The Haitian Revolution: Central to U.S. History
Reading by Alana D. Murray
In understanding the impact of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement on the social studies curricula, the connections to the larger African diaspora cannot be underestimated. One of the key historical events that influences the impact of a diasporic Black identity prior to the Civil Rights Movement is the Haitian revolution. For Black people prior to the Civil War, the revolt of enslaved people in Haiti served as a beacon of freedom. These heroic actions of the Haitian revolutionaries resonated well into the 20th century. The events of the Haitian revolution shaped a Pan African identity that influenced the thinking of leaders in the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement.
However, too often in schools, the Haitian revolution is taught as a part of a modern world history. This instructional decision links Haiti to the larger politics of the French revolution but minimizes the impact of shaping Black peoples’ evolving definitions citizenship. One of the lenses utilized in this book to analyze the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and its link to international struggles for human rights and independence. Understanding the legacy to the Haitian revolution to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement is essential in this effort.
Throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Black intellectuals used the history of Haiti as a guidepost to freedom. The Haitian Revolution influenced the rebellions of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. In 1833, Maria Stewart, an influential Black women orator used Haiti to inspire free Black people to struggle against slavery. In 1854, William Wells Brown used the Haitian Revolution to inspire Black people during the fraught period prior to the Civil War. Frederick Douglass served as the U.S. minister resident and counsel general to Haiti. The Progressive-era leader Anna Julia Cooper focused her dissertation on an analysis of the impact of the Haitian revolution. A close examination of many of the Black historical pageants of the early 20th century written by Black female educators laud the importance of Haiti as they uplifted Black students’ identities. For instance, the heroism of Toussaint Louverture is prominently displayed in Nannie H. Burroughs historical pageant, “When Truth Gets A Hearing.” In textbooks written by Black female authors, the leadership of Louverture and other key leaders are shared to give students a correct rendering of Black history.
Anna Julia Cooper's 1925 PhD dissertation is an analysis of slavery and the Haitian revolution and the contradictions within Euro-American discourses on liberty. Source: Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
One of the key intellectual movements which influenced Black ideologies in the 20th century was Pan Africanism. Key Black leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and Malcolm X spoke to the shared identity and strengths of people of African descent. The Haitian Revolution is central to the Pan African identity. In the 1920s, the International Council of Women of Darker Races sent a delegation to Haiti to explore its rich cultural legacy. The fight against end of colonialism of African and Caribbean leaders served as an essential inspiration to the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. Many modern-day depictions of Haiti define it only by poverty, pain, and corruption. However, Black leaders understood deeply the centrality of Haiti to developing an enriched narrative of African diasporic identity.
As teachers begin to reshape the narrative about the Civil Rights Movement, the Haitian Revolution is essential to developing and nurturing the international dimensions of this importantly scholarly endeavor. The following teaching ideas can help educators to begin to add a comprehensive approach to Haiti into their curriculum. Students can:
trace how the leadership of Toussaint Louverture influenced leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X.
use primary source documents to trace the importance of the Haitian Revolution to people who were enslaved and free people in the United States.
read Frederick Douglass’s speeches about Haiti after the Civil War.
analyze how Black women activists in the early 20th century used Haiti as a case study to inspire Black children.
learn about the Haitian Revolution thru the book Black Jacobins (1938) by the key Pan African writer C. L. R. James.
In closing, Frederick Douglass’ remarks, at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, affirm the centrality of Haiti to the Black Freedom Struggle:
My subject is Haiti, the Black Republic; the only self-made Black Republic in the world.
Until she [Haiti] spoke no Christian nation had abolished Negro slavery. Until she spoke no Christian nation had given to the world an organized effort to abolish slavery. Until she spoke, the slave trade was sanctioned by all the Christian nations of the world, and our land of liberty and light included. Men made fortunes by this infernal traffic, and were esteemed as good Christians, and the standing types and representations of the Saviour of the World. Until Haiti spoke, the church was silent, and the pulpit was dumb. Slave traders lived and slave traders died. Funeral sermons were preached over them, and of them it was said that they died in the triumphs of the Christian faith and went to heaven among the just.
Speaking for the Negro, I can say, we owe much to Walker for his appeal; to John Brown for the blow struck at Harpers Ferry . . . and to the anti-slavery societies at home and abroad; but we owe incomparably more to Haiti than to them all. I regard her as the original pioneer emancipator of the 19th century