Overview

On Saturday, May 4, 2013, at the Tremont Temple in Boston, Massachusetts, was held “The Roots of Liberty: The Haitian Revolution and the American Civil War,” with a particular focus on the 54th Massachusetts Regiment at Fort Wagner, Morris Island, South Carolina, United States (US) July 18, 1863, starring Danny Glover, and special guests Edwidge Danticat and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Actually, this was no ordinary 150th Anniversary since it was the main event of several activities that were held over three days with lots of distinguished artists, scholars, and community stakeholders.  

The attendance was impressive with a good mix of children, youth and families from various ethnic, social, and economic backgrounds. The cadre of talented artists was quite remarkable, including the singers and drummers that accompanied the actors. In addition, the giant puppet of Toussaint L’Ouverture was very fitting both in terms of figure and literature. It means with Toussaint in the dummy role the playwright was able to stay within the Slave Narrative as if Afrikans had never known freedom until they were inspired by the French Revolution.

Let us consider, for instance, the act involving the 54th Regiment composed of Black soldiers who took part in the US Civil War. This was too timid an act since the leap did not show that the dedication of those soldiers to the US led to the current occupant of the White House. Also, that part featured the works of Frederick Douglas along with several white Abolitionists, but it failed to include the 40 acres and a mule. 

“Does history matter?” This is the question that one local Ayitian-led Non-Governmental Organization has been asking.

About Toussaint

Blacks, like the members of the 54th Regiment, fighting under white leadership for some type of freedom first occurred in Savannah, Georgia. In 1779, a group of slaves from Saint Domingue led by their masters were taken to the United States (US) to fight on the side of the American Revolutionary Army against the British. Second, after Bookman Dutty, Leader of the Maroon Revolt of 1791, was captured and beheaded; Jean-Francois, Biassou, with Toussaint second in command, and Jeannot fought against France on the side of Spain.  According to C.L.R. James, Author, Black Jacobins, this group of leaders committed treason during negotiations with the Governor of Saint Domingue. Third, during the struggle between “Les Ponpons Blancs et les Ponpons Rouges,” Sonthonax, one of the Commissioners France sent to impose the authority of the Republic, seeing that his faction was losing the fight against the Royalist, promised freedom to any slave, including his family, who would take up arms for the republican cause.
 
Toussaint rejected this circumstantial freedom. In the Black Jacobins it is written that when Toussaint seized power he had Sonthonax deported because the latter had proposed an alliance for the declaration of the Independence of Ayiti. One of the first articles of the Constitution of 1801, which Toussaint ordered, states: “Any person born in Saint-Domingue is French.”

Historians report Toussaint was motivated by the writings of Abbey Raynal who wrote on the rising of a slave leading his people to freedom. However, Toussaint failed miserably in his attempt to fulfill this prediction. He was not at the Congress that led to the Maroon Revolt of 1791, Sonthonax freed the slaves circa 1793, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines led Ayiti to independence in November 1803.

It is clear that Toussaint could never fathom the Independence of Ayiti. And had Napoleon accepted his Constitution of 1801, Ayiti would have joined Guadeloupe and Martinique to form a trio of “La France d’Outre-mer. However, his worst error was the arrest and murder of General Moise, his nephew. The assassination of Moise is in sharp contrast to Toussaint’s penchant for conflict resolution with his enemies, for example when he negotiated with a French general to surrender.

Toussaint spent his life serving his French masters, which undoubtedly earned him the stature of a hero. Therefore, today, he should not be portrayed as a role-model to the youth and adults who seek to keep the Independence (http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/slaves-white-mans-perspective-black-people/).

The narrative of slaves rising against their masters could not be further from the truth. Indeed, when reading the literature on Ayiti, it is clear slave-leaders, such as Jean-Francois, Biassou, Toussaint, and Jeannot were more interested in negotiating with their masters than fighting them. Hence, it was the freedom fighters; Tainos like Caonabo, Anacaona, Hatuey, Cacique Henri, and Afrikans; Jean Fouchard called Les Marrons de la Liberte (Maroons of Liberty) like Padrejean, Macandal, Romaine la Prophetesse, Bookman, Macaya, Sans Souci, Goman et al, the inhabitants of Free Communities perched on the mountains, who never put down their weapons until Ayiti had achieved her Independence. It then follows the tribute to Ayitians that this play seems to pay must be analyzed further to debunk any unique thought, idee fix, and group think on Ayiti’s historical legacy and tradition.

Black folk in the western hemisphere

An untold number of Black men and women are dying in foreign wars that the US is waging, and those that do make it back are quickly returned to second class citizen. The arrest a few years ago of Henry Lewis Gates, Professor, Harvard University, is a fitting illustration of the second class status that this Republic assigns to Blacks. Hence it seems that it was normal for an officer of the Cambridge Police Department to arrest the distinguished professor at his home on the suspicion of breaking and entering. It must be noted, during the Roots of Liberty, Professor Gates moderated a panel discussion with Edwidge Danticat, Author, Krik? Krak!, and Danny Glover, Actor.

Many years ago, Marcus Garvey denounced this criminalization of black folk in the US. However, the oppression goes on and on with an untold number of Afrikan men and women constantly beaten down and struck dead by the deadliest blows.

