Thread by @TheTattooedProf

The only other republic in the Americas when Haiti won its independence in 1804 was the US-which reacted to this event by slapping an economic embargo on the new nation bc the slaveholder-dominated federal government was afraid enslaved ppl in the US would follow Haiti's example

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1413572614077960192

Out of all the newly-independent nations in the Americas during the Age of Revolutions, Haiti was the one that most fully embodied the ideals of revolutionary liberty and universal freedom. So of course it became a pariah in the hemisphere, esp when it came to the US.

For the US, slaveholders' interests trumped supporting an actual republic founded on similar ideals to the ones possessed by the US's (mostly slaveholding) revolutionary elite. We didn't even diplomatically recognize Haiti until 1862. The US army occupied Haiti from 1915-34!

Before the Right burns all the books that don't endorse white supremacism, read "Silencing the Past" by Michele Rolph-Trouillot. And Guy Endore's novel _Babouk_ based on the Haitian Revolution. When you look at US history through a Haitian lens, you'll see the *real* America.

This is what the anti-CRT crowd doesn't want you to think about: the most significant element of "American exceptionalism" is how this our political culture has been able to so effectively cloak violence, enslavement, and genocide in the aura of republicanism and liberalism.

There are some excellent scholars of Haiti on here to follow and learn from, including @DrSepinwall, @JuliaGaffield, @RobTaber, @FictionsofHaiti, @Soccerpolitics, @michaelcdeibert, @Adita_Ferrer, @DrEricaJohnson. Also, there's great work on Haiti on the @AgeofRevs blog, too.

The best decision I made as a PhD student studying race in US history was to do a Latin America field, focusing on Mexico & the Caribbean. Mike Scardaville at the U is South Carolina was an amazing mentor, and these studies fundamentally reshaped my entire scholarly world.

The scholarly hill I'll die on: every historian of the US needs to be, at the very least, conversant with Central American and Caribbean history.

I could talk about this all night, but when I read CLR James's Black Jacobins as a first year PhD student, it was like everything just clicked into place--all the questions, misgivings, and perceived "holes" in what I was teaching, learning, and researching now made sense.

And from CLR James, I returned to WEB DuBois w. a vastly enlarged perspective. James helped me rediscover Fanon (I had read Wretched... as an undergrad, but I dove into his other works), and put me onto Walter Rodney and Amilcar Cabral, then on and on. A huge turning point for me