The March, from the series The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture

One Book One Northwestern, 2022–23

In his early twenties, Jacob Lawrence created a narrative series of paintings celebrating general François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture, the most prominent leader of the 18th-century Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). L’Ouverture and other self-liberated people sought to abolish slavery and to free Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, from French colonial rule. Lawrence created the series in the late 1930s in order to represent a crucial chapter in the history of Black liberation that was excluded from his formal education. In the 1990s he returned to the theme by reimagining some of the compositions in the medium of screenprint, which has broader circulation. In March, Lawrence visualizes the collective action required to enact a revolution: a group of soldiers becomes a singular mass through a layered repetition of bodies, hats, and rifles whose angles suggest relentless forward momentum.

In How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith discusses the Haitian revolution in relation to contemporary events and the legacy of slavery in the United States. The revolution instilled fear into the hearts of American enslavers, who were worried that a similar revolt could happen in the U.S. In fact, in 1811, an uprising of hundreds of enslaved people in Louisiana was suppressed by militia and federal troops—a rebellion that is rarely included in textbooks. Smith emphasizes the importance of maintaining stories of resistance, in part, to counteract narratives that claim slavery must not have been so brutal if enslaved peoples did not fight back.