1946 · Haitianyear only
She came to the assembly on purpose, and other groups waited outside
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The woman turned away at the door had not wandered in. Her intention was to join the women in their section. She may have belonged to the Ligue Feminine d'Action Sociale, or attended its night schools, or used the Foyer Ouvrier, the community centre the Ligue ran in Port-au-Prince. Outside, Daniel Fignole had brought out the urban working class following he called the rouleau compresseur, the steamroller, to roll over any resistance to workers' rights. His Mouvement Ouvrier Paysan supported women's rights, ran a women's section in its newspaper Chantiers, and in 1948 founded a Bureau d'Action Feminine led by Carmen Jean-Francois Fignole. Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau later recalled that in 1946 there were many women's groups in Haiti, from the left to the Christian right, and that the Ligue was the only one with no party attachment and an explicit feminist programme. Most people in the hall disapproved of the woman's removal, including the same crowd that jeered the Ligue when it walked out. Almost none of them did anything afterwards to bring her back in.
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