Samedi, 12 Décembre, 2020 - 22:12
Toussaint Louverture, according to the scholar Sudhir Hazareesingh, was “the first black superhero of the modern age.” Louverture was born enslaved on a sugar plantation on Saint-Domingue, a French colony on the island of Hispaniola, sometime in the early seventeen-forties. He was emancipated in adulthood and, at about fifty, led the most important slave revolt in history, effectively forcing France to abolish slavery, in 1794.
Next, he united the island’s Black and mixed-race populations under his military command; outmaneuvered three successive French commissioners; defeated the British; overpowered the Spanish; and, in 1801 despite having been wounded seventeen times in battle and having lost most of his front teeth to a cannonball explosion authored a new abolitionist constitution for Saint-Domingue, asserting that “here, all men are born, live, and die free and French.” Napoleon Bonaparte first sent twenty thousand men to overthro