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George. Thank you very much for that, for that introduction, David.

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And before I begin my lecture, and I want to first apologise for those in the audience for the the double image that you see on the screen.

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That wasn't intentional. Since this happened then, and I thank everyone who was trying to help me resolve it, but I've been since it happened,

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I was thinking of an appropriate David Nicholls comment to make about the double image.

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And for those of you who know from wrestling to Duvalier,

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no Nichols very famous comments in the preface of it when he talks about a Haitian historian who he stayed with in Port au Prince,

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why he did his research, and the Haitian historian wrote to him and said, you forgot your unit.

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Be clear when you went back to England, meaning that he had seen Haiti in these two different sides.

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So not a perfect segue into this, but it will work for the purposes of today.

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I'm very, very grateful to be here and to be able to speak with you.

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It's a great honour for me to be presented the 21st David Nicholls Memorial Lecture,

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and so I thank David Howard and members of the David Nicholls Trust for extending to me this this honourable invitation.

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It's very special to me personally to be delivering this lecture because David Nicholls work meant a lot to me at a very early stage in my career.

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Way back in the end of the last century, in the 1990s, when I started to develop a scholarly interest in Haiti,

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it was the Nicholls work that I turned to very early on.

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So it was something very, very personal to me that that journey and more than any other work that Nicholls published,

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and this is not just the books but the essays,

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the articles and all of the, the output that he, he, he, he really sort of shared with the world on, on Haiti its past and up to the 1990s.

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But more than all more than all of that it was from Destiny to Duvalier that had the most sort of profound impact on me.

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It was one of the required books for reading on Haiti for anyone serious with understanding Haitian history.

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And it was a starting point, I believe,

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for a sort of investigation of a generation of scholars that looked at Haitian history after its first appearance.

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And I will say this I don't think the book has had the sustained respect it deserves.

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I think now, as I as a scholar myself of Haiti, as a as a professor of Haitian history,

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I've lamented the fact that it doesn't appear as frequently as it should on reading less on Caribbean history and Haitian history.

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And in some ways, that's a tribute to the vast outputs of scholarship on Haiti since the 1990s.

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Another other ways,

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I think that the richness and the insights that that book put forward still deserve to be grappled with by students of Haiti today.

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In the 1970s, when much of distilling to Duvalier was researched and written,

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Nichols took readers away from the view of Haiti as a case of pathological self-destruction,

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a perspective that seemed to guide far too much of what was being written about the Republic.

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There's a whole sort of genealogy of that sort of writing that one can can find going back to the 19th century travel literature and coming

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down by insisting on Haitian decolonisation as part of a battle between conflicting ideas of what the Haitian state could and should be.

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Nichols, in many ways stood alone, even if his conclusions drew criticism.

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Few could take issue with his methods and the rigour by which he set about his task and is not to be taken lightly.

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The fact that Nicholls was able to look and send to really Haitian sources at a time in which many non Haitian writers were not

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privileging Haitian sources in reconstructing the Haitian past and his many trips to Haiti and his his research in private libraries,

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I think really are a testament to that. It is also significant, as the late Trinidadian scholar of Haiti, Michael Dash,

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once remarked that Nicholls was based in Trinidad, employed at the UW Y when he began to work through the ideas of the book.

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Trinidad was, it must be remembered,

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the place where Celia James first avowed to write a book on the Haitian Revolution that would become his magisterial, the Black Jacobins in 1938.

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There is something very important here in the way the process of Anglophone political decolonisation

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and the discussion over independent nationalism forced a reconsideration of the Haitian model.

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James wrote about Haiti at the start of that process in Trinidad and Nichols just after its completion in the 1960s.

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The struggles over black consciousness and governance in the former British colonies were very much alive in the decade.

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Nichols worked on the book and no doubt had some impact on how he viewed Haiti's past.

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And he makes several references to the scene in from that scene to Duvalier, but more so in later works of Haiti and Caribbean contexts in particular.

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The conclusions he drew are now classic. Race and colour have been divide us of effective national independence in Haiti.

