Istwa Nou

Sylvain kept the League's public posture careful. It had no plan to write laws, undermine the state or reach past what it could deliver. It wished to assist the government in social progress, loyally and without party alignment, and feminism was presented as a gesture any political group could adopt. Over the following decade that posture drew fire from several directions at once. Underneath it the work was concrete. After the summer lectures the organisation put its weight into women's education, scholastic, civic, social and sexual. In October it opened a night school for adult literacy at Saint-Antoine, continuing the school the first League had started at Saint-Anne. By November 1934 the two together counted a hundred students. Madeleine Sylvain also founded a Girl Scout troop, began running regular social surveys on women's place in Haitian society, set up a legislation committee to study what the law said about women, and organised standing visits to women in orphanages, asylums and the penitentiary. Résia Vincent, the president's sister, backed some of it, including classes for prisoners.