say: Yes, we can!
Despite the righteous platitudes of the American and French Revolutions, the idea of an independent Black Republic created through force of arms did not sit well with the powers that be in the Capitols of Europe and America. There was virtually universal agreement among the European/White leaders of the time, including President Thomas Jefferson, that the example of Haiti was a threat to their national interests - profiting from the slave trade and/or colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America. Therefore, it was imperative that Haiti be isolated, marginalized and rendered weak as a "Black nation." Under threat of a new invasion, Haiti succumbed to demands from France to pay millions of dollars in reparations for title loss of property (enslaved Africans and the plantations) incurred during the Revolution. The burden of this debt would cripple Haiti's struggle for development well into the 20th century. In 1915 the U.S. invaded and occupied Haiti until 1934, and has treated Haiti as a neo-colony ever sense.