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But this cannot be determinative.

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And Nichols, in the revised edition of the book in 1996, acknowledged a difference in social and political power of colour and race.

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In my own work on Haiti,

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I have argued for close attention to the peculiar implications of colour and race at various points in time in the Haitian past.

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This is, in a sense, adding nuance to the argument. But what is significant is the larger point Nichols makes about the brittleness of power in Haiti.

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Changes both internally and imposed from outside, can reshape the material structure of Haitian power and cause further distress for Haitians.

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And once that process begins, the past itself becomes redefined.

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In light of it. It is in the preface to the revised edition that Nick Nichols, I think, best captures this point of his argument.

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He acknowledges that the deflation of end of Duvalier's optimism after 1986 and the Duvalier dictatorship

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fell and the splintering of the Duvalier explanation of the Haitian pass altered Haiti's trajectory.

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In his review of Haitian history from 1979, the year of the first publication of Dissident to Duvalier to 1996,

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he was keen to not force his model as an explanation of the crisis after Aristide's first overthrow in 1991.

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But to present Haiti as a state of new tensions connected yes to the past.

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But at the same time, exploring newer measures of correction as Nichols concluded, quote, What are the prospects for the future?

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Changes in Cabinet offices and speeches of self-styled presidential candidates hit the headlines.

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But the real life of Haiti goes on.

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The manifest weakness of the government has also led to an increase in crimes of crimes of robbery and violence, end quote.

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And this is a telling comment about the way in which you see a different sort of creation of violence.

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It's not the violence of the Duvalier estate and the Macoutes,

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but a different type of violence that still was a bit too young in the mid-nineties when Nicholls wrote this.

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But it was something that was notable.

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The legacy of all the troubles of the Duvalier is past was effectively covered in nicol's descriptions of contrasting

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murals on Port-Au-Prince walls and the provocative cover of the new edition of the book From There selling to Duvalier.

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Now, if we consider the changes in the new appearance of the book, here's the 1979 edition.

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And here is the 1996 one. The 1979 cover image is very much a story of the triumph of the Haitian Revolution,

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the triumph of the freed men and women who marched, started to overcome French colonialism.

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This tells a very different story. It's a different history of Haiti that is highlighted there.

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Yes, the revolution is present in the the figure of the man sat in the chair in the in the gingerbread house.

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But that person is wearing dark glasses, a routine costume for the Tonton Macoutes, then in jeans and carrying a sword.

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It seems as if this image in many ways is pointing to the way in which the presence of the Duvalier era has or takes or uses,

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or even in fact recreates a Haitian past to serve its own ends.

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And in many ways, I think that's that captures a lot of what I see as a major contribution and lasting contribution of Nicol's work.

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But it is nevertheless crucial for those of us charged with the duty of revisiting

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that Haitian past to do as Nicholls did and encouraged to evaluate it.

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In terms of the present in the onetime colony of San Domingue,

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that has come to be known by an interminable set of mostly pejorative suffixes the poorest country in the world, poor Haiti,

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the Magic Island, the land of revolutions there in the middle of the western end of the universe of the Caribbean,

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Haitian national independence has been redefined many times over.

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It is the independence of Papa Dessalines that Haitians celebrate freedom from French colonialism in 1804.

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Emancipation from slavery and freedom to determine its own interpretation of race and nationalism, which would be expanded across the Americas.

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19th century Haitian writers spent much time interrogating this type of freedom.

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And David Nichols devoted a good bit of his intellectual work to show how they did so.

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One need only examine the works, the works of Edmund Paul and in our film and compare them with their inheritors.

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Michel Actor Jean Casimir. To see how constant this process of redefining Haitian freedom and race is and the great

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disservice we make to Haiti when we apply conventions and interpretations from outside.

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Haitians. Self conceptions of race have always been guided by history and moments of great change.

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When Haitians might refer what Haitians might refer to as normal or belong can only be appreciated in context and chronology,

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as those terms do not travel unaffected through through time or are not reshaped by internal conflicts.

