Happy Haitian Independence Day! Two fascinating facts about the revolution, in addition to all the really great threads going around...

Until Fredrick Douglass published his autobiography, the Haitian Constitution was the most widely-read document by a Black person in the United States

John Quincy Adams had a copy of a biography of Touissant Louverture in his personal library, inscribed in his own hand, praising Louverture

Also my favorite deep historical cut in fiction is in Edward P Jones' short story In the Blink of God's Eye, when a womanizing sailor tells his girlfriends that he has a diamond necklace from the King of Haiti--the story takes place in post-Reconstruction DC, when Black DCers...

were obsessed with Haiti and its meaning. Black DC elite planned a giant banquet in 1880s DC for the ambassador from Haiti bc of its place in Black imagination post-Civil War. He didn't attend and the DC Black newspapers were

full of essays on why Black americans shouldn't be offended

Also it makes perfect sense that Zora Neale Hurston would make exploration and study of Haiti central to her anthropology work and Tell My Horse is such an interesting exploration of the Black american gaze in majority Black Caribbean countries....

Off topic, but the chapter where Zora Neale Hurston starts arguing with a maroon man in Jamaica about marriage and the role of women is FASCINATING