A hybrid political education collaboration between Haymarket Books and the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction.
The Haitian Revolution has been systematically erased from history, and this is no accident. No single event has haunted the guilty conscience of the powerful more consistently than this explosive struggle against slavery, colonialism, and capitalism alike. For Black slaves to lead not only a rebellion, but a Revolution, was an unthinkable contradiction in terms. Slaveowners from the US to Latin America and beyond were fear-stricken, desperate to prevent another Haiti, while revolutionary forces across the hemisphere found inspiration in the audacity of the Haitian struggle and concrete material support from the post-revolutionary Black state it established.
In this 12-week course, we’ll read C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins—still the best single account of the Haitian Revolution, with an eye to the following questions: What does the history of Haiti teach us about broader world history, and the capacity of the masses to take that history into their own hands? How does James read this history in his own moment, and how can we continue to do so today? What insights does The Black Jacobins offer for the relationship between race, colonialism, and class?
