1934 to 1935 · Haitianspan
Four Sylvain sisters: a lawyer, a doctor, a social worker, a linguist
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The League's crowded first years had one object, which was schooling. Sylvain put the demand plainly: Haitian feminists wanted above all the means to educate themselves, through high schools for girls, more primary schools, and a revision of what girls were taught. The leaders modelled the argument with their own records, and the organisation applauded academic achievement as a matter of routine. Madeleine Sylvain started at twenty-two by founding Pupilles des Saint-Antoine, an agency supplying basic needs to women and their children. She entered law school in 1930 and qualified in 1933. Her sister Yvonne became an obstetrician and gynaecologist, the first woman admitted to and graduated from the Haitian School of Medicine, in 1940; she specialised in venereal disease, worked through the yaws epidemic of the 1920s and 1930s, and came to treat women's living conditions as a public health emergency. Jeanne worked as a social worker and wrote to her sisters about exhaustion and impossible caseloads. Suzanne studied at the Sorbonne and researched at London University, comparing West African coastal languages with Haitian Kreyòl.
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