The articles and documents in this pamphlet were printed in The Nation during the summer of 1920. They revealed for the first time to the world the nature of the United States' imperialistic venture in Haiti. While, owing to the censorship, the full story of this fundamental departure from American traditions has not yet been told, it appears at the time of this writing, October, 1920, that "pitiless publicity" for our sandbagging of a friendly and inoffensive neighbor has been achieved. The report of Major-General George Barnett, commandant of the Marine Corps during the first four years of the Haitian occupation, just issued, strikingly confirms the facts set forth by The Nation and refutes the denials of administration officials and their newspaper apologists. It is in the hope that by spreading broadly the truth about what has happened in Haiti under five years of American occupation The Nation may further contribute toward removing a dark blot from the American escutcheon, that this pamphlet is issued.
Self-Determining Haiti by James Weldon Johnson is an early study focusing on finding means for societal advancement concerning the black people that resided in Haiti at the early 20th century.
In The Black Republic, Brandon R. Byrd explores the ambivalent attitudes that African American leaders in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti, the first and only black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Following emancipation, African American leaders of all kinds—politicians, journalists, ministers, writers, educators, artists, and diplomats—identified new and urgent connections with Haiti, a nation long understood as an example of black self-determination. They celebrated not only its diplomatic recognition by the United States but also the renewed relevance of the Haitian Revolution. While a number of African American leaders defended the sovereignty of a black republic whose fate they saw as intertwined with their own, others expressed concern over Haiti's fitness as a model black republic, scrutinizing whether the nation truly reflected the "civilized" progress of the black race. Influenced by the imperialist rhetoric of their day, many African Americans across the political spectrum espoused a politics of racial uplift, taking responsibility for the "improvement" of Haitian education, politics, culture, and society. They considered Haiti an uncertain experiment in black self-governance: it might succeed and vindicate the capabilities of African Americans demanding their own right to self-determination or it might fail and condemn the black diasporic population to second-class status for the foreseeable future. When the United States military occupied Haiti in 1915, it created a crisis for W. E. B. Du Bois and other black activists and intellectuals who had long grappled with the meaning of Haitian independence. The resulting demand for and idea of a liberated Haiti became a cornerstone of the anticapitalist, anticolonial, and antiracist radical black internationalism that flourished between World War I and World War II. Spanning the Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras, The Black Republic recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of African American internationalism and political thought.
"A timely collection of articles by some of the leading and emerging scholars and specialists on Haiti, offering a wide range of critical perspectives on the question and meaning of sovereignty in Haiti."--Alex Dupuy, coauthor of The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti "Directly asks the provocative question of ownership and Haitian sovereignty within the post-earthquake moment--an unstable period in which ideas on (re)development, humanitarianism, globalization, militarism, self-determination, and security converge."--Millery Polyné, author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964 "Powerful essays by experts in their fields addressing what matters most to smaller nations--the meaning of sovereignty, and the horrid trajectory from colonialism, to neocolonialism into neoliberalism."--Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, author of Haiti: The Breached Citadel Although Haiti established its independence in 1804, external actors such as the United States, the United Nations, and non-profits have wielded considerable influence throughout its history. Especially in the aftermath of the Duvalier regime and the 2010 earthquake, continual imperial interventions have time and again threatened its sovereignty. Who Owns Haiti? explores the role of international actors in the country’s sovereign affairs while highlighting the ways in which Haitians continually enact their own independence on economic, political, and cultural levels. The contributing authors contemplate Haiti’s sovereign roots from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including political science, anthropology, history, economics, and development studies. They also consider the assertions of sovereignty from historically marginalized urban and rural populations. This volume addresses how Haitian institutions, grassroots organizations, and individuals respond to and resist external influence. Examining how foreign actors encroach on Haitian autonomy and shape--or fail to shape--Haiti’s fortunes, it argues that varying discussions of ownership are central to Haiti’s future as a sovereign state. Contributors: Laurent Dubois | Robert Fatton Jr. | Scott Freeman | Nicholas Johnson | Chelsey Kivland | Robert Maguire | Francois Pierre-Louis Jr. | Karen Richman | Ricardo Seitenfus | Amy Wilentz
A passionate and insightful account by a leading historian of Haiti that traces the sources of the country's devastating present back to its turbulent and traumatic history Even before the 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the country, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption. Maligned and misunderstood, the nation has long been blamed by many for its own wretchedness. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois makes clear, Haiti's troubled present can only be understood by examining its complex past. The country's difficulties are inextricably rooted in its founding revolution—the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; the hostility that this rebellion generated among the colonial powers surrounding the island nation; and the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define its newfound freedom and realize its promise. Dubois vividly depicts the isolation and impoverishment that followed the 1804 uprising. He details how the crushing indemnity imposed by the former French rulers initiated a devastating cycle of debt, while frequent interventions by the United States—including a twenty-year military occupation—further undermined Haiti's independence. At the same time, Dubois shows, the internal debates about what Haiti should do with its hard-won liberty alienated the nation's leaders from the broader population, setting the stage for enduring political conflict. Yet as Dubois demonstrates, the Haitian people have never given up on their struggle for true democracy, creating a powerful culture insistent on autonomy and equality for all. Revealing what lies behind the familiar moniker of "the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere," this indispensable book illuminates the foundations on which a new Haiti might yet emerge.
Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of nations—a world in which self-determination was synonymous with nation-building—obscure just how radical this change was. Drawing on the political thought of anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere, this important new account of decolonization reveals the full extent of their unprecedented ambition to remake not only nations but the world. Adom Getachew shows that African, African American, and Caribbean anticolonial nationalists were not solely or even primarily nation-builders. Responding to the experience of racialized sovereign inequality, dramatized by interwar Ethiopia and Liberia, Black Atlantic thinkers and politicians challenged international racial hierarchy and articulated alternative visions of worldmaking. Seeking to create an egalitarian postimperial world, they attempted to transcend legal, political, and economic hierarchies by securing a right to self-determination within the newly founded United Nations, constituting regional federations in Africa and the Caribbean, and creating the New International Economic Order. Using archival sources from Barbados, Trinidad, Ghana, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Worldmaking after Empire recasts the history of decolonization, reconsiders the failure of anticolonial nationalism, and offers a new perspective on debates about today’s international order.
On February 29, 2004, the first democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced to leave his country. The president was kidnapped, along with his Haitian-American wife, by American soldiers and flown to the isolated Central African Republic. In An Unbroken Agony, best-selling author and social justice advocate Randall Robinson chronicles his own cross-Atlantic journey to rescue the Haitian president from captivity in Africa while also connecting the fate of Aristide's presidency to the Haitian people's century-long quest for self-determination.
These two volumes of writings represent Johnson's experiences as one of black America's premier civil rights statesmen, and leader, participant, and historian of the Black Literary Movement of the 1920s.
Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Law examines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. To find out, Kate Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority. At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development.