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Now, today and 2023, a whole new social tension exists from the one that Nichols assessed in the nineties.

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The horror in Port au Prince, where major sectors are choking under the grip of gang violence, seems almost incomprehensible.

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Evacuees from the violent areas are trying with fierce desperation to find a different type of freedom, a freedom just to live.

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It is, to be sure, a Caribbean problem. Gangs, guns and their trail of pain outline daily life in most islands of the Caribbean today.

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But in Haiti, it is most distressing because of the scale and because of the inability of political containment.

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Scholars of Haiti, myself included, struggle to find purchase on this situation and quite often missed the mark when asked to explain it.

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We cannot do so satisfactorily, I argue, because we cannot truly understand what the purpose of this violence is,

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what it might take to stem it, or more disturbingly, the tremendous effect it is having on Haitians today and for years to come.

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And indeed, what we're seeing in Haiti today with the gang violence is going to affect generations of Haitians to come.

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We often lean to the past for answer for answers.

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We denounce foreign intervention with good reason. French colonialism brought violent slavery in the 18th century US occupation.

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The 20th seeded deeper internal divisions and 21st century UN peacekeeping spread cholera and left little traces of stability.

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And today, a proposed Kenyan intervention has aroused considerable debate against foreign occupation or presence in Haiti.

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These are important insights,

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but they are defining a current situation of uncontrollable violence that seems carried out by mainly younger and younger males,

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where contexts of past conflicts simply do not apply.

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What are the prospects for the future of Haiti?

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Nichols asked in 1996. And it was a question that embraced the possibility of parliamentary democracy

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and a national effort to expunge the lingering vestiges of Duvalier ism.

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But we are some distance now from all of that.

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Haiti in 2023 is not the Haiti of 30 years ago or 20 years ago, with the second Aristide coup or even the Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

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It has to be faced by a whole new set of terms, as perplexing as the prospect may be to identify them.

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This is not to say discussing Haiti from the perspective of its past has no value.

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Far from it. The past is always necessary because it holds the aspects of Haitian life and evolution

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essential to knowledge of the present and that journey from enslavement to freedom.

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And the Haitian past cannot be seen neatly as one of unbroken exploitation.

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As is so often the case.

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I wonder if there are other countries whose 220 years of national life are so glibly summarised in news reports of its present problems.

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That sort of approach, even by persons with great sympathy for Haiti,

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overlooks the remarkable history of the country and what it has given the world after 1804.

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What I am suggesting is that the Haitian pass is best approach as being always in motion and reshaped by how we observe its present.

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To get to some of this nuance, the scholar must spend a great deal of time with the records of an older Haiti, and at the same time,

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as Nichols demonstrated in in that preface to the revised edition, cast eyes closely on the responses to what is occurring presently.

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This is not unusual, I admit, but it is much more acute in the Haitian case, because we are even when we because even when we probe,

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profess and pronounce, we're always catching glimpses of something rather than fully seeing what it was.

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The massive expansion, the historiography of the Haitian Revolution,

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or the new exciting work being done in the 19th century when taken together humbly, remind us just how far we have come.

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Since the since the period of the 1970s when a generation of Haitians were writing.

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It is my contribution this evening to that process.

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Of looking at the past and considering the present by supporting the project of re-examination

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of what we know about an early Haiti and focusing on a period of Haitian history,

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I've spent a great deal of my career living with the 1940s.

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My fascination with 1940s Haiti stemmed from how terribly misunderstood it had been.

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It was long treated by non Haitian writers as a prelude to the dictatorship of Duvalier in 1957 and its extreme rule in the 1960s.

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Nichols was a notable departure from this tendency, seeking, as he saw it,

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to explain Duvalier ism by closely investigating its ideological antecedents and approach that has influenced my own.

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But Nichols himself, given the scale and the scope of his work and the sharp analysis of ideology and political power

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did not treat as effectively or as thoroughly with the cultural tensions that lay beneath.

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Political context for PO in Haiti, especially in the 1940s and far from being marginal, the 1940s,

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a major moment in which Haitian notions of freedom and emancipation and liberty were redefined in popular and intellectual spaces.

