dontbestingybaby

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“Similar allusions to the ‘crimes’ of the enslaved freedom fighters had already led some previously sympathetic metropolitan French writers, such as Olympe de Gouges, to argue that Black freedom fighters in the colony were equally as cruel as the white colonists. Shortly after the Haitian Revolution began, de Gouges—who was sent to the guillotine by the white Jacobins in 1793—wrote that the Black Saint-Dominguan revolutionaries paradoxically ‘justified’ the actions of the colonists by imitating their ‘most barbaric and atrocious tortures.’ [80] Those already ill inclined to support the Haitian Revolution, like the writer François-René de Chateaubriand, son of a slave trafficker, characterized the Black freedom fighters as indefensibly out for blood and undeserving of the world's sympathy. In his 1802 The Genius of Christianity (Le Génie du christianisme), Chateaubriand implored, ‘Who would dare to plead the cause of the Blacks after the crimes they have committed?’ [81] Raimond's disdain for enslaved people striving for freedom through violence was not unlike that of these white French reactionaries. There was one simple conclusion for Raimond: the enslaved needed to first repair the wrongs they had supposedly committed before freedom could be given. The reason that Raimond could not see that freedom was already being taken, if, in fact, it had not already been constituted, is because chattel slavery—in great contrast to the forms of enslavement practiced across the ancient world by Europeans, native Americans, Greeks, Romans, and Africans—was designed by the colonists to be an inalienable state germane to the life of an enslaved Black person. Unlike in serfdom, chattel enslavers, through the act of enslaving, sought to deprive the enslaved individual of all social ties, kin, family, and community, to the extent that an enslaved person was not capable, in their eyes, of legally or socially freeing themselves, in mind or body. Laws in Atlantic slave societies codified an enslaved person as ‘entirely under someone else's power,’ [83] even though the colonists were aware of abounding evidence that they did not possess this supreme authority over the people they were enslaving. In other words, in the minds of enslavers, chattel slavery was a condition into which one was born and out of which one could rarely escape. Enslavers usually considered those enslaved people engaged in marronnage to still be their slaves, for example. This is precisely what we learn by sifting through the records of plantation sales in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue."

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citations: [80] L'Esclavage des noirs, ou l'heureux naufrage en prose by Olympe de Gouges, 1792; [81] Le Génie du christianisme, 2 vols. by François-Auguste René de Chateaubriand, 1872; [82] Réflexions sur les véritables causes des troubles et des désastres de nos colonies by Julien Raimond, 1793; [83] The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, 2021

[dontbestingybaby]

Clara Bow in Photoplay, September 1926

original caption:

SHE plays the reckless younger generation—on and off the screen. Little Clara Bow got her name in the papers recently when Robert Savage, untamed Yale student, tried to kill himself because Clara wouldn't marry him. In the subsequent trial—everything seems to get to court these days—Robert testified that Clara kissed him so fervently that he was laid up with a sore jaw for two days. And now Clara says that the more she sees of men, the better she likes dogs

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“Scholars Michael Drexler and Ed White have argued that the Saint-Domingue Constitution of 1801, ‘following its dissemination throughout the US in fall of 1801... became the most widely read piece of literature authored by an African American and may have remained so until the publication of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845.’ [37] What attracted U.S. readers to this early constitution was undoubtedly its unequivocal third article: ‘There can no longer exist any slaves in this land, servitude is forever abolished here. All men are here born, live, and will die free and French.’ The 1801 constitution, even while preserving Saint-Domingue's colonial status as French, ‘made universal freedom from slavery its radical foundation,’ in great contrast to the founding documents of the United States or any of the French revolutionary constitutions, as Philip Kaisary has observed. ‘Neither the French Constitution of 1791 nor the Jacobin Constitution of 1793 abolished slavery, while the 1799 Constitution actually paved the way for the reintroduction of slavery in the French colonies in 1802,’ Kaisary pointed out. ‘In fact,... the only French Revolutionary Constitution that contained a provision abolishing slavery was the otherwise conservative post-Thermidorian constitution of 1795.’ [38] Thus it was that the 1801 constitution made the Saint-Domingue of Louverture's era a ‘colony of citizens.’ ‘The enslaved revolutionaries challenged the racialized colonial system of the day,’ as Laurent Dubois has written, ‘deploying the language of republican rights and the promise of individual liberty against a social order based on the denial of their humanity. In winning back the natural rights the Enlightenment claimed as the birthright to all people, however, the formerly enslaved laid bare a profound tension within the ideology of rights they had made their own.’ [39] The tensions of freedom plaguing the emancipated French colonies were not so much resolved in the Saint-Domingue Constitution of 1801 as they were called into question, particularly surrounding the forms of work or labor that could exist in a vast section of the world that previously hinged its economic prosperity on chattel slavery. This problematic—how to transform a slave economy into a free labor economy—stamped Louverture's first constitution, just as much as it stamped Sonthonax's emancipation proclamation. The relationship between these two documents is crucial to understanding how the Haitian revolutionaries came to define freedom after independence.”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citations: [37] "The Constitution of Toussaint: Another Origin of African American Literature" by Michael Drexler and Ed White, A Companion to African American Literature, 2013; [38] "Hercules, the Hydra, and the 1801 Constitution of Toussaint Louverture" by Philip Kaisary, Atlantic Studies, 2012; [39] A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 by Laurent Dubois, 2004

