Prompted by Laurent Dubois's argument that the Haitian Revolution has been undervalued because the enslaved left so few written sources, Johnson asks what that means for the world history survey course.

Her answer rests on a survey of the textbooks. Most now mention Haiti, often filed with the Latin American independence movements or attached to France, and some name Boukman, Ogé and Dessalines. Africa is largely absent: the enslaved appear stripped of the political and military traditions they carried across the Atlantic, and few textbook authors are Africanists. She also flags the routine misuse of "mulatto" for the whole free population of colour.

Earlier pieces by Peguero, Garrigus and Sepinwall get their due, but Johnson wants more than a slot on the syllabus. Teaching the revolution well, she argues, means showing both what the world did to Haiti and what Haiti did to the world — and choosing a textbook whose own apparatus can carry part of that load.