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It was in that it was in that decade that some of the most contentious interpretations of Haitian history and

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the place of race in its internal and external relations were penned by writers such as Etienne Charlier,

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Dawsonville and Duvalier himself in partnership with Local Emergency,

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but is especially useful to consider is that it was a period of crisis that compelled

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new strategies of his generation who which wish from it a different Haiti to emerge.

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The pivot of the 1940s. And this is something that that is very much pointed out in the timeline of how we understand Haiti after U.S.

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Was a revolutionary moment of January 1946.

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It was called a revolution by the people who made it.

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Mostly initially students from the Haitian University and then expanding from there to a core group of people,

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labourers, high school students and the general population, not only in Port au Prince, but in provincial areas.

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This was different from the revolution that led to independence.

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It is also different from the use of the term revolution in Haiti's long 19th century, when new military leaders,

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eager to call themselves revolutionaries, use the word frequently to define their overthrows.

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And almost every moment you have an overthrow in Haiti in the 19th century,

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straight to 1915, was always referred to in official correspondence as a revolution.

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Revolution in the fever of 1946 meant an end to New York imperialism.

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It meant an end to dictatorship. It meant a vision of Haitian democracy.

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It meant a new way of seeing race, nationalism and colour.

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But even these aspects of the political conflict change in the months and years.

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Following the protest of January 1946, the statement of radical youth that ignited the spark of 19 of January 46 drew on French resistance,

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the Spanish Civil War and Haitian history in defining how it saw what was at stake in Haiti at that time.

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And here is the the celebrated appearance of a text in the student paper LaRouche, that appeared in its New Year's edition in January 1st,

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1946, which is Haitian Independence Day, in which it eagerly talks about 1946 as the year of liberty, of the triumph of true democracy.

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And of course, this is important coming after the war. About to leave Franco.

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Vive la. Long live the youth. Long live democracy in action.

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Long live social justice. Long live the world proletariat.

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Long live 1804. So this is really a key moment and it is from this that we get.

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The ousting of President Eli Lesko.

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The gentleman in the centre here, just seven days after the the student protests began,

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and you get this mass national protest against not only the Lesko government,

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but what many interpreted the the Lesko government to sort of symbolise, which is foreign control of Haiti at that time.

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So 1946 is a crucial moment. The end result of much jostling, negotiating and fighting was the election of Dumas's Estimé, a black deputy from Viread.

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In August of that year and the excitement of 1946 led its supporters to label it a dawn of a new freedom.

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And in fact, in the language of the times, it was seen as a new independence.

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The entire history of the country up to that point was portrayed quite different by the generation of 1946.

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Duvalier, in the mid forties, famously wrote that, quote, 1804 was an evolution.

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This is a revolution and quote. In explaining the factors that led to the revolutionary moment of 1946 and all that energy that carried it.

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I have in earlier work put forth several factors that range from ideological conflicts between black nationalists

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and socialists to a wartime radicalism that rejected perceived dictatorial tendencies of President Lesko,

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as we saw in the LaRouche advert earlier.

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I wish, however, to give my focus this afternoon to one which has a lot of relevance to how we see Haiti today.

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The role of intervention. The United States had occupied Haiti from 1915 to 34, and in the years after military withdrawal,

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the United States continued to not only hold powerful political influence over Haitian affairs.

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Let's go had been ambassador to the United States prior to becoming president in 1941, but also determined the economic direction of the country.

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1946 was, in the moment, treated as a response to the failure of the post occupation decade to protect Haiti from US racism,

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control and economic and political interference.

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As one radical put it in 1946, men of 1934 you have lost.

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We will not lose. 1946. Now,

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what were the specifics of US imperialism that so incensed the Haitian progressives

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who would eventually lead the country after estimated coming to power,

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and especially in that critical period between estimates coming to point 46 and the coming to power of Duvalier in 57,

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what was it that was so deeply upsetting?

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The most determinative feature of the 1940s insofar as foreign intervention and economic

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control was concerned was the establishment of a massive project of rubber planting in Haiti.

