1 to 11 January 1946 · Haitianspan
Four lines of verse in La Ruche bring down a president in ten days
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On 1 January 1946 the student paper La Ruche, edited by Rene Depestre and Theodore Baker, greeted the new year as the year democracy would beat fascism, and printed four lines of verse: down with the Francos, long live democracy on the march, long live justice, long live the workers of the world. Within two days the editors were in the police station on the Champ de Mars and the paper was banned. Medical students walked out first, then the rest of the university, then the lycees, then children as young as ten, crossing the Champ de Mars shouting for liberty and democracy and against dictatorship. The Garde answered with clubs. On 7 January, Jacques Stephen Alexis, Depestre and Baker announced a new party demanding the release of political prisoners, immediate elections and a free press. On the 8th and 9th the government clerks struck, then the teachers, then the shopkeepers. Elie Lescot went on the radio promising drastic measures. On the afternoon of 11 January, Alexis and Georges Rigaud went to his residence and told him to go. He asked for time to arrange his affairs. Two hours later Fort National fired three times.
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