NOIRISME IN HAITI, PART II
Images: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (1: Élie Lescot; 2: Paul Eugène Magloire; 3: Jacques Roumain; 4: Jacques Stéphen Alexis).
After Vincent and Lescot (⇐Read Part i here.)
While we won’t go into all the details of the important election of 1946 (and invite you to read more on the topic until we make a specific post on it), 1946 proved to be an important year for Haiti. Élie Lescot (then (Mulatto) President of Haiti) was driven out of the country earlier that year – thanks to left wing activities, but also student protests very similar to the 1929 strikes that forced an American investigation with the Forbes Commission – and now, it seemed, perhaps for first time since the fall of Boyer in the 19th century, that Haiti was “open for democracy.” The illusion cleared away quickly but as Smith Notes (2004) this period gave rise to the formation of an unprecedented number of political parties and the general freedom of the press. What became clear by the time an election was to be held was that whomever the Haitian Assembly elected had to be Black. With educational reforms started in the late 19th century and the economical opportunities brought by the Occupation, Port-au-Prince was home of a new Black middle-class and educated elite who refused to accept the “Mulatto oligarchy” any longer. While not all of this group espoused a noiriste ideology, the color of the next president was central. It was Dumarsais Estimé, greatly thanks to the efforts of Col. Lavaud, Levelt and Magloire (Magloire , who later ousted Estimé and became President in 1950), who was chosen.
Estimé, unlike most of Haiti’s Black leaders, had been a schoolteacher, and not in the military when he became president. He was a noiriste to be sure, but a moderate one and did not share all of the noiriste ideology, which became a source of friction. What he did do, to a certain extent, was attempt at having a more “balanced” cabinet, accepting few members of the opposition into his government. Most notably, it was the great noiriste “intellectual” François Duvalier who became his Secretary of Labour and Public Health.
As we end our discussion here, since our main objective was simply to explain the emergence and early mechanism of the noirisme ideology, we should note that this diving force in Haitian politics did not end with the 1946 election (if anything, it only had a confirmation that it could be an effective exertion for the emerging “Black oligarchy” to win the political power it felt rightly entitled to).
Our conversation on noirisme in the 1930s and 1940s is of course incomplete. We do hope that the reader recognizes that reading one blog post on the topic is certainly not enough to claim an understanding of this complex ideological and political movement. We therefore encourage you to read (beyond) the few books and articles suggestions we attached to this post.
A fuller analysis of the noirisme should have included:
A historical portrait of the evolution of the color question until the Marine Occupation in 1915;
A discussion on the United States' role in the 1946 and 1957 elections;
A discussion of left wing opposition in Haiti (Communist and Socialist) that saw the noiriste as no more than opportunist Blacks;
The divisions within the noiriste movement;
The rise of noirisme after the Dominican Massacre of Haitians in 1937 and the reaction (or lack thereof) of Sténio Vincent following the affair;
The relationship between political adherence and color (Theologians/Historians like David Nicholls, perhaps in an attempt to make the discussion of political currents in Haiti during the 1930s and 1940s more digestible suggest that intellectuals were usually divided in two main fractions: Mulattoes were leftists and Blacks were noiristes. While it is tempting to make this claim, and to a certain extent accurate, what do we make then of figures like Jacques Stephen Alexis (later murdered by Duvalier’s men) and René Depestre, who were Black and did not adhere to noirisme? Or Carl Bouard, from an elite Mulatto family, who became one of the greatest defenders of Vodou during the 1930s and also, was a close associate of the Denis and Duvalier during the same period?);
While this post is of course incomplete, we hope that it helps, at least in some respect, highlight the complexities of an ideological movement that greatly affected Haiti.
FURTHER READING (NOIRISME AND COLOR QUESTION)
La Révolution de 1946, analyse d’une conjoncture de crise sortie des profondeurs par Leslie F. Manigat
Machine Diplomatique Française en Haiti 1945 1958 by Weibert W. Arthus
Ideology and Political Protest in Haiti, 1930-46 by David Nicholls
Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957 by Matthew J. Smith
VIVE 1804!: The Haitian Revolution and the Revolutionary Generation of 1946 by Matthew J. Smith
Ideology and Political Protest in Haiti, 1930-46 by David Nicholls
Pouvoir noir en Haïti : l’explosion de 1946 by Frantz Voltaire
Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue by John D. Garrigus
From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti by David Nicholls
Colour, class and identity on the eve of the Haitian revolution: Saint‐Domingue’s free coloured elite as colons américains by John D. Garrigus
Race, couleur et indépendance en Haiti (1804-1825) by David Nicholls
“To establish a community of property”: Marriage and race before and during the Haitian Revolution by John D. Garrigus
The Wisdom of Salomon: Myth or Reality? by David Nicholls
Divided to the Vein: The Problem of Race, Colour and Class Conflict in Haitian Nation-Building, 1804-1820 by Hilary Beckles in Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present
Race, couleur et indépendance en Haiti (1804-1825) by David Nicholls
A Work of Combat: Mulatto Historians and the Haitian Past, 1847-1867 by David Nicholls
De l’origine du préjugé de couleur en Haïti by Dominique Rogers
Dash, Michael. “Haïti première république noire des lettres.” In Les actes de colloques en ligne du musée du quai Branly. Musée du quai Branly (département de la recherche et de l’enseignement), 2011.http://actesbranly.revues.org/480.
Nicholls, David. “Idéologie et Mouvements Politiques En Haïti, 1915-1946.” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 30, no. 4 (1975): 654–79. doi:10.3406/ahess.1975.293637.
Smith, Matthew J. Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957. 1 edition. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
- - - . “VIVE 1804!: The Haitian Revolution and the Revolutionary Generation of 1946.” Caribbean Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1, 2004): 25–41.
