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Dark Specters and Black Kingdoms: An interview with historian Ada Ferrer
"The book was a pictorial, intellectual, subversive experiment in thinking through a black kingdom—the one Aponte and his companions were seeking to create, the one modeled by contemporary Haiti, by historical Ethiopia."
Reading Haiti: Ten Books for 2014
Our annual round-up of notable books from 2014 features novels and journals, translations and epistles, ethnographies and histories – all on Haiti.
1967: Riots in Detroit
Could an All-African Army Liberate Haiti?
On December 16, 1990, in a landslide victory, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide became Haiti’s first democratically elected president. Less than a year later, Aristide was deposed in a US-backed coup and sent into exile. The following essay, first published in 1992 by Professor Robin D. G. Kelley, of UCLA’s Departments of African American Studies and History, offers some historical reflections on the possibilities of Aristide’s return to Haiti in the context of the history of Black international solidarity movements. We republish it today, well aware that at the present time elections in Haiti are long overdue — and mindful of the fact that under the guise of Opération Burkina Faso there is a strengthening movement to unseat Michel Martelly, to end the United Nations occupation, and to restore democracy to Haiti.
The Killing of Patrick Dorismond
“I don’t have to ask the police what happened. I know what happened. They murdered him.” "Patrick Dorismond: Another Victim of Giuliani’s NYPD,” Haiti Progres: Le journal qui offre une alternative (March 22-29, 2000)
'RYM', Revolutionary Youth Movement, Chicago, 1969. On the recent assassination of brilliant young Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton (1948-1969).
If we must die / Si n blije mouri
If we must die
By Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Si n blije mouri
Si n blije mouri, ann pa fout mouri kou bèt Trake epi kwense nan yon koridò pwennfèpa Pandan tout alantou nou djòl bouldòg yo ap fè dlo Dan yo griyen sou nou, yon bann lach k aksepte sò yo Si pou n mouri, ann mouri tankou fanm ak gason vanyan Pou menm lè san n ap koule San manman yo ap blije wete chapo devan lonè ak kouray nou Frè ak sè m yo, ann gonfle fòs pou n mache kontre lennmi an Menm si yo pi plis pase nou, ann leve kanpe doubout, ann goumen Pou chak rafal mitrayèt yo, ann lache yon kokenn kout poud ki fè yo tranble Menm lè n ap gade lanmò fasafas Ann kale je n nan je atoufè lach yo Ann sèmante pou n mouri nan batay olye n kontinye viv ajenou
Claude McKay, “If we must die,” first published in The Liberator (1919).
Kreyol translation by Dahoud Andre (2000) [via Ezílí Dantó].
Image: Photograph of Claude McKay speaking in the Throne Room at the Kremlin, ca. 1923. Claude McKay collection, 1853-1990, Yale University.
Migrations and Microhistories: An interview with Matthew J. Smith on the histories of Haiti and Jamaica
Seven Obituaries for Jean-Claude Duvalier
Black Looks: The Haiti Feminist Series
After a ten year run, our dear friend Sokari Ekine has stopped publishing the excellent blog Blacks Looks, but she’s left us with an incredible archive of Haitian feminist intellectual, political, and cultural history. Black Looks’ “Haiti: Feminist Series” consisted of a clutch of essays, interviews, and videos with Haitian artists, intellectuals, and activists addressing a range of issues and concerns on resistance, community organizing, and movement building. We’ve collated links to the “Haiti: Feminist Series” posts below. They’re well worth checking out.
Frederick Douglass and Haiti: A Dossier
Who Killed Robert McCulloch’s Father?
Fifty years before Michael Brown was shot to death on the streets of Ferguson, McCulloch’s father died in the line of duty. The father’s death casts additional doubt on the son’s ability to lead the grand jury investigation into Brown’s killing, while at the same time shedding a garish light on the history of racism, policing, and the law in St. Louis.
"Born in Trinidad, J. Michael Dash is a professor in the Departments of French and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University who has written extensively on Haitian and French Caribbean literature. His publications include Culture and Customs of Haiti (2001), The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (1998), Haiti and the United States (1997), Literature and Ideology in Haiti: 1915-1961 (1981), and Jacques Stephen Alexis (Black Images, 1975). Dash is also the co-editor of Libète: A Haiti Anthology (1999) and the translator of Edouard Glissant’s Monsieur Toussaint: A Play (2005) and Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays (1989)."