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Gloria Swanson in Photoplay, August 1926

Transcription below:

Just to be Different

Gloria goes back to an Old Fashion

Blow of blows, Gloria's letting her dresses grow, too, right down to the carpet . This , of course, is Swanson versus Paris. Yet what dressmaker important enough to demur when Gloria sets her hem down?

Here's a blow to the barbers. Gloria Swanson, whose every style whim affects a million girls, is letting her hair grow. It's at the fierce stage now, half curled, half straight, neither long nor short

And girls, corsets! You just know she wears them when you observe this photograph. Shades of the Jersey Lily, is the straight line front coming back? Gloria wears these outfits in "Fine Manners"

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“Louverture's legacy spawned many lives. The system of life he helped create out of the French enslavers' and colonists' system of death transcended comparison to any other historical figure. ‘Toussaint is not comparable, as they liked to say in his time, either to Spartacus, nor to Alexander the Great, nor to Bonaparte,’ wrote Vergniaud Leconte, in his famous history of the Haitian Revolution and biography of Henry Christophe in 1931. ‘He was a unique man in quest of a unique goal; he did not bring down peoples: he raised them up; he ravished no empire: he built one of Liberty and Equality; he conquered no nation: he created a hundred.’ ‘Born on a straw mat, he died on straw,’ Leconte continued, ‘leaving our black humanity but one thought: you are all brothers; only one recommendation: live free or die!’ [135]

“The arrest of Louverture and many prominent soldiers from the Black army had only added to the chaos created when Bonaparte issued the damning law of May 20, 1802, sanctioned with a vote from France's Legislative Assembly, permitting slavery to exist on the French territories England returned to France at the Treaty of Amiens, namely, Martinique. To understand how and why the revolutionaries came to agree with the conclusion that the island needed independence, iterated previously by Sonthonax, the very man whom Raimond, Louverture, and Rigaud, exiled from the colony, we must also history of how slavery was legislated back into existence.”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citation: [135] Henri Christophe dans l’histoire d’Haiti by Vergniaud Leconte, 1931

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Norma Shearer in Photoplay, November 1926

original caption:

ALL dressed up for a snowstorm in California—Norma Shearer and two Russian wolfhounds who are a long way from home. The Russian influence in fashions is great if, like this lady, you are beautiful enough to get away with it.

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“Dessalines wanted the French consuls to know, ‘when I entered Cap, I discovered that Captain General Leclerc still possessed some of the richest shops, at a time when the most dreadful poverty was felt by all men.’ [128] Dessalines minced no words about the implications of the French army's behavior for the republic: ‘And if men who want to be free because they can be, are still known in France under the dreadful epithet of brigands; let [France] send back, if it is possible, to fight them, the small number of French soldiers that our climate and our humanity have spared.’ [129]

