8 - Voices of Liberty: The Haitian Revolution Begins

Summary

Another indicator of oppositional consciousness and racial solidarity were the connections between enslaved people, maroons, and free people of color during revolts and ritual gatherings that helped the beginnings of the Revolution. The Bwa Kayman ceremony spiritually solidified alliances between West Central Africans and Bight of Benin Africans; and the struggle of the formerly enslaved rebels and maroons propelled racial solidarity between Africans, creoles, and free people of color. I recount mobilizations that occurred in Saint Domingue’s northern, western, and southern departments, and attempt to identify patterns of racial, gender, and labor politics that would inform post-independence social, economic, religious, and political formations. The first post-independence Constitution declared “the Haitians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks,” making Haiti the first and only free and independent Black nation in the Americas.