For those attentive to Haitian studies, you most likely recognize Michael Dash’s name for his his numerous articles and books, but perhaps more notably for Haiti and the United States (1997).
This here is a very interesting interview where Dash explains his interests for Haiti and broder French-speaking Caribbean countries. In the case of Haiti, it is an engaging look at a scholar’s journey, at a time when studying Haiti was not particularly popular, even in West Indian academia.
Toussaint Louverture, chef des insurgés de Saint-Domingue. (‘Toussaint Louverture, leader of Saint-Domingue’s insurgents’). Artist and date Unknown.
Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Radical Black Reading: Summer 2014: Black Solidarity with Palestine Edition
Black people have seen in the condition and treatment of the Palestinians a reflection of their own and recent statements by Black writers, scholars, artists, and activists have affirmed the history of Black solidarity with Palestine. Alice Walker, Robin D.G. Kelley, Angela Davis, Ferrari Sheppard, Teju Cole, dream hampton, Margaret Kimberley, Glen Ford, Kevin Alexander Gray, and others have all spoken to the sheer brutality meted out against the Palestinian people by the State of Israel. They have foregrounded the historical parallels between the everyday practices of violence, the modes of legal disenfranchisement, the normalization of racism, and the forms of segregation and containment through which the policies of the Israel towards the Palestinian people mirror the historic regimes of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow in the United States. And they have been at the forefront of calls for international solidarity with Palestine and for support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel – calls that have taken on an added urgency in light of the current Israeli offensive against Gaza. Read more...
Jim Crow and Nashville's leading colored citizens, October 2, 1926.
"Today I received my first taste of unreasonable Southern prejudice. As the guest of the varsity football coach and the two Purdue “men” on the college faculty, I attended the football game between Vanderbilt University of Nashville and the University of Alabama. The party arrived at the field without tickets for two members. At the entrance to which we applied, the authorities admitted the two with tickets but instructed the others to go around to the field house entrance to the “special section.” One teacher and I went a distance of ½ mile to the “special section” entrance. Paying 50 cents we went into the “special section,” a sort of dirty unattractive “hole in the corner” affair for the colored people. The slats were frame. They were dirty. They were painted with stuff that rubbed off. The grass under the seats was uncut. The team passed through the section to and from the club house. And yet in all of this squalor, Nashville’s leading colored citizens, business and professional men, educators, publicists were present and seemed contented in this polluted hole. My very nature rebelled against the whole infernal system. Segregation at a football game! And yet, in spite of this, the Negroes seemed downcast when Alabama forged ahead, but raised more “rucous” than the whites when Vanderbilt scored. I was almost impelled to ask what had they to cheer for.
In the midst of this democracy, there stood out one spark of heroism. I have already said that the Negro educators of Nashville were present. This included the faculties of nearly every college institution including Fisk. The male student body of Fisk, especially the football team, came as a group. And there came with them Mr. Comptroller Grodon, a white man. There came after them, Mr. President Jones and Mr. Chaplain Baker, white men. They endured with their fellow teachers and students the squalor and filth of the segregated section. They obeyed the dictum that in a democracy majority representatives working with a minority must identify themselves with the latter group. As I thought of this tragic human drama I wondered if this heroism would not be unrequited. The afternoon gave me just cause to wonder. Within a yard of Mr. President Jones and a few feet in front of me there sat two Negroes wagering upon the outcome of the football game. Between them arose quickly a disagreement about some inconsequential matter. They became abusive toward each other. One drew a gun; the other flashed a knife. Trouble foreboded. But the quick action of several Negroes who knew the principals prevented damage. I fancy that Jones wondered whether the sacrifice he is making for our group is worth the while. But back to the game. Aside from the unpleasantness noted, and the July weather in which the game was played, it was a good game. Alabama won by a score of 20-7. This was my first game in white Dixie. It is also my last. I have not yet so far lost my self-respect as to submit to such conditions of my own volition. Hereafter, my activities will be limited to the campus and to such friends as I may happen to find near the campus."
A.A. Taylor to Harriet W. Taylor, October 2, 1926. Letter in Fisk University Archives, transcribed in James Pleasant Woods, Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, 1893-1954: Segregated Historian of Reconstruction (1969)
1991 May 24: The day Eritrean freedom fighters took control over Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, bringing an end to a 30-year armed struggle for independence. Victory to the Masses!! Awet nHafash!!! ✊