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Now, here you see for those of you who were curious why rubber is in the title, here is the answer.

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It was under the aegis of a corporation referred to as the Societe Eternal American Pool, a development that we call.

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Or more commonly known by its acronym, Shada.

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The basic facts are wrong.

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The Shadow Robber project indicates something incredibly ambitious, not only for Haiti, but for the entire Caribbean at the time.

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In the war years, the Caribbean support for the allies, most typically included by the service, as in the British West Indies,

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who joined the British Army or NGO Strategic arrangements, the Lend-Lease contracts that led to bases in Chicago,

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Ramos, Trinidad and Vernon Field in Jamaica was part of that.

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But Shadow was much more than this because it involved the plan not just to extract space people or produce from the Caribbean,

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but to put in place long term agricultural development for Haiti.

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The plan arose when the blockade of the Pacific made it impossible for the United States to get rubber supplies from Asia.

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The Cut-off compelled the United States to look elsewhere for much needed rubber.

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Rubber for tires. Rubber for boots. Rubber for raw material.

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Haiti had previously been surveyed in the early 20th century by Belgians,

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who determined it was highly suitable for growing heavy and possibly crypts due to geo rubber,

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a vine from which a form of latex would be extracted and then produced into rubber.

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By the autumn of 1941. Shadow was established and developed quite rapidly.

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It must be stress just how enormous this undertaking was with a US $5 million loan from the EXIM Bank,

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the Haitian state gave a 50 year monopoly to shadow 150,000 acres of pine forest,

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and 25,000 acres were devoted for sorry of pine forests, went to shadow for rubble, and 25,000 acres went for sisal production for for making rope.

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The largest effort was the land devoted for Chrysotile, which was a total of 67,603 acres.

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This means, therefore, that what land once occupied with sugar and coffee cultivation in the 18th and 19th century was

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now under the control of Chada for this massive undertaking of a new plantation agriculture.

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There were five regional divisions across the country, each with ten firms at its height, shot at a total of 92,000 Haitian employees.

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To break this down a little bit further. If successful, Shadow would have achieved something that Haiti had not seen since independence.

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Mass production of favourable products such as sisal from the plantations.

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Food crops such as spices and fruits. Lumber from the pine forests and most of all, rubber for the war effort that could then.

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Many of the optimists hoped generate a new export commodity for Haiti in rubble.

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From the vantage point of August 1941, the possibilities for Haiti to modernise was very real.

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Haiti could displace Malaysia in a post-war world and become a leading global supply of latex for less coal.

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The presidents who came to power in May 1941. This potential was incredibly alluring.

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Haiti could move leaps and bounds above its Caribbean neighbours and Latin America.

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Unsurprisingly, he gave SHADO ringing endorsement, and this is a quote from Lesko.

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In the summer of 1941, I proclaimed once more the total desire of our government to put at the disposal of shudder all the land which it may

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need for the cultivation of the strategic produce necessary for the war efforts of our great friend the United States.

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Even if in order to do it becomes necessary to tighten our belts and to neglect the cultivation of all the produce.

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For us. Just as for other United Nations, it can only be one task when the war and court.

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Now less goes. Position here requires a little bit more explanation.

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The war had negative effects on economic dependent states such as Haiti.

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There was a crisis on the horizon that Haitian exports, such as coffee, would be reduced if the US, its greatest ally, went to war.

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Shada was a relief to a problem that seemed to be drawing closer support from Port au Prince.

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Support from Washington. Encouraged and fuelled the shot.

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A project the president of Shudder was appointed in August 1941.

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A man from Kentucky named Thomas Dudley Finnell was charged with the enormous responsibility of overseeing this entire operation.

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And now here are some images of just how extensive the shadow operations were.

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I think it's important to note before I proceed that what you'll be seeing from this part of the

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presentation through is from private archives of the shadow operations that I was given access to.

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And I'm working through those records now which have actually contributed to my own revision

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of Haiti in the 1940s and the significance of Shadow and how much effort was put into it.

