Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States

By Michael Lawrence Dickinson, AAIHS —

“What happened in Haiti between 1791 and 1804 contradicted much of what happened elsewhere in the world before and since..But what happened in Haiti also contradicted most of what the West has told both itself and others about itself,” observed Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his significant work Silencing the Past. Trouillot further noted that “The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination.” ¹In many ways, his words encapsulate Leslie Alexander’s critical contribution in Fear of a Black Republic, as she works to tell the complex story of Haiti and its struggle to survive as an inspiration for Black Americans amidst global pressures invested in the republic’s failure.

Alexander provides us with an in-depth analysis of how Haiti has and continues to grip imaginations, both Black and white. People of African descent in the United States have viewed the first independent Black republic in the Western hemisphere as a solitary glimmer of hope amidst the evils of slavery and racial oppression—a true land of liberty where racial injustice could be a distant nightmare. People of European descent throughout the world instead (rightly) viewed the Black republic as a dangerous example threatening the realities of bondage and white supremacy. Indeed, Alexander convincingly argues in her introduction and epilogue that this fear and resentment permeates into present day views of Haiti by many Western nations creating a throughline of Haiti and its people often disregarded at best and vilified at worst.

The author brilliantly weaves the interconnected developments in Haiti with the struggle for Black liberty and equality in the United States. Indeed, the true value of the book lies in its sweeping scope. It pulls together threads of historical discourse while providing fresh insights. This is true on a number of fronts. The study explicitly connects the continued historical marginalization of Haiti to the island’s modern day struggles. This is deeply significant given that analyses oftentimes either focus on the Haitian Revolution or contemporary Haitian economic and political challenges. The truth, as Alexander clearly illustrates, is that we cannot comprehend present struggle without comprehending continued sabotage. Indeed the book deftly illustrates that Haiti’s circumstances are the result of deliberate efforts to cripple Black independence from its inception rather than a foregone conclusion or proscribed fate.

While the book underscores the continued theme of fear, it similarly underscores the continued theme of hope as Haiti served a crucial role in Black American minds both as an ideal and as a reality. Here too Alexander makes invaluable contributions to historical scholarship. The topic of Haitian colonization through the eyes of African Americans has generally received piecemeal treatment, whether through larger discussions of Black emigration or Black activism or abolitionism more broadly in particular periods of the nineteenth century oftentimes framed around resistance to the American Colonization Society. Examples of these threads include work by Beverly Tomek, Richard Newman, Ousmane K Power-Greene, and more recently, R. J. Boutelle.

Book Cover: Fear of a Black Republic – By Leslie M. Alexander

While helpful, these threads only provide a partial view of what Haiti meant to people of African descent as a land of escape both physically and ideologically. Alexander’s extensive analysis of how African American activists worked to influence international policy in relation to U.S.-Haiti relations (or more accurately lack thereof as Western powers worked to effectively exile Haiti with the United States at the forefront) is particularly welcome and revelatory. Indeed this book builds on the recent work of a handful of scholars examining connections between African Americans and Haiti, including Ronald Angelo Johnson, Marlene L. Daut, and Brandon Byrd, such work lacks the temporal breath of Alexander’s study. Byrd’s work, for instance, focuses largely on the postbellum American period while Johnson’s work largely focuses on the period of the Haitian Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Thus, Fear of a Black Republic bridges the gap by examining the decades following the Haitian Revolution through the American Civil War.

Through the study, the author also does much to connect often disconnected bodies of scholarship which pays important intellectual dividends. Simply put, historians of Haiti have tended to focus on Haiti and historians of Black America have tended to focus on Black America with fairly limited overlap. For example, Laurent DuBois’s Haiti: The Aftershocks of History admirably investigated how Haiti has been historically marginalized and oppressed by Western powers since its inception through the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, while providing limited discussion of the nation’s continued impact on and enduring connections to African Americans. In one notable exception, published little more than two decades ago, notable historian of Haiti David Geggus brought together a range of prominent scholars, DuBois included, to ask: what was the global impact of the Haitian Revolution. An impressive intellectual undertaking The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World left readers with a global understanding of how the Black republic’s formation sent shockwaves throughout the Atlantic. However, free African Americans are given limited attention in the text, highlighting the continued need for such a work a generation later.

This leads us to the theoretical framework which undergirds The Fear of a Black Republic: Black Internationalism. The book is included in a series on this topic edited by historians Keisha N. Blain and Quito Swan. While adopting this framework from Michael O. West and William G. Martin, Alexander uses it deftly and to its fullest to help us see the transnational connections between people of African descent on the island and in the United States. The author pushes readers to see Haitian independence, its global impact, and its continued marginalization as a holistic story which is only fully visible with a robust, dynamic approach not limited by traditional temporal boundaries or thematic silos. As all notable works of scholarship, Fear of a Black Republic opens new lines of inquiry for readers and researchers alike for years to come. We are also left with an overarching, probing question: will there ever be a time when hegemonic powers no longer fear a Black republic?