Alexander, Leslie M.
Fear of A Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States
Illinois (Urbana)
2022
OUR SYNOPSIS: Leslie M. Alexander illuminates how African Americans interpreted and leveraged the Haitian Revolution’s gains for Black liberation to forge a newly empowered “Black internationalist consciousness.” (2) As “the largest, bloodiest, and most successful rebellion of enslaved people in history,” the Haitian Revolution became a global call to action that reverberated throughout the nineteenth century. (3) Beyond solidarity, it fostered transnational Black collective consciousness. It also forced a vast international array of observers to grapple with new meanings of freedom and sovereignty. Black identity formation and white fear of empowered Black people combined to create immense social tensions. She shows that white backlash against this Black liberation continues into the present day with border agent expulsion of Haitians from the United States. She also emphasizes and amplifies the voices of Black women in these histories. It is clear throughout the book that U.S. foreign and domestic policy responses to Haitian independence reflected overarching fears about Black freedom. Concerns about Haitian immigration and emigration also showcase these anxieties. Activists such as Frederick Douglass frequently invoked Haiti to justify seizing Black freedom in the U.S.
BIG QUESTIONS:
How did Black collective empowerment and white fear interrelate in responses to the Haitian Revolution across the nineteenth-century United States?
In what ways did African Americans resist foreign and domestic Haitian Revolution policy responses?
To what extent does the Haitian Revolution indemnity relate to present discussions about reparations?
FEATURE QUOTES:
“Radically upending the basic premise of white supremacy upon which slavery rested, they asserted Black people’s fundamental human right to liberty and self-governance.” (5)
“The Haitian Revolution and the subsequent formation of sovereign Haiti provided a model for Black liberation that awakened Black freedom seekers across the Atlantic World and inspired the birth of Black internationalism.” (6)
PRIMARY SOURCES:
William Watkins Sr., “ADDRESS,” Genius of Universal Emancipation (Baltimore, MD), no. 11, vol. 4, August 1825, 168-169, https://archive.org/details/sim_genius-of-universal-emancipation_1825-08_4_11.
BALTIMORE CONNECTIONS:
William Watkins on the Haitian Revolution in Baltimore, 1825: see primary source above