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What is clear from my review of the documents so far is that shadow was far more significant than historians have given credit.

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It was unprecedented in its reach and scale and could very well have transformed Haiti's foreign exports and led the country to a different future.

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As I hope to make clear in the remaining time of this lecture is that shadows collapse four years after it began.

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Long sorry, four years after it was launch was due not to rapacious intentions of either let score for no.

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As has often been stated, but to the contingencies of the 1940s, the backdrop that created it,

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the abrupt US policy changes to antediluvian processing methods of rubber and to the decentralisation of its operations.

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Its finalised papers, which I have looked at,

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revealed that he was convinced that shadow would function with as little disruption as possible to Haitian farmers.

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Lesko may have promised as much land as shadow needed.

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But Fanelli insisted that whatever land was taken from the Haitian farmers was rented with an understanding that should the project fail,

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the plots would revert to the original holders. The farmers would in turn be employed to work on the shadow lands for pay.

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Fanon's position on this was no doubt influenced by his time in Haiti.

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Prior to the Shadow project being launched.

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He was in Haiti since 1939,

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working at the agricultural school in Haiti to help develop new methods of agricultural development in core subsistence crops.

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Before that, he worked as a horticulturalist in Florida.

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In these two years, he had worked closely with Haitian peasants and agronomists on projects intended to increase agricultural production.

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This work involved a good bit of time spent with the Haitian peasantry observing their techniques.

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It was Fennell who saw the Crips, too, who saw the absence of a rubber project as an opportunity.

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To do more than plant rubble, but an effort to transform Haitian agriculture and and lift the country out of its poverty.

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And there's a lot in this early material, both from the Haitian Department of Agriculture and from charter records itself,

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that that really point to this this idea. There's this sort of united view.

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That shadow could have been an answer to Haiti's economic problems.

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As he puts it himself. And this is taken from from the first report that Finnell filed in 1942, Quote,

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Hate is one of the most economically depressed countries in Latin America.

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Yet Haiti is so full of opportunities, both agricultural and industrial,

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that the shadow management is embarrassed by its unwillingness to do more than can be properly, properly administered and financed and quote.

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Farnell oversaw the building of roads and electricity and water projects to the largest shore areas in the Golden Valley and bayou in the north.

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The corporation even purchased a former railroad station with the intention of reviving and expanding rail transports in Haiti,

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which had been largely defunct in the decade before.

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Fennell travelled to the United States excited by the early promise of his corporation, carrying samples of essential oils.

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Ginger, Haitian cacao.

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The last he took to the Hershey Chocolate Corporation in the US, hoping that Haiti could become a new supplier of chocolate for the United States.

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In a private letter from 1943, a visitor from the US Agricultural Department was enthusiastic with what he found.

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He said, quote, The more I see of the operation, the more convinced I am that it is the sorry,

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the more convinced I am that it is well conceived and executed.

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Nothing like it in the magnet in this magnitude has ever been undertaken in tropical agriculture.

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If Tom, referencing for now, is left until late fall alone, left alone until late fall, he will have his acreage planted.

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Planted meddling from Washington could ruin it now and quote, This is an important admonition that came just at the apex of Christou planting.

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Rubber planting was introduced to shadow operations in 1942 and came to dominate the entire production line.

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Nowhere before had such massive planting of it. Of this kind had been done, and Finnell and his board were well aware of the risks.

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As much as Lesko was hopeful of the potential,

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the US Rubber Reserve Company and Board of Economic Warfare asked for an increase in focus on the new rubber project.

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And so all attention was now being directed to that. But at the same time, there were other projects for rubber development in the United States.

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The plant was was particularly centred in Gonaives, in Haiti.

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And at the time in 1942, when this has been unravelled, there was no perceived end to the war.

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The US Robo Reserve Company was preparing for at least another 3 to 5 years for the provide provision of crucial rubber supplies.

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By the following year, 1943, crypto plantations were introduced by zenon buyer and by the summer there were plantations across six divisions

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and at the end of the year there were a total of 45,000 Haitian labourers working on rubber planting.

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It was at this point of widening that the feared Washington interference that I mentioned just previously came.

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The rubber development company had, with the efforts in Haiti also been expanding rubber supplies in the United States and elsewhere.

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Synthetic rubber was successful in the US. In 1941, the US produced 231 tons of synthetic rubber.

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Heavy investment with petrochemical industries and university chemists and labs revolutionised production.

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At the same time, Phenol was putting thousands of Haitians to work on the plantations in northern Haiti.

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By 1944, the United States was producing over 70,000 tons of of synthetic rubber.

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In February 1944, a delegation from Washington visited Haiti and immediately terminated the trips.

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It's a contract. Fennell was directed to return all land to Haitian tenants.

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The shock of this was hard for all who had believed in. Sharda Vesco begged Washington to reconsider.

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Aware of the damage it would cause to his government, his Minister of Agriculture, Maurice Teague,

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also wrote several letters to Washington asking, Please do this in a graduated way of ending.

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Don't do this abruptly. Finnell took this outcome as a personal betrayal.

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He knew that the real reason was that US rubber developers now wanted to protect US rubber from overseas competition.

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Within months, all equipped sets of geo plantations were burned and cleared and the land returned.

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Some, Robert, continue to be grown in buyer and sizeable production continued.

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The US government gave us $175,000, which works out to be roughly US $2.8 million in 2020.

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Three figures for rehabilitation of families displaced on lands that were turned over to at the jail.

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Embittered by the experience, Fidel resigned in September 1944 and moved to Puerto Rico for a few years and eventually returned to Florida,

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where he worked in the family orchid business.

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Just before he left, Lesko gave him the Haitian Order of Merit for his service and efforts to improve Haitian agriculture with the Chada project.

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Now a public indictment against Chavez came very quickly after that channel was blamed

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for the fallout as a self-interested modern coloniser who exploited the Haitian people,

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then left them without anything from Puerto Rico. Just months after leaving Haiti, he wrote a statement defending his job and his work in Haiti.

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He said, quote, It is obvious that they make no attempt and they meaning his critics,

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to present the facts in the case, but merely to smear my record with totally unsupported statements and quote,

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The criticism of Finnell and shoddy, however greatly expanded, and have echoed loudly in the historical historiography of Haiti.

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Shada and all the people associated with it were by 1945, on the eve of the revolutionary moment of 1946, synonymous with exploitation of Haitians.

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That narrative only deepened after 1946 and the election of Estimé and the profound

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black consciousness that defined Haiti's 1940s and its cultural legacies.

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The student protests and even more, the estimated prevalence presidency might be seen as outcomes of an anger that demand closer investigation.

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What might we learn from all of this if we treat the colossal failure of SHADO as one part of the drama of Haiti's 1940s?

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This revision of intent and outcome might be applied to other elements of how we understand the Haitian past.

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There is inherent in all of this a question of memory, always so vital to how we engage with Haiti, memory and history.

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Sometime in the late 1990s in Petionville, Haiti, I attended a concert by Racine Voodoo Group.

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Bookman Experience. At the concert, the lead singer during one of the songs adlibbed a list of historical moments of Haitian exploitation,

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starting with French colonialism.

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As he came closer to the present, he roared when he reached a 1940s new song Shada, which translates as We remember Shada.

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The memory, he recalled, was a bitter collective memory borne in the powerful expression of Haitian nationalism of the 1940s.

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As with all memories created in crisis, it carries forward emotions and it creates its own history.

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Haiti has had too many moments of crisis which have sprung many conflicting histories of its past.

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The crisis of gang violence of today is creating new explanations and rewriting

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all memories of the journey that brought Haiti to this distressed point.

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But if we are to remember the forces that sought to improve and those that sought to destroy Haiti,

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we have to first see the Haitian past not as an unbroken chord of disaster, but loop threads frayed but still firm.

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And we must equally return to the past, as Nichols insisted in the seventies with his work with new questions from which we might get

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some closer understanding of what we thought we knew about the many lives of Haitian freedom.

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Thank you.