Istwa Nou

Haitian women's rights organisers described themselves as modern abolitionists, on the argument that enslavement and the denial of citizenship were the two pillars their own national belonging rested on, and that their emancipation was a century and a half overdue. Successive presidents told them to wait until women were educated enough to take part in government. Their answer was that on that reasoning slavery would still be running, since the regime itself was what stopped enslaved people from developing, and nobody had waited for enlightened men to decree abolition. League members also said plainly that many freed Black men had taken up the role of oppressor. In 1804 yesterday's slaves became masters; they grasped liberty, equality meant something vague to them, and fraternity meant nothing at all. Cléante Desgraves Valcin, the first Haitian woman novelist and a member, wrote that abolishing one's own privileges takes a certain heroism, and that while men kept the Napoleonic Code and its labour exclusions in force, no one could claim all Haitian men were heroes.