“In Haitian revolutionary thought it is the terrible fate of Louverture and his family that taught the other revolutionary leaders that there could no longer be any meaningful negotiations for peace with France. The French continued to act bewildered by the powerful obstinance of the Black freedom fighters and their resolution to die rather than be enslaved by the French again. Leclerc famously said, ‘It is not enough to have gotten rid of Toussaint. Here, there are two thousand leaders to get rid of.... The more weapons that I get rid of, the more the taste for insurrection grows. I collected 20,000 rifles, there are just as many in the hands of the cultivators.’ [130] The French officer Pamphile de Lacroix used a more cerebral metaphor in writing that combating the general insurrection was like trying to combat a ‘hydra with one hundred heads that grow back throughout the colony with every blow we deal against it.’ [131] The Gazette Royale d'Hayti, characterized in the following way the lessons the Haitian revolutionaries learned from how the French government treated Louverture:

Toussaint Louverture voluntarily resigned his authority and laid down his arms: having retired to his home, stripped of all his grandeur, like that famous Roman [Spartacus], he cultivated with his hands the same land he had defended with his weapons; he urged us, by his words and his example, to imitate him, to work and to live peacefully in the bosom of our families. Against the good faith of treaties, the French lured him into a trap: he was arrested, loaded with irons; his wife, his children, his family, his officers all suffered his disastrous fate. Thrown aboard French ships, they were taken to Europe to end their unhappy careers, with poison, in dungeons and in irons!”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citations: [128-9] Journal de la campagne du nord by Jean-Jacques Dessalines; [130] “Le Général en Chef au Ministre de la Marine [August 25, 1802]”; [131] Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la révolution de Saint-Domingue by Pamphile de Lacroix, 1819

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Joan Crawford photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise in Picture-Play, December 1926

original caption:

JOAN CRAWFORD is our nominee for stardom, and we don't care who knows it. In fact, we are merely echoing the prediction made on all sides that within a year Joan will have achieved a stellar position. Meanwhile, she is adorning the heroine's role in "The Understanding Heart."

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“When Louverture asked Sonthonax, his superior, in fact, for clarification, Sonthonax replied, ‘That is to say, that we will be the masters, you will be in control of all the armed forces, and I will be your counselor; I will direct you.’ [69] Louverture reported to the French government afterward that he responded by telling Sonthonax to no longer speak of independence: ‘that very word makes me shudder coming from your mouth.’ [70] Sonthonax continued to justify the claim that striving for independence was a necessary move. He reminded Louverture that France at that time had no marines capable of invading because the French were still at war with England. As a result, Sonthonax stated that France ‘would be obliged to do as England has done with respect to the United States. Afterward, France and every other nation will be so happy to be able to come and engage in commerce with Saint-Domingue, and the country will prosper even more.’ [71] Despite Sonthonax's persistence, Louverture still insisted that he merely wanted freedom for everyone in the colony and that he believed France wanted that too. Sonthonax disagreed. He told Louverture that his own liberty would be more certain with independence and ‘it will then depend on no one. You will be the master.’ [72]

“In a passage dripping with unfortunate prescience, Louverture imagined how France would respond to an attempt by the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue to become independent. If the colony were to become independent, Louverture surmised, France would perhaps not strongly react, at first, ‘but here is what would happen next. France would make peace with all the other powers and say to itself: The colonists were right to say that the blacks were not worthy of enjoying the freedom and benefits of France. And France, in agreement with all the powers that do not want freedom, would bind itself to them out of revenge, and we would be lost.’ [73] There it is, a prophetic narration of the aftermath of the official Treaty of Amiens between England and France, and the Leclerc expedition that anticipated its formalization, captured in the remarks of one who did not foresee that he would be the one determined by Bonaparte to not be ‘worthy of enjoying the freedom and benefits of France.’”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citations: [69-73] Extrait du rapport adressé au Directoire exécutif par le citoyen TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE, général en chef des forces de la République Française à Saint-Domingue by Toussaint Louverture, 1797

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Anna May Wong in Photoplay, August 1927

original caption:

TERRIBLE influence of Hollywood on a nice little Chine[s]e girl. Anna May Wong wears this costume—or lack of costume—in "The Chinese Parrot." What do you suppose the folks in the old country will have to say about it?

