Haiti and Black Transnationalism: Remapping the Migrant Geography of Home to Harlem - Critical Essay

African American Review, Fall, 2000 by John Lowney

Given how strong such protests against the American Occupation of Haiti were, it is remarkable how quickly the cause of Haitian nationalism disappeared from the headlines of the major African American journals after 1922. There was no violent conflict in Haiti in the 1920s comparable to what took place in 1919; however, there was considerable unrest in Haiti over the United States-sponsored Borno administration, even as strict censorship of government opposition was enforced. Young Haitian intellectuals responded to the Occupation by rejecting both the elite French cultural values of the old regime and the pragmatic, materialist American values that had displaced them, instead affirming a new national identity rooted in Haiti's black African heritage. Yet, while this indigenist movement celebrated the African roots of Haitian folklore, religion, and language, it took some time before African American intellectuals took notice of the Haitian cultural response to the American Occupation. [16] Although there we re occasional editorials in African American cultural journals that criticized United States policy in the Caribbean, especially the Virgin Islands, more attention was paid to cultural differences among Caribbean and American-born blacks than to their shared concerns, especially in the aftermath of the Garvey indictment. After half a decade of minimal attention to Haiti, the years 1926-27 saw a resurgence of African American interest in the Haitian response to the Occupation, already over a decade long.[17]

The African American journal that devoted the most attention to Haitian cultural politics in the late 1920s was Opportunity, the National Urban League publication then edited by Charles S. Johnson. Its November 1926 "Caribbean Issue," co-edited by Eric Walrond, did not include any articles specifically about Haiti, but its emphasis on the social differences of African Caribbeans and African Americans suggests why there was less interest in the cause of Haitian self-determination among African American intellectuals after 1921. Because of the social and political differences among Caribbean-and United States-born blacks, "it is inevitable that they should fail either to know or understand each other or to profit fully by the virtues of each other." Even as these differences are diminished by the "single, inexorable pressure of race," the goal of this "Caribbean Issue" was to alleviate the social prejudice that persisted among Caribbean and United States blacks ("A Caribbean Issue" 334). Subsequent issues of O pportunity concentrated more intensively on the Caribbean, and, in particular, on the situation in Haiti. The articles on Haiti include Rayford W. Logan's critique of supposed United States accomplishments in Haiti ("The New Haiti," Apr. 1927), John Vandercook's account of his travels to Haiti ("Whitewash," Oct. 1927), John Matheus's laudatory review of Louis Morpeau's Anthologie d'un Siecle de Poesie Haitienne (Oct. 1927). and the Haitian writer Dantes Bellegarde's "Haiti Under the Rule of the United States" (Dec. 1927), translated by Logan.