Avenging the Americas

In his 1804 proclamation “Liberty or Death,” Governor-General Jean Jacques Dessalines globally proclaimed the success of the Haitian Revolution, declaring, “Yes, I have saved my country; I have avenged America.” The irritated genie of Hayti abolished slavery, denounced white supremacy, and castigated the colonial crimes of genocide throughout the Americas. Some soldiers of his armee Indigène had fought in the 1776 American Revolution, which troublingly witnessed the rapid expansion of slavery on American soil in its aftermath.  The Haitian Revolution raised important and contested ideas about race, citizenship, and identity at America’s founding. Frederick Douglass’s tenure as the first African American ambassador to Haiti illuminated this imperial paradox in his 1852 question, “What, to the American Slave, is your 4th of July?” Featuring renowned scholars of Africana Studies, this symposium will explore how these legacies of Black fugitivity and freedom continue to inform discourses on Africana Studies and the Black Radical Tradition.