[dontbestingybaby]

“Was it a coincidence that on the same day Sonthonax ended up issuing the emancipation decree? It all depends on what is meant by coincidence. Certainly, Louverture's rising power, as evidenced by his ability to achieve exactly his aims with this letter, pressured the French commissioner to formally abolish slavery. In reality, African freedom fighters had already brought the plantation economy to a standstill and ended the ability of human traffickers to profit from their system of slavery. On June 21, 1793, Black freedom fighters set fire to the city of Cap, burning nearly every structure in the center of the city to the ground, with damage estimated into the billions. [38] The French general César Galbaud, brother of the infamous French general François-Thomas Galbaud du Fort (whose governorship of the colony the commissioners and the Black freedom fighters were contesting), reported that four days later, on June 25, ten thousand ‘negroes in revolt’ came down from the mountains into the charred city to present a motion to Sonthonax to ‘proclaim general liberty for all the slaves in the colony.’ ‘That idea was well-received, and we expect very soon to see this proclamation,’ César Galbaud reported. [39] The commissioners had, in fact, already declared that any enslaved men who fought on their behalf against Galbaud, who was trying to have the commissioners arrested, would earn their liberty. The oath Sonthonax and Polverel swore to this effect constituted in fact their first attempt to legislate emancipation. [40] Yet many previously enslaved freedom fighters did not take the bait and refused to join those who fought against Galbaud. Louverture, Jean-François, and Biassou were among that number.”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citation: [38] “Plan de la ville du Cap Français dans l’Isle de Saint Domingue, sur lequel sont marqués en teinte noire les ravages du premier incendie” by Ch. Warin, 1793; [39] “Copie de la lettre de l'adjudant Général Cezar Galbaud au Général Galbaud, son frère” 28 August 1793; [40] Pétion et Haïti by Joseph Saint-Remy, 1854

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Leatrice Joy in Photoplay, March 1927

original caption:

IN spite of her ultra boyish bob—the most feminine of all stars. Leatrice Joy brings to the screen a quality of charm, romance, and gay comedy that gives grace and deftness to the most trivial plot.

[dontbestingybaby]

“In the now famous letter he wrote to the free men of color, Louverture rebuked those among them who were fighting against general emancipation. He warned them, ‘The time has come—I tremble to announce it—when we are going to strike a great blow against all the enemies of peace. So, dear comrades, join our side.’ [35] Next, he laid out the distinct relationship he saw between slavery and color prejudice, which so many of the hommes de couleur had either been unable to acknowledge or unwilling to accept: ‘Freedom is a right given by Nature; equality is a consequence of this freedom that has been upheld and granted by this national assembly. You say that you... now want these two things. It is for me to work for them. I have been given the right to do so, because I was the first to favor a cause that I have always upheld. I cannot yield my position; having begun, I will finish. Join me and you will enjoy your rights sooner.’ [36] Not long after, on August 29, 1793—while Sonthonax was declaring the enslaved of the north to be emancipated—Louverture gave his equally famous speech at Camp Turel. Like Sonthonax, he did not fail to awaken the ashes of Ogé: ‘Brothers and Friends,... Do you remember, dear comrades, brave Ogé who was put to death for having taken the side of liberty? Weep. He is dead. But those who are now defending him were perhaps his judges. I am Toussaint Louverture. You have perhaps heard my name. You are aware, brothers, that I have undertaken vengeance, and that I want freedom and equality to reign in Saint Domingue. I have been working since the beginning to bring it into existence.... Equality cannot exist without liberty, and for liberty to exist we need unity.’ [37]”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citation: [35-7] The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History by David Geggus, 2014

[dontbestingybaby]

Gloria Swanson photographed by Russell Ball in Photoplay, June 1927

original caption:

AFTER sponsoring the boyish cut, Gloria Swanson goes back to long hair. It is arranged in club fashion at the nape of her neck. Also Gloria is coming out strongly for the uncovered ear. The hair, incidentally, is all her own.

[dontbestingybaby]

“It could only be expected that Sonthonax would seek to ardently defend himself against Louverture and Raimond's highly publicized accusations in the land of the guillotine, where others had been executed for far lesser charges. But Louverture had the foresight to painstakingly preserve his conversations with Sonthonax because he knew that without such evidence he could not protect himself from the kind of charges Sonthonax was making.

“Louverture never professed to be a professional historian, but in the documents bearing his signature, some of which he made public in pamphlet form, he insisted that he was trying to correct the historical record in real time. Although Louverture was certainly pleased at the emancipation proclamations, he did not fail to remind Sonthonax during the earlier referenced meeting that so much bloodshed could have been avoided if Sonthonax had decreed the end of slavery at the outset of his arrival in Saint-Domingue, instead of proclaiming, as Sonthonax himself admitted in the emancipation proclamation, that slavery would endure in the colony forever. Sonthonax stated in the preamble to the emancipation decree, ‘Upon our arrival, we found a dreadful schism between the whites who, divided amongst themselves in interest & opinion, only agreed on one point, that of perpetuating forever the servitude of the negroes, & of also proscribing any system of freedom and even improvement of their lot. To thwart the ill-intentioned and to calm their spirits, all excited by the fear of a sudden change, we declared that we believed slavery was necessary for agriculture.’ [32] Sonthonax's earlier support of slavery is confirmed in the March 28, 1793, issue of the Journal des Révolutions de la partie française de Saint-Domingue (Journal of the revolutions of the French part of Saint-Domingue). The journal's epigraph was not drawn from any of the documents that made France a republic rather than a monarchy. Rather, it was taken from the ‘Proclamations of September 24 and December 30, 1792,’ described as an ‘oath solemnly pronounced in the church of Le Cap, by the Civil Commissioners.’ The civil commissioners are then quoted as saying, ‘The colonies are part of the French empire.—We declare in its name that SLAVERY is necessary to the cultivation and prosperity of the colonies, that it is neither in the principles nor in the will of the nation to touch in this respect the properties of the colonists. We shall die rather than suffer the execution of an anti-popular plot.’ [33] Louverture reminded Sonthonax of one crucial fact concerning this: Louverture said he would have not waited to rejoin the French army from the Spanish side, where he previously defected, if Sonthonax had been more sincere and trustworthy from the beginning. ‘If in arriving here you had proclaimed General Liberty, we would have reunited ourselves to you; but remember that you swore the contrary, eternal slavery, in front of the Supreme Being; and because of that we could not place any trust in you. [34] Moreover, it was Louverture who, prior to Sonthonax's proclamation, rallied the various Black revolutionaries, especially the hommes de couleur, to fight for the cause of abolition.”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citations: [32] “Émancipation des esclaves: proclamation du 29 août 1793”; [33] Journal des Révolutions de la partie française de Saint-Domingue, dédié à la république du 20 Septembre 1792, 1793; [34] Extrait du rapport adressé au Directoire exécutif par le citoyen TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE, général en chef des forces de la République Française à Saint-Domingue by Toussaint Louverture, 1797

[dontbestingybaby]

William Haines photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise in Photoplay, March 1927

original caption:

WHEN William Haines first entered a studio, as winner of a contest, a high mogul of the producing staff looked at him and said, "No sex appeal!" The high mogul is no longer connected with the studio. Bill is one of its stars. And that's that.

[dontbestingybaby]

“Nevertheless, the question of who ultimately abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue animated much of Louverture's conflict with Sonthonax. To grasp both the merits and the importance of their differing interpretations of the phenomenon of abolition, let us more fully examine the language in which Sonthonax couched his claims to radical ingenuity. Louverture said that around ‘the start of Nivose, in Year 5’ (circa December 21, 1796), Sonthonax told him directly, ‘It is I who am the founder of liberty; it is I who am the sole salvation of the blacks; it is I who defended them against the colonists.’ [27] Sonthonax seemed to reprimand Louverture in remarking, ‘Without me, liberty would not have been proclaimed; I am your true, your only friend, in this you must believe.’ [28] Louverture recorded word for word this conversation to explain to the Directory government, which replaced the Jacobins, why he sent Sonthonax back to France in 1797. In the course of Louverture's conversation with Sonthonax deeper cracks appeared across the otherwise smooth surface of Sonthonax's claim that he bravely, and uniquely, interrupted colonial slavery. Sonthonax inadvertently admitted to Louverture that it was the enslaved in rebellion who forced him into the dramatic decision to legislatively abolish slavery. ‘At the time, I had to take steps toward giving freedom, because without that I would have had my throat cut,’ Sonthonax stated. [29] It was not out of pure benevolence that Sonthonax came to this hasty decision. It was much more out of sheer self-preservation. Polverel had intimated something similar when he credited the enslaved Africans who spared his life while they waited to see if he would make good on his promise of declaring general liberty.”

from Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citation: [27-9] Extrait du rapport adressé au Directoire exécutif par le citoyen TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE, général en chef des forces de la République Française à Saint-Domingue by Toussaint Louverture, 1797