Istwa Nou

The women's demonstration was set for 1 March 1930, which was also Carnival day in Port au Prince. High Commissioner John Russell told Régina Carrié Thoby the choice was unwise. She answered that a day of protest and a day of Carnival did not cancel each other out, and that with effort and will both could be held. Russell then said the date was fixed by the government and that he could do nothing about it. Thoby gave the exchange to the newspapers, including the reply she had kept to herself, which she reported making with some irony: say the word government and everyone accepts it immediately. Russell was the government. By printing his evasion she made the occupation's chain of command look ridiculous in every literate household in the capital. Le Nouvelliste drew the conclusion in bold type. Haitians had stayed away from Carnival entirely, ten thousand women and girls had marched instead, and no better evidence of a united country could be handed to the Forbes Commission.

The march did its work. Alice Garoute was in the crowd with her granddaughter Ghislaine, then twelve years old. By the time the Forbes Commission finished, an American military withdrawal was clearly coming. President Louis Borno was replaced by Eugène Roy, whose interim presidency ran six months until the legislature could vote. On 18 November 1930 it chose Sténio Vincent, a nationalist who had campaigned for years against the occupation. Ten years earlier Haitian women had walked Port au Prince collecting money to pay for Vincent's journey to the United States to plead the country's case. They expected the debt to be recognised, and a president who would treat their organising as an asset. Vincent was occupied with holding power and with suppressing any programme that threatened his own moderate one, so the support never arrived. Haitian women entered the years after the occupation without a friend in the palace, learning to move between shifting alliances and methods because nothing steadier was on offer.