When in the 200th Year of the Independence the Administration of George W. Bush, President of the US, Manu-militarily kidnapped Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the duly elected President of Ayiti, and then exiled him to the Central Republic of Africa, some Ayitian observers maintain Bush broke International Law, and the subsequent military occupation that he commanded violates Ayiti’s Territorial Sovereignty, and Political Integrity. Therefore, they concluded the Military Mission of the United Nations for the Stabilisation of Haiti (MINUSTAH), which the Bush Administration pushed the Security Council of the UN to approve after Aristide was deposed, is illegal, and it contravenes Ayiti’s Economic Development, and Social Stability.

“But Haiti riches is, in fact, the economic reasons the US took down Haiti's democratically elected government in 2004, installed the US occupation behind UN guns with the humanitarian invasion. For years it denied the over $20billion in Haiti gold until its mining companies had a puppet Haiti government to sign off on OPEN PIT mining in the time of UN-imported cholera. Haiti geologist say Haiti oil reserves is "an olympic pool to Venezuela's glass of water." The US is still strategically denying Haiti oil while carting it off, for almost ten years now, behind UN "peacekeeping" guns” (http://open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto).

It could be argued to stop this structural violence against Ayitians they would have to become more violent than those that took the Afrikans from Afrika by force as well as those that enslaved them in the western hemisphere. This becoming could easily be achieved considering, Maximilien Laroche, Author, La Literature Haitienne, Langue, Identite et Realite, pointed out during Ayiti's War of Independence "The violence changed camp." However, the phase of Vengeance having been attained, Ayitians must move on to the next; that is, they must explain anew and afresh the characteristics of Ayiti that the spirit of 1803 brought. It means their Afrikan ancestors fought to make Ayiti Independent; Ayitians must find out how to keep the Independence for themselves. Let it be so, it is proper at this phase, to make justice work throughout society and/or community. To this end, there are certain conventional wisdoms that Ayitians must totally reject, for example, the Slave Narrative; Afrikans were ignorant of the notion of freedom; the Independence of Ayiti was the result of the French Revolution; Haiti is the First Black Republic and Poorest in the Western Hemisphere; Ayitians cannot make a living without the “Blan” (foreigner).”  

Indeed, emerging, rather social change, which is not the mutation called revolution, is happening throughout native lands. So subtle is this transformation, with farmers, students, scientists, healers, and artrepreneurs, making the land grow abundantly, that most people are not aware of it. While, the elites of the “Free World” are mired in scarcity, austerity, decadence, and endless wars, which over a decade has been the situation of the developed countries that the social theorists, professors, and researchers call the "New Normal."

It then follows there are many world-views that are very distinct from each other. Therefore, it can be proposed that autochthonous folk are living the emergence of National Cultures, with varied stories of Creation, each one with its own narrative (i.e., language, identity, reality and so on). Yet it is only on the basis of justice and equity that Afrikans ought to unite with the progenitors of Conquistadors, Colonists, and Settlers. What amazing wholeness, the encounter of the Tainos and Afrikans, which Jacques Stephen Alexis, Author, Compere General Soleil, described as the Confluence of Cultures! But Afrikans must be aware that both Creativity and Culture are industrialized for service and goods to be distributed at the Market Economy, with China working on the scale while the US seeks to maintain the scope.

In the final analysis
As positive as the Roots of Liberty appeared to have been for Ayitians, it fits within ongoing efforts to maintain mental slavery. Let us be clear, escaping the plantation was the first act of Liberty; that is, the slaves who did not have the courage to leave their masters’ house and/or field could never contemplate freedom. That was the situation Toussaint found himself, totally unable to think of the Independence of Ayiti. Therefore, the slaves as foot soldiers fighting for their masters must never be considered, nor portrayed as the Roots of Liberty. Nevertheless, comparing the American Civil War to the Haitian Revolution is an interesting proposition that implies the latter was greater than the former.

The Independence of Ayiti that the “Maroons of Liberty” conceived led to Gran Columbia the vision that has allowed Latin America and the Caribbean to move ahead of the chaos from the world economic crisis of 2008. Undoubtedly, Latin America and the Caribbean have proposed new models of innovation to the Market that are conceived to liberate it from the myriad of Trans-National Corporations (TNC) and their charitable arm, i.e., the army of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO). Thus the present proves the scholarship of Alexis who many years ago urged Ayitians to pay attention to the events and developments unfolding in Latin America.

By this review, this writer sought to point out the “Language Liberated” in contrast to The Slave Narrative that the playwright of the “Roots of Liberty” attempted to bolster. While not written for comparative studies, this paper shows the fights for the National Liberation of Ayiti and the Colonisation of America could not have been more divergent, with Ayiti well ahead of the US in term of “The Equality of the Races.” This non-colonial narrative can be heard in “Red, Black & Moonlight Vodun Jazzoetry“ by Ezili Dantò (http://open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto).

Ayiti, it is as if Paradise Lost is found, and History that was ripped is sewed, becoming the Notes of a Departure to the Abundant Land, where work is neither hard, nor tiring.

Bibliography

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Aristotle, (2000). Politics. Dover Publications. Mineola, New York.

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CRESFED, (1956). Presence de Jacques Stephen Alexis. CRESFED. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Desquiron, L., (1990). Racines du Vodou. Biblioteque National Haiti. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Firmin, A., (2000). The Equality of the Races. Garland Publishing. New York, NY.

Fouchard, J., (1988). Les Marrons de la Liberte. Henry Deschamps. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

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Wheatley, M., (1994). Leadership and the New Science. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. San Francisco, CA

http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/slaves-white-mans-perspective-black-people/

http://open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto