Cover of Slave Revolt on Screen by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall / credit: University of Mississippi Press
Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021)
Chris Rock’s 2014 film “Top Five” is a scathing critique of Hollywood and its sometimes open, sometimes underhanded censorship of critical movies. Rock’s character, “Andre Allen,” emerges as a movie star because of his role as the ridiculous, crime fighting “Hammy the Bear.” Resentful of being known for only this goofy role, Allen produces a film called “Uprize,” playing the role of the Haitian rebel vodou priest, Dutty Boukman. However, “Top Five” grossed $25 million, while the animated film, “Madagascar,” in which Chris Rock played “Marty the Zebra,” netted $200 million. This shows the powers that be have no interest in amplifying the message of arguably the single most important event of the 19th century: The enslaved can rebel and they can win!
“Top Five” was used as an example in the recently published book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games. In it, historian Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall explores how the 1804 Haitian Revolution has been misrepresented and censored on screen.
Poster for 2013 film, “Tula: The Revolt”
For example, funding was blocked for an epic film, “Tula: The Revolt,” which highlighted the mass revolt and its forward-thinking leadership, namely Toussaint L’ouverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe, Sanite Bélair and Capois La Mort. Starring actor Danny Glover, the film sought to answer the question: “Why has this monumental achievement been so erased from our history and from our consciousness?” Sepinwall writes the film aimed to suggest “enslaved people were capable of formulating their own resistance plans” (p. 53). However, Glover was unsuccessful in raising funds to produce the film at the level other Hollywood films have been produced.
It is here that Karl Marx’s 1848 quote-turned-maxim is more relevant than any other: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”
Beyond a Great White Hope
Sepinwall contrasts the different historiographies that guided both mainstream, underground, and unfinished and unfunded films.
Poster for 1948 film, “Lydia Bailey”
McCarthyism acted to dilute producers’ ability to convey a new image of Haiti and Black leadership in the 1948 film, “Lydia Bailey.” After years of censorship as well as calling key actors and producers, such as Michael Blankfort and William Marshall, to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film became a shadow of its former self when it finally hit the screen.
Poster for 1933 film, “Emperor Jones”
Paul Robeson’s role in “Emperor Jones” (1933) is severely curtailed by racism, causing one African-American critic to call Eugene O’Neill’s play “a travesty of the Negro race” (p. 29).
A major thread in this book is Hollywood’s insistence on having a “great white hope” character who paternalistically shows the enslaved how to fight. The professor cites “Burn” (1969) and the French miniseries, “Toussaint L’ouverture” (2012), as but two examples.
The elite of Hollywood always sent a clear message: They would never endorse a film depicting revolutionary violence against the white slave-owning class, lest this generation of Toussaints, Jean Jacques and Cecile Fatimans are inspired to emulate this historical example of reclaiming their own self-determination.
Poster for 2012 film, “Toussaint L’ouverture”
Chapter 7, “Haitian Reflections of the Revolution’s Legacy,” is perhaps the most politically problematic and imbalanced chapter in the book. The four films Sepinwall reviews are “Dimanche 4 Janvier (Sunday January 4th),” “Moloch Tropical,” “GNB v. Attila” and “Haiti, la fin des chimeres (Haiti, the End of the Thugs).” They all share an anti-Aristide bent. This is curious considering Roger Noriega, the Clintons, the Bushes, the U.S. State Department and U.S. intelligence services always shared this same worldview against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, twice orchestrating coups against his government and kidnapping him (See “Aristide: The Endless Revolution,” 2005).
The Role of Video Games
The California State professor’s final chapters make the case that what has been banned on the big screen has reached millions through a most unlikely medium: Video games. Sepinwell reviews “Playing History 2—Slave Trade” (2013) and “Freedom!” (1992) as examples of video games that are “callous approaches to the subject” of slavery and revolution (p. 186). She reviews “Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry” (2013) and the work of Muriel Tramis and Patrick Chamoiseau as “counterhegemonic commemorations of slavery” (p. 207).
Screenshot from video game “Assassin’s Creed” / credit: GameSpot
Haiti is again trending, for all of the wrong, stereotypical and racist reasons. The mainstream media incessantly using terms like “crisis-ridden,” “helpless,” “pitiful” and “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” are nauseating for those who understand the only break Haiti needs is from U.S. imperialism. At this critical time, Sepinwall’s scholarly study has a great deal to teach us about those who have used cinema to challenge age-old white supremacist views on Haiti.
Just as Chris Rock’s character, “Andre Allens,” seeks to emerge from under and from within white supremacy, so too does an entire history that culminated in 1804, a history that—more than ever—threatens to unlock answers for the future.
Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels to Haiti to stay with the mass anti-imperialist movement. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.
The people of Haiti / credit: Marcello Casal Jr/ABr
What really happened on the night the president of Haiti was assassinated? We may never know the true story. According to initial reports, the home of Jovenel Moïse was invaded at around 1 a.m. on July 9 by more than two dozen armed men, most of them Colombian nationals, plus at least two U.S. citizens. So far, about 20 suspects have been detained. But some of the hitmen have evaded capture, and three so far are dead. At the moment, the fragile government is being headed by acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph.
Breathless news reports call the events shocking, bordering on unprecedented. But they also note that Haiti has bordered on being a “failed state” for some time. In fact, it crossed that border long ago, and more than 20 heads of state have been assassinated since World War II. The list of countries on that list, in just the Western Hemisphere, includes Bolivia, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Grenada.
In 1946, Bolivian President Gualberto Villaroel was killed by a lynch mob in La Paz. Dominican Republic strongman Rafael Trujillo Molina was gunned down in 1961; his assassins included one of his generals. Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza was murdered in 1980. And Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was killed by local militants in 1983. Six days later, the United States led an invasion and ousted the regime that had attempted to replace Bishop.
Other prominent heads of state who have died violently since 1945 include Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, Iraq’s King Faisal, Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquate Ali Khan, South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, South African Prime Minister Henrik Verwoerd, Iranian President Mohammed Ali Rajai, Iranian Prime Minister Hojjatoleslam Mohammed Javad Bahonar, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Lebanon President-elect Beshir Gemayel, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and, of course, U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Still, Haiti does have an especially violent past. In July 1915, for example, its head of state, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, was cornered in the French embassy by rebel forces. The insurgents had widespread popular support. This also was no shock, since Sam was known as a rampaging, vindictive thug, who had seized the government by force and murdered hundreds of his political enemies before running for cover. When a mob finally found him cowering in an attic, they hacked their president to pieces.
The island nation, once known as the “pearl of the antilles,” had been through seven presidents in the past four years, most of them killed or removed prematurely. The rural north was under the control of the Cacos, a rebel movement that adopted its name from the cry of a native bird. Although widely portrayed as a group of murderous bandits, the Cacos were essentially nationalists, and were attempting to resist the control of France, the United States and the small minority of mulattos who dominated the economy.
But a Haiti run by rebels and peasants was not acceptable to U.S. interests, which considered the nation an endangered investment property. The National City Bank controlled the country’s national bank and railroad system, and sugar barons viewed the country’s rich plantations as promising takeover targets. Thus, on July 29, 1915, after several weeks of observation from cruisers anchored offshore, two regiments of Marines landed. Their initial objective was to make certain that the U.S. choice, Senator Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave, was installed as head of state. A snap-election was staged less than two weeks later.
“When the National Assembly met, the Marines stood in the aisles with their bayonets until the man selected by the American Minister was made President,” recalled Smedley Butler, the Marine hero who led the decisive military campaign and administered Haiti’s local police force during the following two years. “I won’t say we put him in,” Butler wrote later. “The State Department might object. Anyway, he was put in.”
April 1978 feature story, Vanguard Press / credit: Greg Guma
Few journalists were on hand in 1915, and most newspapers were willing to accept the official version. According to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, establishing a protectorate was part of a grand effort to halt a radically evil and corrupting revolution, support the slow process of reform, and extend his policy of the open door to the world.
But that was just the official story. Actually, Wilson saw the island nation as a geo-strategic pawn in the build-up to World War I; specifically, he was worried that Germany might take advantage of the local political turmoil to establish a military base in the hemisphere. He also had other, largely economic reasons to seize control of the country. Haiti was an endangered investment property.
During the early years of the U.S. occupation, the Cacos continued to resist, under the leadership of their own “Sandino,” an army officer turned guerrilla leader named Charlemayne Peralte. Murdered by a U.S. Marine in 1919, Peralte became a symbol for the democracy movement of the late 1980s that ultimately led to the election of the liberation theology priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide.
In the 1990s, it happened again. Seven months after Aristide’s 1991 election, he was overthrown in a military coup. It took three years, but by 1994 Haiti’s plight was big news. The coverage was highly selective, however, never mentioning CIA support for those who conducted the coup or the Haitian military’s involvement in drug trafficking. Prior to this U.S. occupation, the media also was suspiciously silent about, as Aristide put it, a sham embargo that squeezed the poor but exempted businesses. Although an oil embargo was imposed, fuel was easily smuggled into the country from the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, a smear campaign against Aristide was launched.
Just as Wilson had veiled his autocratic actions on behalf of U.S. economic interests with rhetoric about stability and democracy, U.S. President Bill Clinton talked about upholding democracy. In fact, the central objective of the 1990s occupation was to maintain effective control of the country until Aristide’s term expired. Media coverage tended to obscure the obvious: the United States, never comfortable with Aristide, had entered into an agreement with the Haitian military for national co-management until the next elections.
Looking back, most policy-makers and analysts suggested that the U.S. had entered Haiti in 1915 only to restore stability. Few stressed that some sort of revolution was underway; even those who did invariably described the situation as chaotic. According to conventional wisdom, the United States remained in Haiti for 19 years in the early 20th century because the Haitian people could not effectively govern themselves or sustain democratic institutions. They weren’t ready in 1915 and, some skeptics claimed, they still weren’t in the 1990s.
At a September 1994 rally, U.S. presidential candidate and businessperson Ross Perot echoed this popular prejudice in his own know-nothing style. “Haitians like a dictator,” he announced, “I don’t know why.” The implication, underscoring his opposition to U.S. intervention, was that he also didn’t care what happened there, and neither should most people.
The Bush administration may have counted on a similar reaction when it embraced a violent uprising against Aristide beginning in late 2003, or even after it reportedly forced him to sign a resignation letter at 2 a.m. on Sunday, February 29, 2004. According to the “ex-president,” he was kidnapped at gunpoint, and flown without his knowledge to the Central African Republic. This should not be so hard to believe, since Aristide never had the Bush administration’s support, and his inability to maintain order in an atmosphere of U.S.-backed destabilization provided an excellent pretext for another exercise in “regime change.”
In early February, a “rebel” paramilitary army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic. This trained and well-equipped unit included former members of The Front for the Advancement of Progress in Haiti (FRAPH), a disarming name for plainclothes death squads involved in mass killing and political assassinations during the 1991 military coup that overthrew Aristide’s first administration. The self-proclaimed National Liberation and Reconstruction Front (FLRN) was also active, and was led by Guy Philippe, a former police chief and member of the Haitian Armed Forces. Philippe had been trained during the coup years by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador, together with a dozen other Haitian Army officers. Two other rebel commanders were Emmanuel “Toto” Constant and Jodel Chamblain, former members of the Duvalier era enforcer squad, the Tonton Macoute, and leaders of FRAPH.
Both armed rebels and civilian backers like G-184 leader Andre Apaid were involved in the plot. Apaid was in touch with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in the weeks leading up to Aristide’s overthrow. Both Philippe and Constant had past ties to the CIA, and were in touch with U.S. officials.
On February 20, 2004, U.S. Ambassador James Foley called in a team of four military experts from the U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami, according to the Seattle Times. Officially, their mandate was to assess threats to the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince and its personnel. Meanwhile, as a “precautionary measure,” three U.S. naval vessels were placed on standby to go to Haiti. One was equipped with vertical takeoff Harrier fighters and attack helicopters. At least 2,000 Marines also were ready for deployment.
After Aristide’s kidnapping, Washington made no effort to disarm its proxy paramilitary army, which was subsequently tapped to play a role in the transition. In other words, the Bush administration did nothing to prevent the killing of Lavalas and Aristide supporters in the wake of the president’s removal. In news coverage of the crisis, both Haiti’s dark history and the role of the CIA were ignored. Instead, so-called rebel leaders, commanders of death squads in the 1990s, were recognized as legitimate opposition spokesmen.
The Bush administration effectively scapegoated Aristide, holding him solely responsible for a worsening economic and social situation. In truth, Haiti’s economic and social crisis was largely caused by the devastating economic reforms imposed by the International Monetary Fund beginning in the 1980s. Aristide’s 1994 return to power was conditioned on his acceptance of IMF economic “therapy.” He complied, but was blacklisted and demonized anyway.
Which raises a key question: Why does this keep happening? One reason may be basic geopolitics. Hispaniola (the island that contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic) is a gateway to the Caribbean basin, strategically located between Cuba to the northwest and Venezuela to the south. Thus, having a military presence on the island, or at least leverage with whatever regime emerges, can help to sustain political pressure on other countries nearby, while providing a base to step in as part of any regional military operation deemed necessary in the future.
Diary kept during 1977 visit / credit: Greg Guma
Photos in this article are courtesy of the writer.
Greg Guma has been a writer, editor, historian and progressive manager for half a century, leading businesses and campaigns in Vermont, New Mexico and California. His early work with Bernie Sanders led to The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. His other books include novels, Spirits of Desire and Dons of Time, and non-fiction like Fake News: Journalism in the Age of Deceptions and the forthcoming Restless Spirits & Popular Movements: A Vermont History.
Clockwise from top right: Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell holding an alleged vial of anthrax powder obtained from Iraq that he later admitted to be false; members of the U.S. Congress wearing Kente cloth (bottom right); Black Agenda Report founding executive editor Glen Ford (left); and the cover of Ford’s book, The Black Agenda (center)
The Black Agendaby Glen Ford (OR Books: New York and London, 2021)
Tomorrow, July 28, marks the 1-year anniversary of the passing of Glen Ford, founding executive editor of Black Agenda Report (BAR), an independent online publication that aims to provide “news, commentary and analysis from the Black left.”
Before Ford died at 71, he was able to publish a selection of his articles as a book, The Black Agenda.
While reading, I highlighted words and phrases Ford invented to help burn the impact of injustice into people’s minds. If he wanted to, he could have published a dictionary of the new vocabulary. It is that numerous.
He made clear in his writings it was not enough to be against injustice. One had to explain it in a way so people would be inspired to organize a liberation movement. In Ford’s case, he was trying to encourage poor and working-class Black people to struggle against the “Black misleadership class,” a group of turncoat Black people who had aligned with the ruling class. Ford viewed former U.S. President Barack Obama and many Black members of the U.S. Congress as working against the interests of the 48 million people of African descent in the United States and the close to 2 billion Africans throughout the world.
Take, for example, what Ford wrote in a 2020 article left out of the book. In it, he compared the relationship the Black misleadership class has with white capital to a toxic marriage one would see in a soap opera. He dubbed that fictional soap opera, “The Black and the Powerless,” in a play on the long-running CBS mid-day drama, “The Young and the Restless.” I cackled at his wit.
“Black misleadership class” has been associated with Ford. But he and other BAR contributors only popularized it, he said. Writer James Warren first used the term in 2005 in Black Commentator, another publication Ford co-founded before leaving to launch BAR with others (page 56).
In advocating for the 72 percent of the Black population that is poor and working class, he wrote in a piece published a few months before Obama was elected (page 33):
Slow-acting Katrinas in the form of gentrification are what Black folks can expect—and must find ways to resist and defeat—from the ruling Lords of Capital for the foreseeable future, Obama or no Obama. There will be no “age” named after the handsome, articulate, and oh-so-slick but otherwise ordinary corporate candidate for president who used to call himself Barry. This is the Age of Katrina, and Barry is part of the problem.
‘Bifurcated Brain’
A child of communists, Ford grew up surrounded by his Irish mother’s door-to-door grassroots activism in New Jersey and his father, the first Black host of a non-religious television program in Georgia. In a 2013 interview with journalist Paul Jay, Ford said those experiences aided in developing his “bifurcated brain.” That might explain Ford’s ability to merge the art of storytelling with a revolutionary conscience.
“Glen Ford is irreplaceable not just because his writing was so sharp and so clear,” BAR co-founder Margaret Kimberley wrote in the foreword to the book (page xii), “but also because his politics were so clearly of the left. He was not a liberal, or a Democrat, or a progressive. He was a Marxist, and he brought that ideology to all that he did. In doing so he revealed important information that is regularly disregarded or disappeared. He also had a talent for making every issue understandable and making connections with the reality of people’s lives.”
After stints in the U.S. Army, on the radio in rural Georgia, writing for the daily newspaper of the Communist Party of the United States, and helping out the Black Panther Party’s Jersey City chapter in New Jersey, Ford led and/or launched several efforts in radio, TV, print, and online. The most memorable feat appears to be the 2006 co-founding of Black Agenda Report.
Blueprint for Liberation
In Ford’s writing, everything is minced and fried up for consumption. Once I start reading one of his articles, I follow it all the way, tickled at the imagery he uses and his climactic endings. For example, chew on phrases like:
Black Prison Nation (referring to the 2 million incarcerated Black people)
Black American Gulag (referring to U.S. policies that led to mass incarceration)
ObamaL’aid (like Kool Aid)
Bernie-bear (referring to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders)
Old Man Biden (referring to U.S. President Joe Biden)
Great Corporate Black Hope (that’s referring to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris)
Ford’s depth of analysis and the breadth of topics he analyzed is awe-inspiring, too. How could someone know so much about… so much? Because the man did not get distracted. Plus, he was an internationalist. And so, Ford could go from the U.S. invasion of Iraq to the surge of Western-armed jihadists into Syria, and the NATO invasion of Libya, the corporate takeover of Black Lives Matter, reparations for Black people, Hurricane Katrina’s impact on Black people, the Detroit hijacking of pensions, the origins of “Thanksgiving,” billionaires and millionaires running for elected office, Occupy Wall Street, and much more.
Journalists like Ford are hard to find. Not only does it not pay to tell the truth, some journalists risk their lives doing so (check out Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julian Assange and Shireen Abu Akleh). And so, Ford led a humble existence, as one of his friends told me.
In the final piece compiled for The Black Agenda, Ford paid tribute to George Floyd, the Black man whom Minneapolis police murdered in 2020. It led to the largest popular uprising in U.S. history. But because of his political training, Ford included a blueprint for liberation in searing language (page 326):
Community control is how we build socialism within the framework of people’s right to self-determination—the principles by which, along with solidarity, we decolonize and dis-imperialize our world. “Power to the People” means disempowering the capitalist and white supremacist. Everything else is a diversion, conjured up by the Kente cloth-soiling Black misleadership class in service to their bosses, the oligarchs. They have betrayed us repeatedly and laughed at our willingness to trust them yet again. In George Floyd’s name, let this be the end of it.
May more people be inspired to do the honest journalism Ford modeled.
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Toward Freedom has 69 years of experience publishing independent reports and analyses that document the struggles for liberation of the majority of the world’s people. Now, with a new editor, Julie Varughese, at its helm, what does the future look like for Toward Freedom and for independent media? Join Toward Freedom’s board of directors to formally welcome Julie as the new editor. She will be reporting back on her time covering Nicaragua’s critical presidential election. New contributors Danny Shaw and Jacqueline Luqman also will speak on their work for Toward Freedom as it relates to the value of independent media. Danny will touch on the rising Pink Tide in Latin America while Jacqueline will discuss an increase in films that have documented the Black struggle in the United States.
Toward Freedom tiene 69 años de experiencia en la publicación de informes y análisis independientes que documentan las luchas por la liberación de la mayoría de la población mundial. Ahora, con una nueva editora, Julie Varughese, a la cabeza, ¿cómo se ve el futuro para Toward Freedom y para los medios independientes? Únase a la junta directiva de Toward Freedom para darle la bienvenida formal a Julie como nueva editora. Ella informará sobre su tiempo cubriendo las elecciones presidenciales críticas de Nicaragua para Toward Freedom. Los nuevos colaboradores Danny Shaw y Jacqueline Luqman también hablarán sobre su trabajo para Toward Freedom en lo que se refiere al valor de los medios independientes. Danny tocará sobre la creciente Marea Rosa en América Latina, mientras que Jacqueline hablará sobre un aumento en las películas que han documentado la lucha negra en los EEUU.
